If you are interested in building a website or considering a marketing career, chances are you’ve heard of SEO before. What exactly does SEO mean, however? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is the process of getting individuals who browse the web to your website based on a specific keyword or phrase.
SEO Explained
Let’s simplify SEO with an example. Let’s say you are interested in hiring a plumber, and you take to Google to find a plumbing company. When you search “Plumbing services” into Google, you will find a series of different websites and links on the first page of your results. Those results are referred to in the marketing world as “SERP,” which stands for search engine results page.
Often on the SERP at the very top, you will see paid advertisements. Following those advertisements, you will see organic search results. The organic search results are a product of Google or another search engine matching keywords from your search to websites that seem fit for what you are looking for.
SEO is the process of moving your website as high as possible on the organic search results page. This blog article will discuss how you may impact your website as high as possible on the SERP.
Best Practices
1) Develop Quality Content
Google and other search engines are continuously evolving and are becoming more and more intelligent. Google now can answer nearly all of your questions by identifying your needs based on your search and matching them with a website that satisfies those needs in the most efficient way possible.
Google takes into consideration the quality content of websites and articles when ranking them on the SERP. For that reason, if you aspire to be ranked highly on the SERP, you must ensure your website is high-quality content by writing detailed, clean, and easy-to-read content.
Now you may be wondering, how long does my blog article or website page need to be to satisfy Google’s high-ranking SEO requirements? Ideally, you should have around 2,000 words to match Google’s criteria well.
Another essential aspect to remember if you aspire to rank higher on SEO is that Google takes into account how often a website releases new content. Therefore, it is imperative to be consistently publishing new content. Most brands publish new content through blogs.
2) Identify Search Intent and Align
- Informational: This is when a user is looking for the exact information available on the web. For example, how long to cook chicken breasts in the oven?
- Transactional: Transactional intent is when a user is looking to buy a product or service. For example, “Sony TV for Sale.”
- Navigational: Navigational is when a user is looking for a specific website. For example, “Youtube.”
- Commercial: Commercial intent is when a user knows the category they want to buy but has not decided on the exact product or service they need. For example: “SEO training tools.”
3) Utilize Keyword Optimization
Primary Keywords
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- One time in URL
- One time in the title
- 3-7 times in text body
- One time in the description
- One time in ALT URL
- One time in the image description
4) Strong Website Logistics
You want your website to be running at a fast and optimal speed. You do not want a potential customer to visit your website only to leave due to poor upload speed. Therefore, make sure that you spend the time and resources to ensure your website is fully optimized.
Another issue to be aware of is broken links on your website. A broken link is a link on your website that displays a 404 error. In essence, it’s a link that no longer works (this could be because the owner of the link shut down their site or they changed the URL to that particular page you were linking to). Having broken links on your website is unprofessional and unappealing to your brand. Spend the time to ensure you do not have any broken links. There are Google Chrome extensions to help you identify where you have broken links. Here is a blog where you can find some extensions to help with your SEO work.
5) Building Your Links
Having many links to your website is a critical component of your SEO ranking. There are two types of links that you need to be familiar with. They are internal links and backlinks.
Internal links are links that are on your website that reroutes to other components of your website. It is essential to ensure that all your links are functional and efficient. Backlinks are links from another website that links to your website. To Google, Backlinks are crucial. They are, in essence, a thumbs up to Google. The more backlinks you have to your website, the more Google trusts your site as a reputable website for their SERP; thus, the higher rank.
6) SEO Images
It is also vital that you embed images into your website with primary keywords associated with your SEO. When naming your image file, be sure to incorporate the keywords related to your content. Do not name the .png many random letters and numbers as doing this will not benefit you.
It is also vital to use high-graphic images. However, do not use images that are blurry or unappealing to the eye.
7) SEO Videos
Videos are becoming more and more relevant for search-related issues. As a result, many are using YouTube as their primary search engine for their search intent. Given the recent surge in demand for videos, making videos and potentially embedding them into your website can only do positive things for your brand. It is also important to note that on a SERP, users may filter the results to just videos. Therefore, if you were to have a video on a subject, you would differentiate your company from competitors.
8) Improve Overall User Experience
Here are a few tips on how to make your website more user friendly:
- Incorporate headings and subheadings
- Utilize white spaces as much as possible
- Use bullet points
- Add images
9) Invest and Analyze Data
It is essential that you analyze your website’s traffic data. There are many ways to invest in your data such as software that always provides traffic statistics. The most common software that is used in the business world is Google Analytics, Ahrefs and SEMrush.
10) Ensure your Website is Mobile-Friendly
According to Google, over 60% of Google searches are conducted on mobile devices. With the increase in mobile searches, you must ensure your website is mobile-friendly. In 2016, Google also announced that they will be prioritizing mobile-friendly searches for their SEO ranking over desktop websites.
There are services online that test if your website is mobile-friendly. I highly recommend that you check if your website is compatible with all mobile devices and browsers prior to sharing your link.
11) Contact and Link Other’s Websites
To get more backlinks and traffic to your website, consider linking to other’s websites and contacting them that you just made a new blog article and featured their website. In featuring another’s website, they might share your writing and thus increasing your traffic.
SEO is an incredibly important part of any company’s digital marketing strategy and one all entry-level marketing professionals should get to know and understand deeply. If you are trying to get your first full-time entry-level marketing job, consider checking out JobPrepped as 94.3% of JobPrepped students get marketing interviews or job offers within 3 weeks. If you want further help honing in on your SEO skills and learning detailed strategies that work in today’s business world, feel free to check out our free SEO Marketing trial here.
Good luck out there!
By Guest Writer,
Will Lazar
