Websites are a powerful marketing tool if used properly. One way of increasing the effectiveness of your website is by carrying out search engine optimization commonly referred to as SEO.
From an online definition, Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving your site’s organic traffic and ranking on search engines such as Google, Bing, and other search engines. This includes creating high-quality content in addition to monitoring your site’s technical health. It is the art of persuading search engines to recommend your content to their users as the best solution to their problem.
In this article today we will be looking at the steps taken when working towards optimizing a website for search engines. The first step is creating a list of keywords. This entails creating a list of words that a brand’s target audience searches for in search engines. Having this words included on your website makes sure that chances of it being found by your audience are higher and therefore a higher consideration for your products and services. Ideally, it is advisable to populate a list with about 10 words to get started.
Step two would be looking into the brands that pop up on the first page of the search engine whenever you key in any of the words populated on your list. This starts to give an indication of who your competition might be. It is important to scan the top ten organizations listed when you search any and all of the key words. Look in to any patterns common among the ten sites, not down the structure, language, color, font, presence or absence of blogs within the websites etc.
Step three is to put your findings from steps one and two into good use. At this point you do have the option of creating something entirely different from what the ten organizations have or doing something better but within the same lines. It is advisable though to develop something entirely different but better to set you apart from every other website listed among the top ten. You get to decide how to structure and use the key words within your website in a way that sets it apart from the rest placing your brand as a top consideration amongst consumers.
At stage four, one should consider incorporating backlinks in to the website to increase the quality on content shared on there. According to a study by Stone Temple Consulting that was published on the Moz blog, backlinks are strongly correlated with first page Google rankings. This means that including backlinks on your website increases the chances of it being ranked amongst the top 10.
The final stage involves the optimization of words already included in content shared on your website. Thereafter, share content with search intent in mind then work on the design/ layout of the determined content in a way that ensures that your website is structured in a way that makes access and navigation easy for your target audience. Finally, you should consider building links from the content such that they can be shared and back linked on other sites and platform therefore driving traffic back to your website.
The above shared guide is a summary of how to go about SEO as a beginner but there is a wealth of information providing deeper details on how to go about this for the benefit of your brand within a specific market. Next week we take a look at the importance of SEO in marketing.
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