In today’s day and age, digital marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience and promote your company. A majority of consumer time is spent online, which is why online marketing has become one of the most prominent ways to reach potential and past customers.
With so many businesses investing in websites online, Search Engine Optimization is becoming increasingly important. Showing up on the first page of a search engine is one of the best ways to stand out from competitors and drive more business to your company.
Search engine bots are constantly scanning articles to understand what they’re about and what searches they correspond with. Having the correct content that communicates your webpage content is necessary to rank well within these search engines after being analyzed by the bots.
Search Engine Optimization may seem daunting from some businesses, especially those who aren’t familiar with how this technology works. With a little bit of education and pointers, all companies can implement search engine optimization into their marketing and reap the benefits.
There are some essential steps to ensuring your website is aligned with SEO best practices. Becoming familiar with what they are and how to use them will ensure that your website is getting the most traffic possible. We asked Rankings.io, an
1. Utilize Keyword Research and Relevant Terms
Keywords are one of the most important Search Engine Optimization components. These keywords tell search engines what your page is about. This is what makes it possible for people to find your specific page when they search for a specific topic.
These keywords are what people type in when they are looking for information. If the keywords on your website match, the search engine will send them to your website as a relevant source.
Keywords can be short-tail or long-tail. A short-tail keyword may be ‘email marketing’, where a long-tail keyword can be something like ‘how to optimize my email marketing’. Short-tail keywords are searched much more often, making them hard to rank for. On the other hand, long-tail keywords are searched less in comparison. This makes them easier to rank, but less commonly used by consumers.
When researching keywords that are relevant to your page, it’s important to look at search volume and how difficult it is to rank. Search volume indicates how often people use this specific term within a search engine. A higher search volume means that a lot of people are interested in this topic. Rank difficulty will tell you how hard it is to get on those first pages when this keyword is searched.
2. Efficiently Place Keywords Throughout Your Page
Once you have found the keywords that are most relevant to your site and the easiest to rank on, they need to be utilized within your site. But there is a balance of where and when to use them. Using keywords strategically is the best way to make sure that you rank for the searches that you want to be found by.
Overusing keywords, often called keyword stuffing, in hopes of achieving a high keyword density can be recognized by search engines. If a search engine believes you have overused keywords to get a higher ranking, known as keyword stuffing, it may push you further back in the results as a result of this.
A good rule of thumb when it comes to keyword usage is to include them in the most effective places within your page. This includes the title of your page, the URL, first and last paragraphs, tags of any images used and where they naturally fit within the article. The goal is to make wherever your keywords are placed flow with what your article is discussing.
3. Consistently Refresh Pages and Content
Relevant keywords for any topic are constantly changing. To stay up to date and highly ranked, you will need to keep up with these changes and what terms are proving most effective to use at various times.
Sometimes keywords that were extremely high ranked at one point will have been replaced months later with new terms. Our society is always changing, and so is the way that we search. Hot topics come and go, and ensuring you’re using the most searched keywords in your niche throughout your article will help you remain authoritative to search engines.
Outdated information can actually cause your search engine ranking to be penalized. As stated, search engine bots are constantly scanning web pages to properly rank them for any given search. If a bot analyzes your webpage to be outdated, you are very unlikely to end up in the most relevant searches because of that.
SEO audits should be performed regularly. These audits can be used to research relevant keywords and update your site to utilize them. In doing so, you will make sure that your webpage is relevant and will keep a high CTR (click through rate).
