Getting your site to rank high in search engine results has been on the minds of businesses for over a decade. Over time, numerous search engine optimization (SEO) techniques have been used to improve a site’s position. These range from “natural” methods that are approved by search engines to “black hat” tactics aimed to game the system and get quick results.
As these later methods can get your site dropped altogether, what can you do to achieve noticeable improvements and still play by the rules? The answer is plenty, but here are a few that are easiest and most effective:
Define a small set of keywords or phrases to target
Before you do anything, you need to figure out what you’re targeting. This should be a handful of words or phrases that you hope will lead visitors to your site when entered into the major search engines. Your selections should accurately represent what your site is about. Do not target popular celebrity names when you sell dog beds.
Similarly, don’t try to target subjects that are extremely broad or saturated with results. If you own a cupcake shop in Indianapolis, do not aim to be the first result in Google when someone types in “food”. Instead, “cupcakes Indianapolis” would be a more reasonable phrase to focus on. The more specific your keywords, the easier it will be to improve your rank. At the same time, you’ll want to target phrases that people will actually search on.
Make sure your content is optimized around your keywords and phrases
The content of your site carries the most weight as search engines are determing the relevance of your site.
- Integrate your targeted phrases into your pages. That said, don’t go overboard. Your content should read naturally and be easy for a real person to understand.
- Focus on making sure the words appear in section headings as well and early on in the page.
- If you have links to other pages in your site, consider using relevant keywords in the linked text instead of just saying “click here”.
Writing your content in this way will help you balance between writing for your visitors as well as search engines.
Additionally, search engines love sites that are authorities on a subject matter. Knowing this, you need to focus much of your effort in writing appropriate content that provides valuable information on whatever your organization is about. Let’s say your company makes water bottles for cycling. You probably talk about your company, products, and details like size and pricing. Most sites leave it at that. To improve your SEO however, think about adding content to supplement this information. For example, you could have articles about cycling and the importance of proper hydration. This makes your site more than just a place to buy a bottle and more of a destination to help visitors make informed decisions. This gives you an edge when a search engine is comparing your site against your competitors.
Unique titles for your pages
One of the quickest and most effective changes you can make today is to make sure the titles of your pages are unique and describe what the page is about. If all your pages are titled “My Website”, then you’re missing an important opportunity because they serve a number of purposes:
- Search engines put a lot of weight on the title to determine the subject of a page, so you’ll want to make sure to use the appropriate keywords.
- They are the most prominently displayed piece of information in search engine results. Descriptive page titles will help people determine if your listing interests them.
- Internet browsers display them in the title bar or tabs to help visitors know where they are. They are also the text they see when they bookmark your page.
Get high quality incoming links
Having a lot of sites linking to yours is great as it can help drive more traffic. Getting a handful of links from sites within your industry or those talking about the same things you are is a much better goal than dozens of links from random sites. In fact, links from untrustworthy sites can actually harm your ranking.
How do you get quality sites to link to yours? It all goes back to content. If you have interesting and useful information, then people will be more likely to want to share it with others. Also look for opportunities to be listed in relevant and reputable industry directories.
Clean up your code
The quality of your code can impact your SEO if it is poorly built. Early on, most sites were built by lumping content, code, styles, and layout information all into one. This lowers the ratio of your content and keywords to the rest of the information on your page. The good news is modern web standards provide a way to put better separation between the content and the page’s layout and styling. This helps you guide search engines towards what’s important and what’s not. As an added benefit, these same techniques will improve the speed of your site which your visitors will appreciate.
Search engine optimization is an important topic for anyone with a web site. Though this list is just the tip of the iceberg, we hope this list will help you understand where to start. Keep in mind, search engine optimization is not a one-time event. You should reevaluate your site several times a year to see where you are in comparison to the competition. If you need assistance making these changes or would like to know more about what improvements can be made, we’re happy to help.