9 Tips From Semalt For Those Who Want To Know The Way To A Wider Customer Universe Via SEO
As you already know, Semalt is always showing you the ways and tricks to help you change your company's image online.
Today we've prepared 9 tips that further expand on the areas of SEO we've explored so far.
However, to benefit from these tips, you should consider them as concrete advice for you who want to know the way to a wider customer universe via SEO.
Each tip opens up additional categories, which will then unfold as you go in-depth with these.
Also, further down in the guide we have made a checklist that you can use as an overview of your entire SEO efforts. It lists the areas that you must at least have control over in order to increase the presence on the search engine.
1. SEO is for people
Although the word "SEO" is an abbreviation for "Search Engine Optimization", SEO is more targeted at people than it is targeted at search engines. Because those who search on Google are people - not robots. That is why it is also important to think in human terms when working with SEO. This is also referred to as semantic SEO.
So what does it mean to think in human terms?
To get high on Google search results, your users or customers must get answers to the questions they are looking for when they enter your site. This is one of the most essential prerequisites for good SEO.
So, find out what questions your site can answer, and then make sure to create content that does just that.
There must be a focus on what gives users the most value, and not just a focus on having as many keywords in the content as possible. Your page needs to be relevant and add more value to the user based on the keywords being searched for. It makes your page more value-creating than the others, which will give your page more traffic, and ultimately you will stand stronger than your competitors.
2. Make your website a user experience
Another one of the fundamental prerequisites for your SEO work to deliver good results is that your website has an easy structure and good design.
Also, your site must have modern technical features and must not suffer from too many technical errors. It is also a matter of course that your website has a great mobile-friendliness as Google is running for Mobile First.
While these points may sound simple, it is still precisely these points that websites typically fail at and cannot live up to.
Several points can challenge the user experience:
Discover the most important points that your website should avoid
Some of the most important points that your website should avoid are:
- Poor structure and navigation
- Low speed ( poor page speed )
- Duplicate pages without canonical
- 404 pages ( broken pages )
- Hreflang problems
- Unnecessary redirects
- Missing meta descriptions or page titles
- Unnecessary use of crawl budget
The list is of course even longer and applies to both mobile and desktop. Here, the Google Search Console is a great help as it regularly reports errors so you can keep your page user friendly. Here, in 2020, they have implemented the Core Web Vital report, which is based on the most important areas a website must live up to within "page experience".
The points are essential to follow under Google's guidelines. The better the technical foundation, the easier it is for search engines to find your page. This is of course a huge benefit to the SEO work.
If your website cannot live up to these points, this is one of the first things you need to get a handle on as it affects the health of your site. This also goes by the name Health Score among several SEO tools. The Health Score typically has a value between 1 and 100, with 100 being the best result. If you have a Health Score of 100, in theory, there are no technical problems on the site.
If your website does not have a solid foundation, this is one of the first things to optimize. It, therefore, requires that you make the necessary demands.
By the requirements, it is meant that you should be able to expect a developer(s) to provide you with a website that follows the above points, and that generally follows Google's guidelines. The website is the company's face externally online, and therefore it is crucial that it works as it should.
If you would like your site to meet the requirements described above, you can contact Semalt's developers for a free consultation. This will allow you to have a clear action plan for immediate improvement of your website.
Make a sitemap
Do yourself the favor of creating a sitemap for your pages. A sitemap forwards the search engines information about your website, which makes it easier for the search engines to find your content.
Briefly described, a sitemap is a list of those of your pages that are indexed. If you need help creating a sitemap, you can get help from Google through their Search Console Help.
3. Choose the right keywords with a keyword analysis
Keywords take up a huge portion of SEO. Keywords are the term for the keywords that people search for in the search engines, and it is precisely keywords that are what your page should rank high on in the search engines.
So if you e.g. are a hairdresser in New York, and you want to be found easily in the search engines, you should choose some keywords that cater to people who go to the hairdresser and live in the New York area. Here it could be obvious to choose a keyword like "hairdresser New York".
The keyword you choose, make sure it is reflected in the content that you have on your page - and make sure you live up to the search intent.
Spend time and effort on optimizing that particular keyword, as well as relevant related searches (longtails), so that you live up to everything that is in line with the search.
It can be difficult to find the right words, but with thorough keyword analysis, you can find some really attractive searches. Searches like with targeted SEO can get you up and rank high in the search engines. However, it requires that you know your target audience and their needs.
4. Create relevant and good content
Many people who want to optimize their page may well have the idea that they should just write as much text as possible. But for good SEO, it is about creating quality rather than quantity. It's about living up to Google's EAT guidelines and what users want to find.
In the past, it was often about writing a keyword as many times as possible in content (keyword stuffing). Today, it's more about delivering content naturally - of course still using keywords, so Google knows what the page is about.
Here, make sure that the content on your page matches the intent behind the keywords being searched for. Make sure it matches your target audience.
The most important thing for your content on the page is that it answers the questions behind the unselected searches - and you here show expertise. Something that can take the form of text, visual content and, yes, general content that interacts with your target audience.
Content is all the content on your page
When it comes to optimizing the content that you have on your page, it is essential that you look at it all. It's everything from the body text itself to headlines. This means that you weight the headings based on H1, H2, H3 tags, etc. This is also what is called headings. Here you should generally make use of the important keywords in H1 (heading) and H2s (subheadings).
In the source code, you can check whether you have set them up correctly on your page.
Also, you should look into the use of images and make sure that they all have relevant ALT text. It shows the search engines what your images are about.
We humans also continue to weigh information provided through movies higher. Therefore, you should also look at how you can deliver your messages through video material as part of your content on the various landing pages.
Overall, it will be smart for you to make your content as edible and captivating as possible for the sake of the users so that they can easily understand your message.
Your content must be relevant to the user and it must be implemented. Here, the keyword analysis is just essential to get done, to find out which words are searched for the most within your area.
This allows Google to link your content on your page to individual searches. With good and relevant content on your pages, Google will be able to see the value that your content provides, and you will thus have a better chance of getting a higher ranking in the search results.
Get inspiration from the competition
A good way to get inspiration for your page's content is to check out the pages that are already at the top of Google on the keywords you would like to rank yourself - 'that is, your competitors'.
Find out what they do well; take it to you and learn how your page can be even better than theirs.
5. Take action - this is what counts
After your website has been made technically ready and relevant and sharp content has been created, look at how to motivate your customers to take action. Call-To-Actions must be created in a way that leads people to the desired action.
Your website has a purpose, and you need to make sure to engage users to follow. Whether users need to make a purchase or sign up for a service, they must be guided through the user journey from start to finish, so that they find it completely natural to take the desired action.
When it comes to keeping track of how users behave on your pages and how they act, Google Analytics is an obvious tool to take advantage of. With this tool, you can go in and look at several parameters in the users' actions on your page(s).
Different parameters you should look at
One of the parameters you should look at is Bounce Rate. Bounce Rate tells what percentage of those who visit your site leave it - without interaction. So you can see how many of the users only go to one page, and then go out again immediately.
You want to engage users to stay on your page so that they not only check one page out but check several of your pages out or do something active in there. The more of your subpages users access, the more engaged they seem.
That is why it is also important to know Time on Page - that is, the time people spend on the individual page. The longer they are on your page, the more engaged they are in the content.
Besides, conversions on your page are of course also quite obvious to know, as that is ultimately the goal - how many of the users sign up for your newsletter, get the various forms filled out, or get to buy something on your page? The more conversions, the more successful SEO is in the end.
This simply underscores the importance of a good user experience that content helps to deliver. That is why content and technical SEO are very much related.
6. Page titles and Meta descriptions should catch the attention
Before users can even click on your page, they must evaluate which page on Google's search results looks best. Therefore, your page titles and Meta descriptions must be sharp so that they choose you.
Page titles and Meta descriptions are the absolute first-hand impression that users get of your website. Also, they play a huge role concerning CTR (Click Through Rate) - that is, how many people choose to click on your results over others. Google is happy with a high CTR on their SERP. Overall, a good CTR will make you and your site increase in search results.
When a keyword in the search engine, several results will appear. The text associated with each page in Google's search results is the page title and Meta description.
Page title
A good page title is important to keep track of (although it does not directly affect the ranking) if you want people to choose your result. Here you can go in and write exactly what you want.
First, make sure your page title contains the keyword that is the most important keyword on that page. This allows users to easily identify their search with your result.
This means that before writing title descriptions for your page, you should have a handle on which keyword the page should rank on.
Also, make sure to create a page title for your page that has a good length which is neither too short nor too long. This means that Google can display a maximum of 512 pixels of the page title. Because if you make your page title too long, some of your text will be cropped in Google search results.
Meta description
The Meta descriptions also have no direct impact on how high you want to rank in the search engine results. But that is not to say that it is not important. The Meta description will appear below your page title, and therefore users / customers will also read the Meta description when considering whether they want to visit your page, as with the page title.
You must get a good Meta text written because otherwise Google will go in and take text from the respective page and post, which may seem irrelevant to the page title and thus make your page less attractive to click on for users.
The best Meta description contains about 150 characters (max. 160), plus or minus. Here, as with the page title, it is also a good idea to include the most important keyword. This is because it will be marked in bold in your Meta description, thus jumping in the eyes of users.
So all in all, a good page title and Meta description must be written for the individual pages, which matches the keywords and the content of the pages. Make sure you sell the page so that it will allow people to just enter your page. Because the better the CTR, the more traffic you get through it.
7. With links, you connect your surroundings with yourself
Link building is one of the most fundamental and popular ways to rank higher in the search engines as it provides authority. But there are many ways to build links. Here are some good and bad ways to do it.
Link building is, as previously described when a page links to another page on the web. For you and your SEO work, it should be understood as when external links are linked back to your page. It is also called "backlinks". This is one way of recommending your site over others.
The analysis tool Ahrefs has made an overview of the correlation between the number of links, which point to a domain with the development of organic traffic. The context shows the clear influence that links have on traffic.
But when working with link building, there is both the quality way to do it and the opposite. Therefore, it is important to know good and bad link building if you want the best out of your investment.
What is a good link building?
Good link building is when you through relevant and useful content (could be an article or study), promote it to relevant media, which then chooses to share it with its network via a link that goes back to you - in a relevant context.
Here, the link itself can be in the middle of the article, so it is part of the text itself. It is also what is called the anchor text.
The best link building is here when you can get links in from pages with the most traffic and high authority, and which have a relevant value for what is on your own page.
Some talk about link building becoming extinct as a tool for ranking, but that is far from it. It's just about the way you work with it.
What is a bad link building?
If your link building becomes too advertising-oriented, Google may in the long run agree to deprive you of your rankings, as they will see it as spam. So be sure to follow Google's guidelines.
If there are too many links on a page, the importance of each link will lose value. So also make sure to go for links from sites that also do not just toss around with links as you typically see PBN links do.
PBN stands for Private Blog Network, and are domains that are built to link to each other. Here, there is rarely much relevance behind the content, and one can typically buy these links. This is against Google's guidelines.
So remember, the idea of link building is not just to get endless links - but links from quality domains. It is their quality that makes your page stronger and thus gives higher rankings.
Outbound links
It is good to get backlinks, but there can also be a value in you linking to external pages from your own website.
This is because you want to associate yourself with other powerful sources that help people move forward in the search phase. Search engines like that.
Internal links
Lastly, internal link building between your pages is also essential so that you make sure your pages are linked together. This means that your subpages must link to each other so that they are linked together and added value. It is also the model that is referred to as pillars and clusters. A model that is the structure behind a user-friendly site.
Overall, get the link to your page from strong and relevant pages, and make it as natural as possible - then you get the most out of your link building.
8. Make use of social media
The attractive thing about SEO is that there are no limits to how you can optimize. It's about being creative!
SEO is about optimization on the internet, and therefore it is also quite obvious that you use the tools that are used a lot on the internet and where you can be creative in your online marketing. Therefore, social media is a clear approach.
By getting SEO and social media platforms to play together, you have an even greater potential to hit out and engage a larger audience that can help bring you more traffic to your site. If things go viral, you increase the chances of getting links from more websites.
9. Follow SEO ethics and you will be rewarded
Following the SEO ethics will basically mean that you follow Google's guidelines in search engine optimization. Several of the points have already been mentioned during this post. But as for Google's guidelines, you can never repeat too much, as you can be punished if you do not follow them. So you can smoke further down in the search results.
Basically, you need to create websites that are targeted at people and not search engines - fun enough. But many in their SEO work can become so technical that they completely forget that their users are people, customers, and not search engines.
Do not make use of small tricks that trick Google into making your page rank higher. In other words, what is called "black hat SEO ". It will do more harm than good in the long run.
Here it will be best to avoid creating profiles on pages that are only meant to make links to each other. Here there is no real relevance to your own page and Google will not see it as something positive.
Likewise, purchased links are something to stay away from.
It's perfectly okay to create multiple pages, but finally, doing not have the same content in multiple places. If you have duplicate content on too many pages, it can be confusing for search engines, and yes, it almost says itself = bad SEO.
Lastly, remember to make everything you do on your pages as natural as possible. Of course, you need to do all the SEO you can do, but not make it look like SEO.
The whole experience of your website must be as natural as possible for the customers so that the user experience becomes a success. This will make customers come back and you will increase your conversions.
A good last piece of advice
The Internet is virtually infinite, and for us humans, it becomes more and more every day that our reality unfolds. Therefore, the possibilities with SEO are also without limitations, and it's all just about exploring for yourself.
With these 10 tips, you are now ready to work with SEO. But take one step at a time - there are many things to go in-depth with at each point.
It can be confusing to throw yourself into it all at once if you do not yet have a great experience. But use it, because there are huge amounts of opportunities for you and your business.
So is SEO difficult? It does not have to be. It's about using the tools of the internet in the best possible way, and with these tips, you're well on your way.
Do not be afraid if you do not see results right away. SEO is organic and therefore it takes time before it starts to move. On the other hand, it is also what shows itself best in the long run. It is not an investment in being at the top here and now, but an investment in being at the top for all time to come…