SEO, or search engine optimization, improves the rank of web pages, blogs, or other pieces of content in major search engines like Google or Yahoo.
Simply put, SEO involves optimizing a piece of content to appear at the top of the first page of search results after a user searches for a certain keyword or phrase.
For example, if you own a landscaping business, you want your company to appear at the top of a Google search page for “landscaping Atlanta” or “landscaping company near me.” Higher rankings usually result in more traffic, more leads, and more sales. However, outranking competing websites and reaching the top of a Google search isn’t easy.
That’s where SEO strategies come in. SEO success requires time and plenty of hard work. Still, you can start making small changes today to optimize your website, increase web traffic, and improve organic search rankings.
3 Tips to Optimize Your Website and Grow Your Audience
Years ago, companies could perform keyword research, make a list of relevant entities, and cram their web pages with as many keywords as possible. Early versions of the Google algorithm would then analyze the web pages for relevant words and determine search engine results rank based on the number of entities included on the site.
Since then, the Google algorithm has become infinitely more sophisticated. As such, a solid SEO strategy goes beyond keyword research and includes a thorough link-building strategy featuring both “inlinks” and “outlinks,” website analytics, keyword research, and more.
However, some of the best ways to start optimizing your website and building your audience include:
1. Improving Your Site Speed
In 2010, a Google report revealed that web speed was one of the critical factors its algorithm used when determining page rank. More than a decade has passed since then, but there’s no doubt about it: slow pages lose customers.
In fact, a one-second day in page loading speed can result in a 7% loss in sales. Fortunately, you can use a free website speed test to check your website speed. If the test reveals a lag in load time, you can improve your website’s speed by:
- Eliminating slow-loading advertisements
- Optimizing images to load quickly
- Adjusting your website theme
- Removing unnecessary plugins
- Deleting nonessential widgets
2. Sharing Relevant, Engaging Content
It’s tempting to perform keyword research and immediately start writing entity-loaded articles. In reality, though, your readers – and the algorithm – will see through your attempts to rank. You may even lose readers if your content seems too “sales-y.”
Instead, focus on the long-tail keywords and phrases that your audience will actually search for, such as “easy vegan pizza crust dough” or “when to mow new sod.” Then, build relevant, informative, and digestible content around the terms.
In doing so, you’ll place the priority on your readers – not Google’s search spiders, which follow users around the web looking for authoritative, useful content.
3. Creating a Consistent Content Schedule
Producing search engine optimized content isn’t easy. For many small business owners, it’s even more challenging to do so regularly. Still, your target audience – and the algorithm – prefer websites that consistently publish engaging, relevant, and compelling content, resulting in higher freshness scores.
Fortunately, you don’t have to share a new blog post every day. One post per week can help improve rankings as long as you stick to your schedule and update your website regularly. You’ll keep your customers coming back for more while boosting your freshness score.
Kickstart Your SEO Strategy with YourVIBE Marketing
SEO getting you down? No need to worry. Our team at YourVIBE Marketing can help. We’ve got years of experience creating compelling, relevant, and informative content that drives web traffic and improves search engine rankings. We’ll partner with you to share your story and your expertise. Most importantly, we’ll help you grow your web traffic your way.
For more information on our content creation and web marketing services, please click here to schedule a call with the YourVIBE team today.
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