Getting your website online is only the first step. After that, you need to find a way to market your site to get visitors. Promoting your website with SEO is one of the best ways to do this.
With
67,000 searches performed on Google every second, it doesn’t make sense to ignore SEO for your website. But with all the information out there talking about SEO, it can be hard to figure out where you should start. This post will get you started on the right path.
Keep reading to learn six SEO tips that will help you rank your site on Google.
1. Learn What Your Audience Is Searching For
Content is king when it comes to SEO. The problem is, it can be hard to know what topics to write about on your website. That’s where keyword research comes in.
You can use tools like the Google Keyword Planner to learn what people search for in Google. This tool will give you estimates of the keyword search volume every month. Type a word in, and the keyword tool will provide you with suggestions for keywords that you can target.
Use this data to come up with ideas for blog posts. When writing your posts, you can then integrate your keyword and other similar ideas into your post. This will help your website rank for those terms in Google.
2. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile-Optimized
Mobile internet use has grown by
504% since 2011. That’s a lot of people that are using their phones instead of their computer to browse websites.
If you don’t provide these people with a pleasant website experience, why should Google show them your website in search results? If your site isn’t mobile-optimized, Google will know and bump your site down in the search results.
To optimize your site, you will need to make your website responsive. This means that whenever someone with a small screen size visits your page, they’ll be shown a different website layout that looks good on smaller screens.
Optimizing for mobile also means being sure that mobile users can load your site in a reasonable time. Every second counts when it comes to page load time.
The first step is to optimize your images. There are compression tools out there that will lower your image file sizes without ruining their quality. Once you finish this, implement lazy image loading on your site so your visitors can see your website without loading the images at the bottom of the page first.
3. Start Optimizing for Voice Search
Text search has dominated information queries since the internet first started to become popular, but that’s beginning to change. With smart devices starting to get good at understanding voice commands, voice search is starting to become more popular.
Because of that, many of the keywords that you would typically optimize your site for will start going down in value. People don’t type the way they speak, so there will be many new search terms that will take their place.
If you can optimize for these terms before your competitors, you’ll get a leg up on the websites that ignore voice searchers.
4. Don’t Ignore Backlinks
Backlinks have gotten a bad reputation over the past few years. That’s because a lot of webmasters have abused them to rank their websites on Google.
But that doesn’t mean they don’t work, and that you can’t use them to improve the SEO for your website. You can think of a backlink as a vote for your site. The higher the reputation a site has that links to you, the more authority you get for your website.
If you can acquire backlinks from several high authority websites, you can see a boost in your Google rankings.
One way to start acquiring backlinks to your website is guest posting. Search for websites that have a similar following to yours and ask if they accept guest contributions to their website. You’ll write a post for their site and include a link in the content that directs visitors back to your page.
It’s a long process, so don’t be afraid to reach out to SEO services to handle this for you. This is one of the easiest ways to acquire
traffic for your website.
5. Optimize Your Page Titles
It’s harder than ever to grab a person’s attention on the internet today. Because of this, you need to give your blog posts and pages captivating titles that will grab a person’s attention.
You can do this in two places: your page title and meta description. The page title should tell the visitor exactly what your page is about. Integrate your keyword into the title for Google, and tell searchers what they’ll learn by visiting your website.
Your meta description gives you a chance to talk a little more about your post. Use this space to connect with a searcher.
What problem are they having? What issues does their problem cause? How does going to your website help their problem?
Optimizing these things will increase your click-through rate on search engines. Google wants to rank relevant content, so increasing this will tell Google that your page is answering the questions that their users have.
6. Optimize for Featured Snippets
Google’s goal is the answer the user’s question. To do this, Google created rich snippets to put at the top of their results to answer the user’s question without going to another website.
These snippets can include anything from definitions to lists of products. Google grabs this information from a website they believe does an excellent job of answering search queries.
Because of this, ranking number one on Google isn’t as effective as it used to be. You can be ranked number five and still have a featured snippet at the top of the results.
To get your website there, take a look at the snippets that are currently ranking and research how the website there is doing it. Try to do this on your site so you can capitalize on the snippet position yourself.
Promoting Your Website With SEO Is Worth It
Yes, SEO is a lot of work. But when you put in the work, you’ll reap the benefits long into the future. Use the tips above to start promoting your website.
If you’re looking to take advantage of your new SEO traffic, you need a plan to monetize your traffic. Head back to our blog to read our latest marketing strategies.
BY DALE HARRIS
