SEO stands for search engine optimization. But you already knew that didn’t you?
With SEO you get to ensure that the content you wrote and the site you worked so hard at creating have a great chance of ranking well on the SERPs.
You optimize content in a manner it has the best chance of scoring a place atop search engines.
The higher up your site ranks the more the chances of revenue and conversions.
So here are the basic SEO steps that will help you rank and convert more traffic to leads:
Write in depth content
Time and again I have seen this trend that longer content tends to rank better on the SERPs.
Content length could be easily be thought of as one of the most important ranking factors in SEO today.
Long form content has the ability to attract and retain traffic and acquire customers at various stages of awareness. A leading SEO Company Melbourne explains that search engines like long form content as it provides users with more relevant information. Additionally, it has the ability to attract and retain traffic and acquire customers at various stages of awareness.
Longer content also tends to rank for more keywords as there are more keywords and a lot more information that can help the user. High quality content isn’t just fluff that repeats the same ideas over and over again.
Content quality defines how well your content is going to be shared.
Longer blog posts owing to their sheer length also increase the time people spend on a page. Highly engaging content makes people stay longer and they read more as a result.
It’s a sign that people enjoy your content and indirectly has a say on your rankings.
Content freshness matters
Both search engines and people assign higher value to fresh content.
Google simply attributes better rankings to fresh content.
It’s more relevant to users as well.
It’s difficult to produce new high-quality content all the time. That’s where existing content comes to the fore.
Update popular but older posts with relevant and current information and republish the content with the latest date.
To that end you can use techniques like including the month and year in the title of the post.
As the year changes don’t forget to update it to 2020 from 2019.
Employ the right kind of keywords
The right keywords can make all the difference between how successful or not successful your SEO strategy is going to be. When you use the right keywords you must think of what potential users are looking for.
It is obvious that the keywords that you use must be really relevant to the core topic so that you’re indexed for the right content. You don’t want to confuse either search engines or regular visitors to the intent of the site. You must always focus on the correct keywords.
That said while being relevant don’t get blindsided by keywords that get zero to no searches. You should always try and rank for keywords that have the biggest search volumes. Otherwise you risk no one visiting your site.
There are different keyword research tools like UberSuggest and Ahrefs with filters and options to help you discover these keywords.
You should look for the highest search volumes and also look at the organic difficulty score that tells you how difficult or easy it might be to rank a certain keyword. Also look for long tail keywords. On my post on webinar software I also target webinar tools and best webinar tools. This is how you approach keyword research.
Use long tail keywords and LSI keywords as well. LSI keywords are more specific and shouldn’t be in the title of the post. However they can be included as h2 and h3 headings to generate specific and hyper-relevant visitors.
Optimize the meta tags and descriptions
I will give you this.
Meta titles are waning in importance.
But including them in the right places gives you a fighting chance against competitors.
Title Tag
The title tag carries a lot of SEO weight.
That’s the first thing users see.
Titles need to unique for each page
The length of the title tag shouldn’t exceed 60 characters.
The title tag must contain the target keywords
If you create titles without any keywords you are going to miss on opportunities for ranking high.
The title should be relevant to the content and tells both people and search engines what the page is about.
Use additional keywords that are relevant to the main keyword if possible.
Meta Tag Or Meta Description
Meta description is a one or two line short description of the url that gives the preview of what the page is going to be about on search engines.
A good meta description is what people see when they decide whether to click on your link.
It is not mandatory for Google to use this description. But it is something google refers to when categorizing and indexing your page. Hence it’s important.
Headings And Subheadings
On your page there are headings and subheadings that have the h1, h2 and h3 tags. These sections of your content should contain the right target keywords.
Backlinks
SEO isn’t complete without relevant backlinks.
A backlink is simply a mention of your site on another website with a link to your site.
Backlinks are the biggest deciding factor that help decide your site’s rank.
If you want to rank high the backlinks should be good quality and not spam. They should be around your content.
If your blog is about design, try and generate links from web design related sites. The relevance and the authority of the domain decides how powerful the backlink really turns out to be.
Search engines know that the better the links to your site the more useful your content is for users.
If you want to score great links the first thing to do is go and identify competitor backlinks.
Identify the best links they have with the help of link research tools like Moz’s open site explorer or Ahrefs.
Always think of quality first. The rest can stay.
What do you think of our tips? Do let us know in the comments below.