In Episodes 26 and 27 of Building Success Stories, Producer Seth and I discuss the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), a process for maximizing the traffic to your website, social media profiles, and any online “properties” you have from organic (not paid) search engine results.
In this episode, Part 2 of this discussion, learn how to use these keyphrases to optimize your website and other digital channels.
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Take action!
- Review the website platform, or content management system (CMS), used for your website and determine how to use the elements needed to optimize your site and its pages for maximum traffic from organic search results.
- Then, email admin@placentric.com with your findings and get a quick evaluation.
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Read on for more about the basics of SEO.
Understanding Basic Search Engine Optimization – Part 2
How to Optimize Your Online Properties to Maximize Results from Organic Searches
- Keyphrase Research–Identify the phrases that are likely to be used by your target audience to find what you have to offer. Use a research tool, like Moz or Ubersuggest that suggests relevant phrases with usage data combined with your knowledge of your target audience.
- Determine which phrases to target on specific pages of your website, social media profiles and posts, Google Business Profile, and other websites where users find your business.
- Ensure that the platform used for your website is “SEO friendly” or that you can use an SEO plugin or add-on. For example, WordPress is somewhat SEO friendly, but you can use a plugin like Yoast SEO to optimize more efficiently and thoroughly.
- Use the target keyphrases in the areas known to impact SEO. I usually pick one fairly popular phrase as the primary target phrase and two to three related phrases as secondary target phrases:
- URLs–the domain of the website and the URL, aka slug, of the specific page.
- Title tag—the most crucial placement of the primary phrase, as it signals to search engines the page’s main topic.
- The “title” usually shows in search results, along with the page’s description tag, so craft these carefully to attract and engage users to click the listing to reach your site. Higher clickthroughs will help your rankings. Higher bounce rates, when a visitor clicks through to your site but leaves immediately (perhaps because the Title and Description were misleading), will hinder your rankings.
- Headings and text on the page. Use the primary keyphrase in the main heading (H1) and balance the use of the secondary and related phrases in the other headings and text on the page.
- Media (images, videos, audio) file names and the “alt text” field.
- Link text–the clickable text in a link that leads to the specific page.
- Categories–the names of the categories used for the blog or other categorized content on your website.
- Social Media and other online properties–use keyphrases in your profiles, posts, videos, images, etc., that appear on third-party websites like social media platforms, YouTube and other video platforms, online directories, etc. Optimizing related content off your website will help in several ways:
- Improve rankings of the pages with your content on search engines.
- Improve the performance of the pages with your content for searches on these sites themselves.
- Increase the SEO value of these pages, which will likely link back to your site and provide SEO value there.
- Site Structure and Navigation–Ensure a hierarchical structure of the site’s navigation that accurately conveys the priority of the site’s pages and ensures easy access for search engine crawlers to reach and accurately index all the pages of your website.
- An accurate XML sitemap will give search engines information on your website’s structure and help them crawl and index it.
- Technical Factors for SEO–Monitor these factors using Google Search Console.
- Page Load Speed–Check the speed of your website, especially the mobile version, using a tool like Google Page Speed Insights and make fixes as recommended. Fixes may include optimizing the sizes of images and removing unused plugins, etc., that add unnecessary code to the page.
- Fix Broken Links–As search engine crawlers follow links to reach your site’s pages, broken links may restrict full access to your site. Several broken links may also reduce your site’s “authority” to search engines.
- If you redevelop your website, you should avoid losing any impact it now has on search engines and ensure that the new site uses the same URLs or redirects the old URLs to the new URLs.
- Security–Use of https (secure server) to ensure secure transmission of user data.
- Technical errors inhibiting access to your site–consistently monitor for technical errors that may bring the site down or hinder search engines from crawling your website.
- Use Structured Data (also known as Schema or Microformats), sometimes referred to as “Markup,” to provide information on the type of content on the site that search engines may include in SERP Features and Search Results – reviews, events, product information, etc. Google has indicated that this data will be used more frequently, particularly for voice search results.
- External Links and Authority or EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness): Google bots crawl the Internet and determine a valuation of each site based on what Google calls EEAT, partly based on the external links to your site. Gain high authority links to your site through partnerships, offering to write content, ensuring listings on industry or regional directories, etc. Google has recently indicated that you shouldn’t be overly concerned about the number of external links to your site. However, the number of high-authority links does have an impact. See more: Increase Domain Authority.
- Good reviews, especially on Google Business Profile–Good reviews may appear in search results and attract clicks. They will also likely impact your site’s “authority” value with search engines.
When Google started, it aimed to provide the most useful results to those using its search engine: “What’s good for people is good for Google.” Over the years, Google has continuously tweaked its algorithm to maintain this aim as technologies, web development, and the digital marketing landscape change.
Using an SEO-friendly website platform, you can accomplish much of this basic SEO through a strategic content creation strategy that includes consistently creating and delivering relevant, optimized content.
- When you research target keyphrases, you will also learn what topics your audience is interested in. You then plan out the creation of content optimizing for these phrases.
- Quality, relevant content organically attracts external links and demonstrates EEAT qualities.
As you determine what content to include and how to deliver it, remember that “what’s good for people is good for Google,” and you won’t be too far off.
Take action!
- Review the website platform, or content management system (CMS), used for your website and determine how to use the elements needed to optimize your site and its pages for maximum traffic from organic search results.
- Then, email admin@placentric.com with your findings and get a quick evaluation.
If you enjoyed this article and found the information useful:
📍Click here to subscribe to the Next Level Success Newsletter, a weekly email for ambitious individuals looking to take their businesses to the next level with insights, advice, and how-tos from Ann Donnelly’s 40 years of business and marketing experience.
Have a chat with me to see how I can help you increase sales and grow your business:
Click here to visit AnnDonnelly.com and book a call.
