Sorry folks, the title is a bit misleading. Unfortunately, there are no ‘secret formulas’ that will allow your brand to organically rank for relevant search terms overnight. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), there are no shortcuts. To ensure that your website or web pages are discovered by users conducting searches in Google, you must implement the right tactics that appeal to the needs of users and search engines alike.
At its core, SEO is about user intent. Search engines, like Google, want to provide users with results that are relevant to their queries and offer the utmost value. Therefore, it’s no surprise that the best and most relevant pages are given higher positions on a search engine results page.
Any good digital marketing professional understands the importance of a cohesive strategy that supports your content marketing efforts. Simply identifying keywords that you would like to rank for and then arbitrarily plugging them into your content won’t help you grow your business online.
To gain visibility in search engines, it’s critical that you follow some of these SEO guidelines I’ve outlined below:
1. Quality Content Is Essential
You’ve heard it said time and time again that “content is king” and this is particularly true in the modern era of SEO. It is essential that you create unique and valuable content that is a worthwhile read for users. Whatever your industry may be, tailor your content according to the needs of your audience. Stay on top of relevant trends, create “how-to” blog posts, and frequently update older content to make sure you’re continuing to serve your audience with useful and timely information even after it’s initially published.
Aside from offering users the best insights possible, high-quality content goes hand in hand with your backlink profile–a key element of SEO. The more links that you amass back to your website from other authoritative websites, the greater the likelihood is of improving the visibility your website receives in search engines. In theory, the better your content, the more websites you will find linking to you because of the sincere value you have to offer.
2. Relevant Title Tags
On each and every page of your website, relevant title tags (under 55 characters to avoid truncation by search engines) should be present. Title tags lets Google know what is on your page, and are a main text element used in search engine results, therefore it’s important you choose keywords and phrases that match user intent and align with what your audience is searching for.
For example, one of our services at Blue Fountain Media is non-profit website design. As you would imagine we have a page that is dedicated to this service offering, and our title tag for that particular page contains that keyword, acting as a brief indication of what the user could expect to find if they click through to that page.
By appealing to the needs of the user when you create your title tags, you can hold a significant advantage over your competition. If you focus on what a user is looking for when they search, and build that into your title tags, you can capture the right type of user that will ultimately take an action on your site. If you simply plug in keywords that you want to rank for, you’re not giving the user what they’re searching for and could possibly mislead them to irrelevant content.
3. Create Unique Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions help to set the expectation for what information is on the page itself and can help to improve click-through-rate, which may be key to improved keyword rankings. This brief, yet descriptive, copy should be between 150-160 characters and contain a call-to-action that encourages the user to select your result.
The goal of this copy is to drive clicks and capture further interest, so it’s essential that you use emotionally-charged and compelling language. Meta descriptions give you a little more flexibility than title tags, and are another excellent opportunity to connect with the user before they’re even on your website.
4. Include Structured Data
Structured data helps Google decide what appears when someone searches for your company or a relevant query. Schema, a type of structured data, is incredibly beneficial for click-through-rate and making your result stand out amongst the rest on the page. Whether it’s images, ratings, or locations, having this information appear on a search engine results page makes your site far more captivating and click-worthy than its competitors.
5. Use H1s The Right Way
In a lot of ways H1 tags are essentially the title or headline of your page, providing a broad overview as to what the page entails, and setting expectations about the content that follows. These tags should be towards the top of the page so that you can appropriately introduce users with the content subject.
Since these tags are the “title” of your page, they may include a keyword that is relevant to your content and business, and should only be used once per page.
6. H2s Should Expand on H1s
As mentioned above, H1 tags can be compared to a “title,” making H2 tags similar to a “chapter.” Your H2 tags should not be an alternative combination of your H1, but instead be a deeper breakdown of what they identify–you wouldn’t have the title of a novel be part of each chapter name as well. H2 tags should be related to H1 tags but never the same thing. In a lot of cases, H2s might not even contain a keyword, but instead be a descriptive variation or sub-category of it.
7. Include Canonical Tags
Under many circumstances, it’s beneficial to use a canonical tag in the header of your coding, denoting to Google that this is the absolute version of a respective page. Adding this tag makes it difficult to scrape your code, eliminating any chances that you would have to compete against a site with the same coding as yours. This also helps you avoid being detected as “duplicate content” by search engines.
8. Don’t Forget Image File Names and Alt Tags
To add value to onsite imagery in a way that will help your search rankings, take the time to craft descriptive file names and alt tags that are basically text versions of what one would see when they look at the image. Not only does this help to improve the likelihood of ranking in an image search, but this helps indicate exactly what the image contains. Search engines can’t read images the same way a user does, so offering a text-based description gives them the ability to gauge relevancy in terms of providing the best result to users.
9. You Need An XML Sitemap and Robots.txt File
A robots.txt file allows you to control which parts of your website you would like to be indexed, and thus crawled appropriately so that they show up in search results. Without this sort of file, you could have certain pages appearing in search results that you might not want to–depending on your business this could be anything from internal pages or gated pages that are password protected. An XML sitemap essentially lays out all of your pages and indicates where everything is located. The more efficient your sitemap is, the easier it is for bots to crawl your pages automatically.
Sitemap path explicitly provided on robots.txt and an example of some disallowed paths are shown above. By making sure that both of these elements are in your root directory, you’re able to more effectively communicate with web crawlers.
10. Site Speed Matters
For user-experience, the rate at which your site loads is essential, which makes it no surprise that Google takes this into consideration when determining rankings. If your page doesn’t load quickly, search engines aren’t able to crawl as many pages, which can have an adverse impact on the indexation of your site.
Today, users expect instantaneous results when they consume content on the internet. From a user-experience perspective, if your site is operating slowly, there’s a good chance that users won’t stay long, and will visit another site instead.
A Strategic Approach to SEO
As mentioned above, search engine optimization is all about user intent. To be successful in growing your business online, it’s essential that you tailor your online experience to meet the needs of your dedicated users. Keep in mind that good, quality content will be shared more frequently by your visitors and will bring them back to your site because of the value that is offered–so it’s worth the time to do it right!
By following best practices and staying on top of the latest changes with search engine algorithmic updates, you’ll begin to see improvements in your company’s organic search engine visibility.
To learn more about SEO tactics and how they can help improve your brand’s ROI, visit Blue Fountain Media online.