The role of search engine optimization (SEO) is to make your website rank well for relevant search terms. There are a number of principles that, if applied, will help you outperform your competitors on Google and other search engines. Below is a summary of the basic ingredients for proper SEO…
Good keyword research
This is an integral part of any search engine optimization campaign. If people aren’t searching for something, who cares if it ranks #1 for a certain keyword phrase on Google? You need to identify keyword phrases that have people searching for them and that you have a chance of ranking for.
Optimize for search engines one page at a time
Search engine “spiders” crawl the Internet by indexing individual pages based on the content they contain and ranking them based on their relevance to search terms. If one page talks about bananas while another talks about fruits, like apples, oranges, pears, and bananas, chances are the one that only talks about bananas will rank better when someone searches for bananas.
When planning your website, it is important that you have one page per keyword phrase that you are targeting. This page can include secondary keywords and synonyms for the primary keyword, but the goal will be to make that page the most relevant page on your website for the primary keyword phrase you are targeting.
As part of this optimization, you would include the keyword phrase in your title and description meta tags (this is what Google displays in their search engine results), in your h1 tags, in your first and last paragraph, and throughout. its content.
quality content
When you write content for your website, write it for a human and then go back and optimize it for Google. Search engine optimization means nothing if it gets people to visit your website, but the quality is so bad that they immediately click the back button.
Google’s algorithm is now smart enough to recognize when people are trying to “game” the system by writing content specifically for search engines… they also recognize when a large number of people immediately click the back button to find a list more relevant to your search. search query. Poor and spammy content will have a negative impact on your search engine optimization efforts.
Links
Internal links between pages on your website help Google and other search engines to index all the pages on your website. As a general rule of thumb, it shouldn’t take more than 3 clicks from one page of your site to another. If your website is properly structured, it also allows the authority that search engines have given to an individual page to flow to other pages that the page links to.
Once you have everything else correct, the most important factor in ranking your website will be links from other websites (external links). Every link to your website from another website is like a vote of confidence for the content on your site… but not all votes are created equal. The authority and relevance of a third party website will determine the value attached to a link, for example an industry body website with an article on irrigation with a link to your irrigation business will count more than a link from your mechanic friend. website.
In summary:
If you want to rank well, you need to identify the keywords that are relevant to you and that you can compete for. Once you have this list, write content for each of the keyword phrases to be placed on individual pages of your website, adding links to other pages where appropriate, and incorporate these pages into your main site navigation. If you can set appropriate meta tags for title and description (you may need help from your webmaster).
Once your site is properly optimized, it’s all about getting links to the pages you’ve created. This could be asking partners to add links from their websites, paid advertising, forum posts, blog comments, creating other web properties that you can link from… There are numerous ways to create links to your website and the amount that will be required depends on your competence.
This article is intended to be an overview only. Search engine optimization is quite a complex skill that in most situations will require experience to outperform your competitors. It is often worth consulting with a search engine optimization specialist to determine the feasibility of a search engine campaign.
Search engine optimization services that may be offered include keyword research, content writing, on-site optimization of your current website, and external link building. An initial analysis from an SEO professional should give you an idea of what you can do yourself and what you may want to outsource, and then you can determine the best way forward.