Let’s discuss the actual process of doing SEO – how to optimize your website to improve its ranking on Google and increase traffic. To achieve this, you need to implement on-page, off-page, and technical optimizations. There are a few popular steps among SEO experts:
1. Keyword research as a First Step in SEO
The initial stage of search engine optimization involves identifying the keywords you wish to optimize for. These keywords are the terms that your ideal website visitors are expected to search for on platforms like Google. It is recommended to focus on different keyword clusters for each page of your website to avoid any competition among them.
How to do keyword research for SEO?
Here are the fundamental actions you should take to identify the most effective keywords to focus on in your organic content.
Make a list of keywords: Begin by jotting down the words and phrases that your perfect customers are searching for on Google. Consider their interests, wants, challenges, and objectives, and focus on using the same language that they use, even if it differs from your expertise.
Enter them into a keyword research tool: By using the keywords ranking checker online, you will acquire information about these keywords. This will enable you to determine which terms you have the potential to rank for and identify the most advantageous opportunities.
2. Create quality content that focuses on specific keywords
To match the intended meaning of the keyword, it is important to ensure that your content offers the desired information that people are looking for. Also, avoid excessive use of keywords. Write in a conversational tone, addressing your audience as a person instead of writing solely for search engine optimization purposes.
Remember that Google prefers pages that are informative and provide accurate and current information. Also, use header tags to showcase the order of content on the webpage.
3. Place your keywords
Besides naturally incorporating your keyword within your content, it is important to strategically place it within certain areas on the page to signal to Google your desired ranking.
4. Optimize your titles
Each page on your website has two titles. The title tag is the title that is displayed on the search engine results page (SERP), and it holds the most potential to impact your keyword placement. The H1 tag, on the other hand, is the title that you see when you click on the page itself. Whether these titles are the same or not depends on the specific page.
5. Optimize your meta descriptions
A meta description is the description that appears below the title tag in the SERP. Google may not always show the description you provide in search results, but optimizing it for SEO is still extremely important. Google uses this description to understand the content of the page during crawling.
6. Include and optimize images
Images play a crucial role in optimizing SEO. They attract and captivate users, improve the overall quality of information, and offer opportunities to increase rankings and generate traffic to the host pages through image results.
7. Internal and external links
When optimizing blog posts for search engines, it is recommended to include both internal and external hyperlinks.
Include external links in your post that lead to 1-3 pages on other websites with high domain authority and are relevant to your topic. This will establish trust with Google.
Include internal links in your blog posts that lead to other content on your website. This will provide multiple pathways for Google to crawl your site and make it easier to navigate. The number of links to include depends on the length of the post and the availability of other relevant content to link to. Ensure that the links are relevant to the page and use appropriate anchor text.
8. Earn and get backlinks
Backlinks, which are connections to your website from other websites, ranks as the third most crucial factor for Google rankings. Naturally, backlinks originating from websites with higher levels of trust are more profitable compared to links from less trusted platforms. To increase your ranking, it is important to accumulate more quality backlinks. One effective way to achieve this is by investing in an organic link-building service from Sure Oak, which focuses on securing high-quality and relevant backlinks to enhance your site’s authority and trustworthiness.
9. Share your content on social media
Besides including a link to the main website on your social media profiles, it is recommended to consistently share your blog posts with your followers. This will increase the amount of traffic coming from referrals and increase your chances of getting backlinks.
10. Build your brand reputation
Google considers more than one page when determining the ranking of a specific page on your site. It also takes into account your brand’s overall reputation by examining various information about your brand online, such as reviews, ratings, listings, awards, and even unrelated brand mentions. Therefore, it is crucial for SEO to build your brand’s reputation by optimizing your listings, getting positive press, and asking for reviews.
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