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Search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial part of your business’s online success. Basically speaking, SEO is the process of improving your website’s visibility by ranking high in search engine results – which should then translate to more traffic for your site and hopefully more profits for your business – but in actual practice, SEO can end up being much more complicated, resulting in complete website overhauls and changes in the way you present your business to the online world.
But no matter how in depth or complicated SEO can get, there are a few basic tactics that almost all SEO strategies incorporate, and that’s what we’re going to look at here:
Basic SEO Tips You Can Use Right Away
- Keep track of your baseline. Testing and tracking is a huge part of effective SEO, but you won’t know if your efforts are helping or hurting your stats unless you establish a baseline and continue to regularly monitor where you stand in terms of search engine rank, where your traffic is coming from, and how much of it you’re already getting. Use the baseline to measure how well your SEO strategies are performing, and adjust it up as necessary.
- Get those keywords in there. You should always be conscious of where and when you can slip in a keyword to make whatever you’re doing more SEO friendly. For example, if you’re writing a blog post, make sure to include an important keyword in the title, headings, and anchor text, where appropriate. Don’t put them in where they don’t make sense, or just start putting them in everywhere – search engine spiders are programmed to ignore instances of keyword stuffing, and that is the exact opposite of what you want.
- Make use of internal linking. Internal links are links on your site that link to other parts of your site. When you create new content, make linking back to previous relevant content a standard practice. Use a keyword in the anchor text for the link, as well, and the search engine spiders will take notice.
- Don’t forget the site map. While you’re thinking about internal linking, you should also be thinking about your site map. A site map is simply a page that lists and links to all of the other important pages on your site, and search engine spiders love them. The easier it is to navigate your site, the better off you will be.
- Use search friendly URLs. The URL is a great place to sneak in a keyword, so make sure your URLs are search friendly by doing just that. Sites that use excessive numbers and letters in their URLs due to the site’s particular classification system are nowhere near as search friendly as URLs that use actual words. For example, rather than having your WordPress blog use the post number to create the URL, set it so that it uses the title of the blog post itself.
- Regularly create good content. This is probably the most important tip of all. Your site needs good content in order to be a contender for a top rank, and it needs to be updated regularly (and preferably often) to keep increasing traffic. This is part of the reason blogging is such a big deal. Search engine spiders love blogs that are updated often with new content, so adding one to your site can give you a big traffic boost.
Effective SEO is both an art and a science, and while it can get complicated, the above basic tips are applicable to pretty much everyone, and should always be kept in mind when running a business website.
What Now?
If you’re looking for help with your business’s marketing plan, JSA Interactive has all the help you need. For more information on how we’ve helped other businesses increase traffic, leads, conversions AND profits, we invite you to check out one (or all!) of our free business case studies. And if you’re ready to get started right now, simply request your free quote here or give us a call at (617) 615-9895 to speak with someone immediately. We’d love to hear from you!
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