simple tips to improve SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) might be one of those terms you keep hearing, but don’t necessarily understand how it works – or how to achieve it on your site. If that’s the case, you’re not alone! In a survey conducted by Fractl, almost a quarter of the business owners they surveyed were either “vaguely familiar” or “not at all familiar” with the concept. Luckily, SEO does not need to be rocket science, and familiarizing yourself with the basics can drastically improve your business’ online presence.
Essentially, SEO is the process of improving your website’s organic ranking and traffic on search engines, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. When someone uses a search engine, they’re typically looking for an answer to a question – and it’s the search engine’s job to provide the most helpful, credible and relevant answer.
Optimization is achieved by enabling search engine bots to easily “crawl” your site’s content so that they can recommend it as the best solution for the user’s search. Here are a few simple ways to improve your ranking within the search engine’s algorithm, and rank higher on the SERPs (search engine results pages):
1. OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE COPY
In order to optimize your copy, you’ll first need to identify relevant search terms to incorporate throughout your site. These terms are called “keywords” – even though they aren’t limited to just one-word terms. The trick is to anticipate what your target audience will be searching for, and select keywords accordingly.
When selecting these keywords and phrases, it’s important to find the balance between relevance (how closely the term relates to what the person is searching for) and search volume (how many people are searching for that particular term) so you can remain relevant but avoid getting buried beneath higher ranking search results. If you reinforce your keywords throughout your site – both on the front end and back end – the search engines will rank it higher on the SERPs and your site will be more likely to appear as a recommended solution to the problem being searched.
2. CONSISTENTLY ADD AND REFINE CONTENT
SEO isn’t a “set it and forget it” process. In order to maintain relevance and credibility with the search engines, you’ll need to consistently keep your content up-to-date. Publishing fresh content on a regular basis can help build a returning audience, driving more traffic to your site and therefore improving your authority within the search engine’s algorithm. You can accomplish this by refining existing copy or by regularly adding new content, such as blog posts, news articles, company updates, webpages, etc. By consistently updating your content, you’re increasing your chances of ranking higher on search engine results.
3. ENCOURAGE PARTNERS TO CROSS-LINK, WHEN APPLICABLE
While you want to avoid driving traffic away from your site unnecessarily, it’s beneficial from an SEO perspective to cross-link to outside resources when applicable. Whether you’re sharing a link to a relevant source’s site, or another site is linking back to you, cross-linking allows search engines to verify your online credibility. When other sites drive traffic to your page by sharing a specific link, it’s referred to as “backlinking.” Backlinking increases the overall traffic to your site and therefore, enables you to rank higher within the algorithm.
Taking it a step further, if a site that Google already considers credible links out to your page, then it reinforces your site’s credibility by association and shows that your information is well-trusted – allowing you to appear higher on the search engine results page.
4. AVOID REPEAT-CONTENT, BOTH INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY
A quick way to lose credibility with the search engine bots is to publish duplicate information that exists elsewhere on the internet. Not only does it confuse search engines into not knowing which of the versions is the credible source, but it also lowers the ranking of all versions of that content. Having duplicate pages with the same content on your own site can also dilute the benefits of backlinking.
When users are interested in linking to your content, they’ll have to choose between multiple options – and instead of a single page receiving all the backlinking benefits, it’s split between two or more pages. To help optimize your site’s content, be sure to produce original copy whenever possible and rework the wording to avoid algorithm confusion.
If you’re interested in improving your site’s SEO in any of the ways mentioned above, contact us and we’re happy to talk through the ways Purdy Marketing Co. can help!
