You've got your shiny new website ready to go, now the question is how will anyone find it?
Before going live you'll want to make sure you've got a working SEO strategy that will give search engine crawl bots the right signals to rank your website. Successful SEO strategy is a long term strategy which means that implementing the best practices today could mean you see the results you anticipated sooner.
Here are 5 actionable SEO tips you can implement and today and pitfall to avoid so you can kick your website off to a great start and improve your chances of SEO success.
Meta title
Your Meta title is one of the most important factors for search engines to determine what your web page is about and also one of the key tools you have to entice searchers to click onto your page.
Do:
Keep the length to 50-60 characters as a rule of thumb, anything longer than this will start to get truncated (cut off) in the search results
Be sure to include keywords in order of importance (put your most important keywords closer to the beginning)
Make sure all your pages have title tags and that all the titles tags are unique (don't copy and paste them)
Don't:
Write your title in all Capital letters (no page has ever ranked #1 using all caps) using a capital letter at the start of each sentence or having specific words in all caps is fine!
Clog up your title by writing too many keywords (you're writing for people, not search engines)
Meta Description
Meta description is a 160 character summary of your page, being one of the first things that users will see on a search engine result it is a good idea to have this as enticing as possible to ensure that you get clicks to your website.
Do:
Write the Meta Description with the searcher in mind and provide them with a reason (or two) to click on your site
Work any relevant keywords into your description while maintaining the integrity of the description (avoid throwing a bunch of keywords together that don't make sense!)
Include a call to action based on the type of website that you have, phrases such as "find out more" or "click now" can improve your click through rate (CTR)
Don't:
Make your description longer than necessary, make sure you sum up the main points you want to get across in 1 or 2 sentences
Write your description in capital letters (this never ends well) having a few words in caps is fine if it flows well with the rest of the text
Count on your description to boost your ranking. Google has confirmed that Meta Description is not a ranking factor for websites, however, it will help get more clicks coming to your website
Keywords
Keywords undoubtedly make the biggest impact to your SEO strategy, it is important to spend a bit of time researching to find strategic keywords that can deliver the right audience to your website and help you get better rankings on search engines.
Do:
Before conducting keyword research you'll need to understand your customer and target audience. Since you'll likely have a few keywords in mind that you'd like to rank for (seed words), having a good understanding of your target audience means you'll be able to brainstorm different ways in which they can search for your seed words to get to your site.
Try to format your keywords into a question and include the answer on your website. FAQ's are great at boosting your organic search traffic.
Research your competitors using keyword research tools such as the ones below to find out which keywords are driving them traffic
Don't:
Try and target generic short-tail keywords. Short tail keywords are usually keywords with less than 3 words, for example, "clothes", "pizza", "good movies" are considered short-tail keywords. Terms such as "merino men's winter clothes", "how to make pepperoni pizza" and "good movies with Tom Hanks" are considered long tail.
Targeting short tail keywords usually has a higher search volume but also more competition and does not always relate to the customers search inquiry. Targeting long-tail keywords in your niche generally has a lower search volume but also lower competition requiring less of a budget and a higher click through rate because it is more targeted to your audience's search.
Backlinks
Backlinks are created when a website links or points to another. This is fundamental for SEO because it creates a "vote of confidence" which is a positive signal for search engines, helping rank your website higher.
Do:
Research your competitor's backlinks using tools such as Moz link explorer, find pages that you can also reach out to and have them link to your content
Target backlinks from popular and trustworthy sites, these links are the most valuable and make the most impact for boosting rankings
Try and get referring backlinks from the region and industry that you are targeting
Don't:
Build spammy backlinks, Search engines recognise links from these types of websites and they don't tend to help your rankings.
Expect it to be a short term process, link building can take many months and backlinks from multiple sources before you see an improvement in your rankings.
Content
One of the most powerful ways to generate quality backlinks is to create valuable content. Well written content on your site can generate attention however a lot of the time blogs are also included to help share expertise.
Do:
Create something original that reflects your learning or expertise in the field that you are in
Your content should be relatable or compliment the industry you are in or product that you are selling to help convert visitors that come onto your site.
Having content that satisfies your customer's inquiry and provides an abundance of value is the surest way to get social shares.
Don't:
Share misleading or uninformative content for the sake of generating content or links, this creates a poor reputation for your site and reduces trust.
Forget who you are writing for, when writing your content you should always have your audience in mind, not Google! Be sure to include keywords but only if they are relevant.
Now that you've made it this far hopefully you will knuckle down on these 5 steps and be on your way to SEO success, remember, making sure your page is the best resource for what people are searching for is one of the surest ways to successful.
If you're not sure how to plan or implement your SEO strategy then that's something we can help with, Elyptus Digital offers full service Digital Marketing including an expert SEO team, we have offices in Melbourne, Australia. Auckland, New Zealand. New York, USA and service clients worldwide. We can also help you fine-tune your SEO strategy.
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