Having a relevant and up-to-date blog is an effective way to increase website traffic and build brand identity. But if your articles aren’t ranking on search engines like Google and Bing, then no one will see your content and all of your hard work will go to waste.
In order for your website to rank on search engines, you need to have a grasp of how to implement SEO. SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation, and refers to the process of increasing organic traffic to your website through optimising web pages and their content - hence the name! Find SEO services near me.
SEO is a complex process that involves a range of clever tactics and strategies to help your website rank highly, including positioning the right keywords in the right place, harnessing the power of meta-data, and creating optimal page titles to increase your visibility on search engines.
If you’re an SEO newbie then it can be a tricky world to navigate and takes a long time to set up (especially if you’re not an expert), so it’s always a good idea to hire an SEO specialist with years of experience in planning and implementing SEO strategies for success.
There are a few ways that you can improve your SEO to increase your position on search engines, even with little to no experience. Let’s break it down and look at some simple steps to help you climb the ranks of Google.
Become familiar with keyword research
If you want to get your SEO right, then understanding how keyword research works are absolutely essential. Keyword research is a powerful tool for helping you to understand your target audience and which keywords they are using to search for your services, products, or content. Keyword research should help you to uncover exactly what people are searching for and in what format, which is important for making sure your content provides a solution to their search queries.
Start by thinking about which keywords you’d like to rank for. These will be terms associated with your products or services. Once you’ve got an initial list, pop those keywords into keyword research tools (some good options are Google Search Console or Buzzsumo), to identify which keywords have the highest monthly search volumes as well as other keywords that users use to describe your services. This will help you to gain a clear picture of which keywords are most popular among users.
Once you’ve built a list of keywords you want to target based on search volume and relevance, you can base your blog posts around these keywords.
Make the most of your title
Your title is one of the most important elements of your SEO strategy. If you fail to properly optimize your title then it may not be found by the right readers, which will mean you would have wasted your time writing beautiful copy!
The key is to strike the balance between creating a title that is keyword-rich and engaging at the same time. Whether it’s using humor, questions, or puns, trying to inject some personality into your title. Remember that a title must be as catchy as possible, as this will persuade readers that your writing is worth reading. It’s also equally as important to include the primary keyword that you want to target within your title. Try to place it as close to the start of your title as possible to help it rank higher.
Finally, remember that relevance is key. Your title should always be relevant to the content of the article. Promising your reader something that your content fails to deliver makes for a poor user experience, which is a big no-no in the world of SEO. The reader should be able to effortlessly follow your article and intuitively understand what you’re talking about. Find local SEO services.
Subheadings affect SEO too
User experience is critical to SEO rankings. If the experience of your blog is poor for users, then ultimately it is failing to fulfill the user’s intent as they can’t find the answers to their search queries, which will negatively impact your search engine rankings.
One way of improving user experience is breaking down your article into subheadings as this will make your content far easier for the user to digest. Avoid incredibly wordy and text-heavy pages at all costs, and add as many subheadings and images as possible to complement and break up the text.
Don’t forget your keywords here either. Remember to include your keyword in the H2 and H3 titles to prove to Google that your article delivers on the keywords you’ve targeted.
Make sure your content is SEO-optimised
Google is constantly modifying its algorithm for ranking content, but there is one thing that never changes. When it comes to content, it’s quality over quantity that really matters. There are a few key milestones to hit to ensure your content is top-notch in the eyes of Google’s algorithm:
- Make sure it addresses your reader’s pain points and clearly answers their questions or provides a solution to their problem.
- As a general rule of thumb the highest-ranking articles are 1,000 words or more, but remember that quality over quantity will rule every time.
- Your content needs to remain unique - there’s no use publishing the same article on multiple blogs as this may cause Google to detect duplicate content and lower performance for all forms of content, which can negatively affect your rankings.
What’s the best URL structure for SEO?
Although a small part of your article, a URL is important for SEO. Remember to customise the URL of every blog article to ensure it’s easier for Google to notice. A URL should succinctly describe the content of the blog post in as few words as possible, in a clear to understand format with the user experience in mind. It also needs to include hyphens to separate words and capital letters should be avoided.
Meta descriptions are key for SEO
Meta descriptions are also crucial to your SEO strategy as they’re the first thing that potential readers will see, so it’s important that they are compelling enough to draw readers to engage with your content. Try using the free Yoast plugin for WordPress, which is a simple way to add metadata to your web pages, without having to string a single line of code together.
Images also count for SEO traffic
Using relevant, high-quality images will positively impact the SEO value of your blog content. Two tricks for optimizing your images are:
- Modify the image filename before uploading it to your website (make sure it’s relevant to the content).
- Write a short description of the image in the alt tag which is also relevant to the content of the article.
Social Media
Social media is an effective (and free!) tool for sharing content so make sure to take advantage of it! Sharing content on social media will increase the number of potential readers, boosting engagement and opening up the possibility for readers to share it themselves, which will lead to even more views.
Although it's not been proven that social signals directly affect SEO rankings, SEO experts have provided evidence that they do in fact make a positive difference. If you’re not sure how to share your content then you can always hire a social media marketing specialist to implement it in the most effective way possible.
To sum up
There are hundreds of tools to help you optimise your blog content to rank highly on search engines, yet it can be tricky to implement them if you’re not well versed in SEO tactics and everything that comes with them. If you’re an SEO newbie then it’s always worth hiring an SEO expert to help define and implement your strategy to set you up for success.