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3 Basic SEO Tips to Get your SEO Journey off the Ground
A lot of small businesses are allocating a good chunk of their marketing budget into online marketing, particularly SEO.
17:56 07 February 2019
And for good reason. Following white-hat SEO techniques that work increases the odds of your website ranking higher on Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPS). A top position on search engines like Google or Bing basically means more people will be able to discover your content online, which translates to more web traffic.
Here is a checklist of some basic SEO tips that are easy to understand and effective. If you’re looking to boost your SEO and web traffic, start with this advice.
Avoid Duplicate Content
Always make sure that the content you publish on your website is original and hasn’t been ripped from any other website. A DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) content takedown could be in order if you cut and paste content from elsewhere breaching copyrights if any. If you’re concerned about the originality of your website content, use tools like CopyScape to verify whether or not it is plagiarised.
You’ll do well to produce fresh and original content on a consistent basis, although it is quite challenging. Done right, you will create a loyal base of readers that engage with your content at a much deeper level, share it online with others, and keep coming back for more. More shares also means more inbound links to your website, which has a huge impact on your search ranking.
Focus on Relevant Keywords
Make a list of keywords, also known as search phrases, that are relevant to your business and customers. it might be a little overwhelming to come up with keywords in the beginning but it gets easier eventually.
Here are a few things you can do for getting some keyword ideas. Talk to your customer to understand their lingo. Send out an online survey for them to fill out. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer and think about how someone searching for your product or service would search online.
Do some research and make a list of highly relevant and effective keywords for each article you’ll publish on your website. Make sure to include the main keyword in the opening paragraph of the article, image descriptions and the URL. Start with a small set of keywords, test them and take it from there.
User Experience is what it’s All About
User experience signals is one among the hundreds of signals that determine how your website ranks. To improve user experience on your website,
- Let your customer’s journey on your website be simple and straightforward.
- Make it easy for them to do something- whether it be signing up on your website, completing an order, downloading a PDF, filling up a contact form. Add a XML sitemap to your website and make sure all important pages on your website are properly indexed (added to their database) in a search engine.
- Take steps to improve site structure, content layout and site navigation.
- Test how long it takes for your web pages to load and make changes wherever necessary. For instance, moving your host from a shared server to a dedicated server is one thing you should do if you want to decrease load times and improve page speeds significantly. Reducing the size of rich media elements particularly images is worth considering as well.
Note: Search engines send out spiders, also known as web crawlers, to see your website’s ease of navigation among many other things. If you’re keeping your customers happy by giving them a good user experience, that should take care of the crawlers as well.
Are you a business looking to get ahead of some stiff competition online? These search tips will only get you so far. It helps to collaborate with a SEO agency with a great track record for producing consistent results on their SEO campaigns.
Based out of Canada, Ignite Digital has helped a lot of businesses with improving their search presence online. Contact them today to see how they can be of help no matter where you are on your SEO journey.