Five SEO Best Practices

Creating a strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is crucial for businesses that want to continue to grow using organic and paid search results online. SEO takes a lot of time and work before you start to see your efforts pay off, but using these five best practices will strengthen your company’s SEO strategy.

Utilizing Keywords

Keywords are vital for customers looking for your services online. Keywords should be a mixture of both specific and general words related to your business. This allows you to cater to customers that are both familiar or unfamiliar with your products.

Luckily, Google provides companies a free keyword planner that allows you to research the competition and prices of keywords and helps develop other potential keywords. Keywords are used in content, website descriptions and ad placements. Don’t, however, stuff keywords into your content in attempts to rank higher. It won’t work. Instead, use them purposefully to enhance your content.

Linking

SEO linking includes external links, internal links and link descriptions.

• External links help create validity on your site. By linking to trustworthy sources, you encourage customers to trust your site and the information found there. This will rank you higher on search engines, and customers are more likely to return to your website knowing you have helped them in the past.
• Internal links allow customers to find information throughout your website. They let users dig deeper into your content while helping them find exactly what they are looking for.
• Link descriptions are the most important part to focus on when creating links on a webpage. Link descriptions need to be detailed enough so people know exactly what to expect when they click the link. Don’t frustrate your customers by making the description vague or misleading.

Create Engaging Content

When creating content for the web, you have two main audiences you are writing for: search engines and human beings. Search engines look for meta descriptions, site maps, links and keywords.

But you must also write for humans. Your content should be unique and connect with readers and their needs. They came to your website for a reason; it is your job to make sure your content meets their expectations.

Grammar Makes a Difference

When creating content or an online ad, grammar and punctuation matter. Don’t use weird capitalization (i.e., capitalizing every word in a description) or odd symbols or add extra punctuation. Search engines will read these grammar mishaps and lower your ranking. By following basic grammar rules, search engines are likely to rank you higher.

Analyze and Adjust

The final best practice in creating a strong SEO strategy is to analyze your work and adjust as needed. Track everything. Understand which ads are getting the most clicks, what your most popular pages are and at what point your customers leave the website. This information can help you understand where your content could be stronger, which ad or meta descriptions are the most accurate for their landing pages, and where to concentrate your efforts. By constantly analyzing and adjusting, you are gradually improving your site and therefore its ranking.

SEO is a long process. Even by following these best practices, it could take months or even a year or two, depending on the competition, to see results. Therefore, my last tip for you is to be patient and your efforts will eventually pay off.

Written by Katie Doehrmann