5 SEO Basics to Implement Today
There are many misconceptions about SEO. While to those who aren’t “in the know” it might seem confusing, the truth is that SEO on a basic level is hardly rocket science. In our line of work, we come across plenty of websites in a variety of niches every day and we’re shocked to see the number of them that haven’t even implemented the very basic, but very important, elements of SEO. Taking some time to do the following can make a huge difference:
Create unique titles, descriptions, and headings
One of the most important SEO elements on a web page is its title. Yet, we see far too many sites that have generic titles like “Services” or “Products” or that use the company/brand name across every single page. This is a huge missed opportunity. Every page on a website should have a unique title tag that utilizes keywords and tells both visitors and the search engines what’s on that page. The same goes for meta descriptions and headings on the page. While they carry less weight for ranking purposes, they’re still important from a user-perspective. The meta description is right below the title in search results and is an opportunity to “sell” the page and get clicks.
Claim Google My Business
This is especially important for local businesses, but it’s something that all website owners should do. It only takes a few minutes to claim and verify the listing and it’s a way to provide Google with more information about the site. Be sure to fill out the profile completely and ask satisfied customers/clients to add their positive reviews, which can enhance the presence of the listing.
Set up Google Analytics and Search Console
Whether you’re actively involved in SEO and online marketing or not, it’s still worthwhile to set up these free tools in order to see website traffic information and trends over time. Search Console will alert you if there is anything wrong from a technical standpoint. As we know, Google is the king of search and there’s no reason not to receive this valuable and free information from them.
Add a website blog
Google likes websites that stay “fresh” and are updated on a regular basis. Whenever a new page (or blog post) is added to the site it gives the search spiders reason to go back and crawl, index, and rank the site. The key here is to actually blog. Even if you start off with one blog post a month, it’s certainly better than nothing. Don’t overthink blog post content either. As long as it’s information that clients/customers find interesting, it’s worth blogging about.
Share in social media
Google claims that there isn’t a direct correlation between social activity and rank, but there’s certainly an indirect one. Social media is a great way to get more brand exposure which can result in branded searches and inbound links, which certainly is a ranking factor.
There’s obviously more to an SEO campaign than these 5 items, but it’s a baseline for website owners that they can mostly do on their own in order to see positive results.
Categorized in: SEO
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