Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the best way to promote any website. By using some simple – and free – techniques, you can improve the ranking of your website so that it is one of the first results people see when they search Google. With the right SEO strategy, you can reach millions of people a month with your website.
SEO is a complex series of strategies, not just a handful of techniques. You can do some of the work yourself, or you can hire professional SEO services, such as pay-per-click management, social media marketing, and content development will get the results you need quickly.
Improving the ranking of your website will increase traffic and increase your business exposure with SEO. Here’s how:
Content
Content is at the heart of your SEO strategy. Not only should your content include relevant keywords with the right frequency, but it should also be relevant to your readers, should be unique from your competitors and should be written with authority (or backed up by authoritative sources). Every page should be meaty and should explore the topic in depth. Above all, the content should offer a unique perspective or be about a unique topic.
On the more technical side of things, you should also make sure that every element on every page of your site is filled in with relevant information and keywords, including header tags, image tags, meta descriptions, title tags, and more. A professional SEO can comb your site to make sure all this information is included.
One case study reported by Moz showed that making these and other changes to a site that had lost almost half of its traffic after some Penguin updates significantly improved its traffic and ranking. In fact, it ranked among the top five results for all targeted keywords after these and other changes were made.
Site Architecture
Site architecture is an often overlooked aspect of SEO, but it is one of the most important. When you hire a designer to build your site, you should stress that it be created with the user in mind. The navigation should be intuitive, and it should provide a clear structure for linking pages. That includes adding bread crumbs, removing duplicate or similar content, creating a clear site map, and including menu and side bars that are easily navigable.
Another Moz case study showed a 515% increase in traffic for one site after the site architecture was updated and some other on-page changes were made.
Speed
When your site is slow to load, visitors are not likely to wait around for the information they need. Instead, they’ll click off your site and go to another. As a result, your bounce rate will sky rocket and your page rank will plummet.
Ask your SEO professional or page designer to run some speed tests on your site. The code may need to be tweaked, or the images may have to be resized or the CSS preloaded. In some cases, you may need to update your host. If your host or your hosting plan can handle the bandwidth you are using up, your site speed will suffer.
SEO may seem complicated, but it boils down to a series of small changes that a professional can easily make to your site. Hire a professional SEO to audit your site and identify the trouble areas to create a plan that will get results fast. You’ll soon have the traffic and the conversions you need to reach your business goals.
