Anyone who has a website has probably heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is complex. So it’s okay to be intimidated by the word because, quite frankly, it can be intimidating. But, there are some foundational things you can do right now to improve your website’s SEO without having to rely on someone who has a lot of expertise in that field.
A good SEO strategy is optimized so that even if you don’t show up first in a Google search, (or even if you do show up first), your listing is still optimized so people CLICK. It’s actually recommended to not get caught up on your actual page ranking. Because ultimately, showing up first in a Google search means nothing unless people want to click on your site to learn more.
We’re going to walk you through 5 steps you can do in order to help you improve your SEO. These things will help you rank higher and help get people to click on your link vs. your competitor.
1. Make sure that your website can be found.
Link your website with a free tool called Search Console. This tool helps make sure that your website is connected to Google and also helps you monitor how you’re doing in Google search. The biggest search engine right now is Google. Google and other major search engines are optimized to find new sites, but it’s never guaranteed. So it’s important to take the extra steps to make sure you’re doing all you can for your SEO.
2. Assign a focus keyword to each page.
Focus keywords help describe what your content is about. What’s a phrase that will describe your page? Use it in your page title and add a few of those keywords to your subheading. It’s important not to overuse them, but using them gives the search engine and people who search, a preview of what that page is about.
3. Optimize your page titles.
Make sure all of your pages have unique page titles that match with what is on that page. Though be sure to never duplicate the same page title. Ask yourself what do people Google the most? Then, use those keywords that come to mind, in your title.
Typically on a lot of websites, the page title is equivalent to your header 1 (H1) setting. (Just as a side note), only use your H1 setting once per page. Be sure to optimize your page title to be descriptive. The more descriptive you are, the better. Avoid saying generic titles like: “homepage”. Use a phrase or specific keywords. This is an example below of how Google titled one of their sites. It says you can browse all of their products and services just by clicking the link.
4. In addition to a page title, optimize your meta description for each page.
Make sure that you have optimized all page descriptions. You can go into your website and customize and add in key phrases or keywords that people Google the most so your website will pop up first when searching. In a few sentences, describe what the page is about. The better optimized both your page titles and meta descriptions are, Google will then have a better feel of what it’s about. You can reference the example from Google above. Look at the description below the title and how they write it in a way that will attract people to click.
5. Make sure you have content on your pages.
The more content there is, the more information Google has to crawl while people are searching different things. FAQs are helpful to add into a page. These questions could be general common questions you think people would google. Be careful though, you don’t want people to have to scroll through long paragraphs of text.
A handy tool to avoid this is by using an accordion-style format. This is useful for if you have a section where you want to have multiple paragraphs of text. Inserting an accordion is essentially a ‘read more’ function that hides the rest of the text from the reader, but Google will still crawl all of that text. It gives the website a more clean layout and also doesn’t overwhelm the reader.
Here’s a few helpful resources you can utilize to help with your SEO:
For SEO specifically, Yoast (they have a free version) and Smart Crawl are two very handy tools. For keyword-related things- use Google Search to find various suggestions/keywords/phrases that tend to pop up first. You can also try Twin Words which is used where you can type in a specific search term and it’ll show monthly average searches for that exact word/phrase.
Or, if you just don’t have the time or simply can’t seem to understand the concept, that is OK!
SEO is something that our team has a lot of expertise in. Feel free to contact us and let’s talk about a solution for you.
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