How to Improve Your SEO

Posted - March 31, 2014

SEO is the most important segment of search engine marketing. Websites that rank higher in search results typically get more traffic, which can result in more business. As a business owner, your goal should be getting your site to position one on page one when consumers search for your products or services. Depending on your business, reaching that position can be very difficult. With the right tools and know-how, your website’s SEO can be improved and potentially bring in a lot more business. There are multiple steps to take to improve your website’s SEO.

Keyword and keyword phase research

It is important to regularly perform keyword research to find which keywords and keyword phrases consumers use to find the product or service you and your competitors provide. When determining which keywords to use, you’ll want to focus on the keywords with a high search amount, but with a low competition. Since most consumers search using more than just one word, it is suggested to use long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are at least 2 or more keywords long, which may have a low search amount, but the competition for them is typically lower. Keyword research should be an ongoing step of your SEO, by analyzing your competitor’s websites you can identify new keywords to utilize in your SEO campaign to keep up or even get ahead of your competition.

The structure of your website is important for the consumer and search engines

It is very important to consumers to be able to use a website from the beginning to end, which why search engines provide results that are best for their users. A clean, organized, and appealing website is more likely to rank higher than a website that is not, which is why it is important to be sure your website is appealing to your customers, easy to navigate through so they can get to the information they want and need, and contain quality content that isn’t too long and contains keyword rich information for the search engine as well as your customers. If your website is well structured and appealing, search engines will be more likely to provide it in search results and consumers will enjoy your site and stay on it longer, which will likely bring in more business.

Optimizing your website on a technical level

Since search engines use software known as crawlers to read the text and code of your website, it is important that your site is technically optimized. By having properly structured URLs, title tags, heading tags, and meta tags search engine crawlers can read your site better, which will give consumers better chances of finding your website when they are searching. To achieve higher rankings it is also technically savvy to be sure your site does not have duplicate content under 2 or more URLs, every image on your site has related tags, your site contains an XML sitemap, and your data is structured by adding special markups to the content as well as providing a small sample of the page’s content known as Rich Snippets. If your website is cluttered and is not technically optimized, it can be difficult for search engine crawlers to identify your website and your site’s rankings will not be able to improve.

Marketing through your website’s content

Having quality content on your website should be the base of your SEO campaign. Businesses should devote a significant amount of time to produce quality content that is both fresh and engaging to consumers. Through the use of a blog on your site, you can post up-to-date content that is relevant to your business and is useful to consumers; this can also be a marketing tool when your blog posts are linked and shared by consumers and other websites. Your site can be marketed in other ways when you provide useful content such as eBooks, guides, graphs, charts and other visuals that are appealing and useful to consumers. Increase the value and credibility of your site through Link Building – Your website’s SEO can improve by having your website linked from other popular and/or reliable sources. When link building, consider quality over quantity. Search engines do not look kindly on unnatural or paid links; therefore links from trusted valuable sources are best when improving your SEO.

Social media has become a strong aspect of SEO

Every SEO campaign should include a social media plan and strategy since social signals are important ranking factors. To achieve a successful social media strategy you’ll need to setup your social media goals, understand your audience by researching users and consumers within your business’ market, determine the social media channels you want to use based off your target audience, begin connecting with influencers in the market, and plan your posts to social media. By obtaining a good amount of followers and fan base through social media, you will have achieved a new set of channels to market your business’ products or services on a regular basis and however often you need. There are many ingredients and steps to a successful SEO campaign, which can’t all be done overnight. Improving a website’s SEO requires experts who have the knowledge, skills, and tools and also know how to coordinate the entire process. Dallas SEO Dogs are the experts you can rely on to improve your SEO. We have all the ingredients and know all the steps to help you have a successful SEO campaign.