SEO is something that as entrepreneurs we are all interested in because we need people to find us so we can serve them with our amazing services and products. You don’t have to spend hours at the computer, become an seo on youtube expert, or pay lots of money to have better SEO. You can implement these three things today to increase the traffic to your site. I am going to toot my own horn. Are you ready? I last month I used these simple tactics in a website redesign to double a clients web traffic in just three weeks!
Create New Content
The easiest way to have your site index better is to update your content. Think about when you are Googling for information and you see an article from the current year, versus an article from a couple of years ago. You are going to pick the newest information because you assume it’s the most relevant. This is the same way Google views sites. Having a blog and writing at least one post a month is a great way to do this because you are building up your credibility in your field while keeping your site content fresh.
If you don’t have a blog check your site quarterly to make sure your information is current. If you do a guest post, collect testimonials, or have an online portfolio don’t forget to update your website with this content to keep your site current and index better with Google or other search engines.
Use Keywords
Think about Google like a big filing cabinet that categorizes information for easy retrieval. Google scans through your site with a big highlighter(easier to think about than a complex algorithm) and marks key words to file your site in the right folder. It’s important to use the right keywords and use them often. What words describe what you do? How can you be more specific? For example, if you were to search online for a photographer you would get a ton of results. What if you added a location, and then a detail like wedding? What combination of words would people use to search just for you? A short keyword for a photographer would be photographer, and not very efficient as far a keywords and search results go. A long tail keyword like destination wedding photographer Hawaii is more specific and will give a better result when searched. Think about the filing cabinet. Google will search through all of the photographers, then the wedding photographers, then destinations, followed by Hawaii. What other keywords could you use to define your business? What makes you different? Who is your ideal client?
Tips for finding the right keywords.
Type in some words in the google search box. See what predictive words they insert for you. You can do the same thing with Pinterest. When you type in a word in the search box you can see what other words come up so you can see what topics are popular. This not only tells you what keywords to use but also what kind of topics you should write about.
Now that you have your keywords you are probably wondering what to do with them! Three places you should use your keywords is in your post title, your image titles and descriptions, and in your content. If you are using WordPress I really like the Yoast SEO plugin. With this plugin, you can add all of the meta information and keywords for that page without accessing the HTML for your page. This is especially nice when you are sharing your blog post or website pages. You will have a full summary of what the content is about instead of just the first few lines of the first paragraph which may not lure people in.
Write Clear headlines
Headlines throughout your site are surrounded in HTML by h1 tags. This stands for headline 1. Any type editor you have used will give you a list that says headline 1, headline 2, headline 3 and so on. Headline one has your largest typeface and the type gets smaller as you go from headline 1 to headline 4. When Google sees this the bots get their highlighter out because they know this is important information. The bots consider the first use of a headline tag and all headlines and content on your first page to be the most important when categorizing your site for search results.
What this means for you is using those keywords in your headlines, site title, and positioning statement are powerful in improving your ranking and getting in from of your ideal customers. Instead of just saying words like services or using fun or vague titles use the words that clearly say who you are, what you do and who you do it for.
Who you are, what you do, and who you do it for, is known as your positioning statement. It should be clear and to the point. You can be creative with your tagline but your positioning statement should be clear and to the point. You can download a worksheet to help you write yours here.
Putting It All Together
Now that you know how to use updated content, keywords, and headlines to increase your SEO you can apply these practices by creating an SEO roadmap of your site. An SEO roadmap is how you are communicating with search engines. It’s your SEO strategy. The first step is to take a thorough look at the current content on your website. You can copy and paste all of your content into a Google doc and highlight the information in the following steps or look at your website and write the information down.
Step 1. Write down your positioning statement.
Step 2. Write down your headline one and headline two words.
Step 3. Write down any words on your first page that repeat any words or correspond to what you wrote down for steps 1 and two.
Step 4. Look at the images on your site. Do the titles for these also correspond to the words you wrote down for steps 1 and two?
Step 5. Look at your last 10 posts. Write down your headlines and look through the content of the post. Write down the words that repeat the headline or correspond to the headline subject.
This should give you a different view of where you stand with your SEO and how to make it better. These are all things that you can do FOR FREE to get results, after you do this, you can start thinking about obtaining quality link building services. Creating fresh content using clear headlines and keywords will increase your visibility and grow your business.