In today’s digital economy, search engine optimization (SEO) is a must-have component of any online marketing effort. Proper execution can lead to significant and lasting results, with higher search engine rankings leading to increased website traffic and sales.
When someone is looking for the types of products, services, or information you offer, the best place to be is at the top of their search results. This is where SEO comes into play.
Let’s look at some of the elements and factors that affect on-page and off-page SEO, and how these can impact your search engine rankings.
On-Page SEO
1. Add a title tag. You need this on every page of your website. This shows the search engines (and your visitors) what the page is about. It should be 70 words or less, and include the keyword or key phrase that you want to rank for.
2. Write a meta description. This is not always needed and is often ignored by the search engines. However, you can use it to explain in more detail what the webpage is about. Include the keyword or phrase within this description too.
3. Create sub-headings. Sub-headings make your content easier to read, plus they help improve your search engine rankings. You can use them to add additional keywords and key phrases into your content. This shows the search engines that you consider them to be important.
4. Build internal links. This technique can be powerful and is sometimes strong enough to rank individual pages without any off-page (external) SEO. Just put a link in your smaller articles to a longer, more authoritative piece of content on your own site. This helps the longer content to rank higher.
5. Use relevant image names and ALT tags. Give each image file on your website a name that includes your chosen keyword. When indexing the page, the search engines may rank these images when people search for that particular keyword.
6. Don’t over-optimize. When creating the content for your website, it’s important not to over-optimize. This means you should sparingly use the main keyword while including related keywords and phrases. You don’t want to get penalized for “keyword stuffing.” Besides, you may be able to rank highly for these other keywords as well.
7. Make your website mobile-friendly. An increasing number of searches and social media traffic are coming from mobile devices. As such, it’s important that your website works properly on mobile devices. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, this will negatively impact your user experience and ranking signals.
Off-Page SEO
1. You must build trust. Trust has become an important ranking factor. It shows the search engines that what you say is accurate and that visitors can trust your content. To develop trust, build high-quality backlinks from other trusted sources and make sure that you only post high quality material.
2. Build backlinks. Most SEO experts gain backlinks by building relationships with other websites. However, please don’t spam your links or build them too quickly. This could result in your website getting de-indexed, which means your site is essentially banned from the search engines.
3. Get social proof. Getting likes and shares from social media can sometimes have an impact on your search engine rankings. Make sure to share your most valuable content with your social media accounts, where others can like and share it too.
Now it’s up to you to take these elements and start applying it to your website. In time, it can lead to a boost in rankings and sales.
Just remember that SEO takes time to work! It won’t happen overnight and may take many months for you to see the fruits of your labor (especially for off-page SEO). However, this effort will be worth it once you’re continuously getting targeted traffic from the search engines — and once you’re up there, it’s a lot harder to get knocked down in the rankings!
FroBro Web Technologies offers SEO packages that are customized to your business. If you want to partner with us to achieve your SEO goals, send an email to seo@frobroweb.com to get started today!