Search engine optimization (SEO) is about improving the visibility of your website on search engines. The goal of SEO is to bring organic traffic to your website from people who are actually looking for the product or service you are selling or the information you are providing. It is important because it increases the chance that new customers will find you when they are searching online. There are many things to know about SEO, and it can be a complex field. However, the basics are important to understand if you want your website to be successful. Here are five of the key things to know about SEO.
- It is an ongoing project
SEO is an ongoing process that requires regular maintenance and effort to maintain the results you have achieved. This includes making continuous changes to your web pages, adding new sponsored content, adding new pages to your website, and promoting your content on social media. Search engines are constantly updating and changing, so website owners must too. Just because a strategy worked in past, doesn’t mean it will work now. SEO requires ongoing work and a willingness to adapt.
- Don’t fill text with keywords
We are always looking for ways to get our content noticed. Some methods are more effective than others, but one of the most common techniques is to include keywords in our content. The ultimate goal when using keywords for SEO is to get your content to appear at the top of search engine results pages. While you can use as many keywords as you want, keep in mind that overuse, known as ‘keyword stuffing’ can appear spammy, repetitive and off-putting to the reader. Instead use keywords naturally allowing the phrase to read and flow well.
- Link building is important
Link building is the process of gaining links to your webpages from another website. There are known as backlinks. It is seen as an endorsement of your content, therefore the more backlinks you can gain the better, as it means your content is of value and worth sharing.
Therefore, link building is a worthwhile endeavour. You can collaborate with a link building company in order to reach out to online publications to carry out guest blogging, as well as work with other industry professionals or influencers.
- There is more to SEO than backlinks
Whilst building backlinks is one of the most beneficial ways to improve the rank of a website there is a further area of SEO to bear in mind, it is on-page SEO. This generally refer to the quality of your website and the way it functions. Content should be well written and unique, images should be high quality, and loading time would be speedy.
- Write for the reader
Whilst SEO is vitally important, it is the user that should be at the forefront of your mind when creating content. Figure out who the reader is and how to provide quality content that they want to consume.
Use clear, simple language. Provide content that is genuinely interesting to the reader. It should offer a humorous persecutive, an alternative opinion or a fresh, though provoking idea. This is the kind of content that will get shared with others and drive traffic to your site.