What is SEO and how does it affect your website's ranking?

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is a set of strategies that can be implemented into your website to help it rank higher than your competitors in the search engine results pages (SERPS). People often use Google as an example because it currently has over 70% of the market share. The better your website ranks on SERPs, the more traffic you will get.

10 Steps To Improve Your Websites SEO

1 - Identify Keyword Phrases To Target

To better understand this section, you should look at it like "What words or phrases would someone type into Google to find my website?" Once you answer that question for yourself, pick the two or three best ones. If they are too long, think about shorter versions of your keywords.

Once you have found keyword phrases to target, double-check these terms to see if there is search volume and that the terms you are looking to target have low competition.  For example - trying to rank for diamond engagement rings might be incredibly difficult to rank for, however, finding a more narrow phrase might be easier to rank for.

It's worth spending time on keyword research as it is something that has a direct impact on your website's performance. The more targeted and relevant traffic you receive, the better off your website will be.  The better chances to rank, the more likely you will gain the search traffic.

2 - Optimize Title Tags

The title tags are one of the most important factors in ranking well with search engines. Typically, it displays at the top of SERPs and can influence what the searcher clicks on. Use of 70 characters or less is recommended.

When you optimize your title tags, it's important to use keywords as close as possible to the start of the tag and avoid cramming them in at the end.

For example: A company might want their website to rank for "San Francisco Web Design Company" so they would include this phrase in their title tag. However, if they were to cram it into the tag, like "Web Design Company San Francisco," this would be more difficult for search engines to determine what your website is actually about.

The start of your title tag also needs to be relevant and descriptive of what your business does in order for it to make sense when someone sees it in the SERPs.

For example - "Web Design Company" is too vague of a start for your title tag, but something like "Providing web design services to businesses across San Francisco" would be more descriptive and relevant for what your business does. It also provides context to the people who are seeing it in the SERPs.

3 - Optimize Meta Descriptions

Just like your title tag, meta descriptions are an important factor for search engines to determine how relevant and descriptive your website is. For example, if someone searches for "San Francisco Web Design Company," having a long meta description that has multiple uses of the phrase "San Francisco Web Design Company" would be helpful in determining what your business does.

The meta description, just like the title tag, should be around 70-150 characters or and use descriptive and relevant keywords that people might search for when looking for a company like yours.

4 - Optimize Alt Text Images

Alt text is an image attribute that tells search engines and users what the image is about. It's always a good idea to use relevant keywords with your alt tag because it helps people find your website in the SERPs.

5 - Write Unique Content

You want all of your pages on your website to be ranked for different terms so it doesn't look like you're using a template or duplicating content from other sites. In order to avoid this, it's important to write unique content on all of your pages that are relevant and descriptive of what your business does.

6 - Write Consistent Blog Content

When you write blog posts about topics related to your industry, it helps with your overall rankings because Google's algorithm takes into account how informative and helpful content is when determining what the most relevant page on your website is for a certain search term. 

Unique, informative, useful and user intent types of blogs are very valuable in ranking, social sharing, internet, and external linking and backlinks.  Make it a goal to publish content weekly at a minimum to consistently add value.  If you can't keep up with content ideas, targeted keyword, new content, then you should hire a blog writing service that specializes in SEO.  Many companies offer affordable options that will grow your search traffic consistently. 

7 - Optimize Internal Linking

Search engines look for a balance of internal and external linking to determine how important a website is. When you have a balance of internal and external linking, it looks like your website is being shared with many different people as opposed to spamming the same page repeatedly on thousands of websites.  

Internal linking is set up mainly through navigation menus, but can also be done on individual pages. It's good to link each type of page (i.e.: product, blog post) to its relevant category or subcategory. You should also create links that take people back to the homepage and other important pages within your website like terms and conditions or contact pages.

8 - Build Quality Links

Link building is a complicated subject because many people don't want their tactics to be used for spamming or link schemes. However, there are still ways to build high-quality links that help your overall search rankings without being considered as spammy to Google and other search engines. 

A few ways to build quality links are becoming a regular writer on a publication's website, networking with industry professionals and finding ways to contribute to their business or blog, sharing other people's content (especially influencers in your industry), commenting on relevant blogs, getting involved with communities like Facebook groups related to your industry; whatever it is that you do, just make sure you are putting in effort to build relationships instead of trying to send someone a message or email with a link. It's important that your content is original and provides value to the other person's website without asking anything back in return.

9 - Get Reviews

Reviews are a great way to get high-quality links that will also help people discover your business if they're searching for it by word of mouth. Search engines like Google place value on reviews because it shows that multiple people have had positive experiences with your business, and the more reviews you have (combined with other links, social engagements, etc.) the more trust people have with your business to want to visit it.

10 - Have an Ongoing SEO Plan

The last important factor in ranking better in search results is having an SEO plan that you can consistently implement across all of your website pages. This means knowing what types of content you're going to publish, how you're going to promote it, how you are going to track progress, and working with your employees or virtual assistants so they know what needs to be done.

You should plan on continuing to grow your website traffic because not all of your posts will go viral right off the bat - it takes time for content marketing strategies to work. The important thing is to keep at it because the best SEO strategies take months before they start seeing an increase in search engine rankings. If you are just getting started, then have your plan set up so that you can focus on one keyword or topic area for 3-6 months to see good results.

Apply These 10 SEO Basic Tips

You don't need to be an expert in SEO or understand the ins and outs of how it all works. You just need to know what you're trying to accomplish, whether that's improving your website rankings, attracting more traffic, or increasing conversions. Just be sure to follow the 10 basic tips above in order and you'll be on your way to improving your website's search engine rankings and overall market presence.

About The Stack Group

Written by: Ryan Stack

If you want your website or business to rank higher in Google, it all starts with having a good SEO strategy. You can have the best website in the world, but unless people are finding it easily online, you won't be able to get your message out there. The Stack Group offers affordable SEO services nationwide.  If you're looking to rank higher on Google, contact us today.