Having a website and making it visible online are two different things. While it is easy to have a website up and running, making it visible online is not always easy, considering that there are other 1.3 billion websites to compete with. There are several ways of creating a search engine optimized (SEO) website. Here are a few essentials when optimizing your site for search engines.
Putting the goals of the business first
All SEO projects should be tied to the goals and objectives of the business site. Gone are the days when the daily activities of SEO experts would only involve looking for what is missing or broken on the site and fixing it. Nowadays, SEO experts should consider the goals and objectives of the business then come up with SEO projects that will help the business achieve these goals and objectives. These projects should be implemented in order of importance to the business. Evaluate the impact of each of these projects once they are all implemented and come up with another list of projects and repeat the process.
Creating evergreen content
We all know that content is king when it comes to SEO. To ensure that your website is SEO friendly, you need to create timeless user-generated content around the keywords that you want to rank for. Endeavor to create content that search engines will always like to index and display. At the center of your content creation process is your target audience. Examine the most common search terms in your line of business by your target audience. Of these search terms, come up with a list of keywords and phrases that you want to rank for and create organic content around these keywords. You may also want to group your target audience into categories and create content that targets each category. As you create keyword-based content, remember that search engines don’t love keyword stuffing. Avoid it at all times.
Learning from the competition
In the SEO world, you are allowed to steal your competitor tactics. In fact, you are allowed to ‘steal’ followers from your competitor’s websites, as long as you stick to the standards of practice. You should, therefore, see what your rivals are doing and whether or not it is working for them. Copy what is working and improve what doesn’t seem to work for them. For instance, consider the keywords they are ranking for and modify them to suit your specific business needs then create great content around them.
Keeping abreast of the modern SEO trends
The SEO algorithm changes by the day. What worked yesterday may not work today. For instance, we now have voice search from text search. A good SEO expert should determine what this change means to SEO ranks in good time. We have also witnessed search engines providing instant answers to customer queries. This deprives websites of valuable traffic, since the customers may not see the need to visit the websites in question. In general, an SEO expert should remain up-to-the-minute with the changing trends in the SEO world.
