5 Ways to Optimize Your Site’s SEO

The digital landscape is always changing, driven in large part by search engines. There are approximately  3.5 billion searches a day on Google and 100 million searches a day each on DuckDuckGo and Bing. In other words, your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts have never been more critical. And while it would be easy to spend a vast amount of time on every bit of SEO minutiae (that’s part of our job!), we’ve identified five essential steps that can go a long way toward making your site as attractive to the search engines as possible.

1. Optimize Keywords

The first piece of the puzzle for optimizing your website is to determine the right keywords to use in your page titles and content. If the process feels daunting, let AdWords Keywords Planner or Keyword Tool help you out.

Page Titles

Using keywords in your page titles and headings will help Google (and other search engines) understand what the page is about. It also helps search engines determine page rankings. If your page is about Corporate Branding, but you title the page Employers in the Workplace, even a “smart” search engine may not recognize the connection. Your page title can have a huge impact on your rankings, so make sure it’s optimized accordingly.

Content

Search engines don’t stop with your page titles. Your body text will drive higher page rankings with better use of keywords throughout your content. This includes using keywords in your headings, body text and alt text for images. However, it’s important not to overuse keywords. You don’t have to use your keywords 20 times for it to rank. You just need to ensure it’s appropriately used throughout the content.

2. Improve Your Page Speed

If your web pages don’t feel like they’re loading instantaneously, many people (especially millennials) won’t wait. People are impatient. They want what they want when they want it, and they want it now.

So, how slow is too slow? HubSpot recommends an ideal page load time of less than 1.5 seconds. Likewise, Google found that 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than 3 seconds to load. But the same study found that it takes an average of 22 seconds to fully load a mobile landing page! Which means that a lot of sites aren’t getting the traffic they could because visitors leave (or bounce) before the page loads.

So, what does this have to do with SEO? For search engines, a better bounce rate translates to a healthy website that is appealing to customers. This is why it’s so important to maintain a speedy site.

Check your site’s speed with PageSpeed Insights. It will tell you how quickly (or slowly) your pages are loading – as well as what you need to improve to get your pages loading faster.

3. Three Words: Content. Content. Content.

A strong content strategy should be the core of your website development. Search engines favor high-quality content. So, gone are the days of posting meaningless fluff that simply takes up space. Use your blog — after all, companies that blog produce an average of 67% more leads per month than companies that don’t. Keep highlighting relevant keywords, but also seek to reinforce your expertise and brand authority. Make time to regularly review your audience so you can meet them with the fresh, meaningful information and insights they want and need.

Search engines also favor fresh posts over dated information.  Before you panic over being in a constant state of creation, however, keep in mind that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel (or your blog). You can – and should – update older posts containing content that’s still relevant with updated stats, fresh framing, and new graphics. This is efficient, since it’s easier to edit than to start from scratch. It’s also effective, because you’ll augment your previous links and SEO work with your updates. In fact, refreshing older blog posts can increase organic search traffic to your site by more than 110%.

4. Use Headings

Headings are a critical component of your SEO strategy. There are six heading tags ranging from the largest, <h1>, to the smallest, <h6>. They tell search engines the importance of different titles on your blog page, which Google uses to index each page. Use a logical hierarchy and don’t make the mistake of thinking that “more <h1> is better.” There should only be one <h1> tag – the page header or blog title.

5. Link Building

As Moz puts it, “link building is an art.” Internal links and backlinks are both important in your site’s SEO strategy. Keep in mind that the type of solution that works best for you will depend on the type of website you’re running, but generally speaking, the following strategies can help you create links that make a difference to your SEO.

Backlinks

Backlinks are created when one website links to another. The link between the two websites is the backlink. Backlinks work as a way to validate your content. One of the easiest ways to generate backlinks is by guest posting – especially because it benefits both parties. It provides fresh and valuable content to their audience, while also giving you the opportunity to get your brand out there by including a backlink to your website. Think about your own expertise as it relates to your own website and reach out to like-minded businesses, blogs, or even clients that could benefit from a ‘guest post’ written by you.

Link Reclamation

Link reclamation is the process of finding sites that have mentioned you but haven’t linked to you, and requesting or suggesting a link. After all, if someone has written a great article about you or your business but hasn’t linked to your site, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to improve your SEO. In some cases, sites may have tried linking to you but the link is broken because of a misspelled domain or obsolete page. Search for your business online and you may be surprised with how many link reclamation opportunities you have.

These strategies are just a part of how our work connects our clients to their audiences. And they can be a great way to kickstart your SEO efforts, as well.

At Relish Marketing, our fusion of creative and strategy unlocks your brand and propels it forward.
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