SEO is a critical aspect of a Digital Marketing strategy. In our recent blog What is Digital Marketing and How Can it Help your Business? we highlighted all the main elements of Digital Marketing. Content Marketing may be the cornerstone of Digital Marketing – but SEO is what gets people to your website. SEO is the best way to organically grow inbound lead generation. In this blog we highlight best practices concerning SEO for business and some of the best ways a company can improve website SEO.
Best Practices to Improve SEO
There are numerous tools in the SEO toolbox. Google algorithms are evolving over time, and SEO adapts with those changes. The following best practices are just eight ways that a business can improve website SEO. SEO for business is of critical importance. Working with a digital marketing service provider can help make all the below easier to achieve. We will cover some of that in our “Want to Learn More” section.
Optimize your Site Speed
There are many reasons to improve your website speed. First among them is that you only have one chance to make a good first impression. A slow loading website is a major turn off. However, when a company wants to improve website SEO results, site speed is critical. This is because site speed is a ranking factor. Additionally, fast sites are easier for Google bots to crawl which all goes into their SERP (search engine results page). Faster sites reduce overall bounce rate and leads to an improved overall user experience.
Create Great Content
Focusing on creating great content seems obvious but useful content is what brings web searchers to your site. The more people search for your site and find relevant content they wish to read, or watch (video is super important!), the faster an organization can improve website SEO. Consistently blogging is important. Having a great About Us page is also important. Cornerstone or pillar content on websites is also part of the effort to create great content.
Use the Right Key Words
It is particularly important when it comes to SEO for businesses to use the right keywords. Key words are what people will type into a search engine. Keywords need to be prominently on a website and tagged on the back end as well. To improve website SEO for your business you should examine what keywords your competitors use and how many hits different keywords get. A good digital marketing specialist can help you do this research and get you started in the right direction.
Perfect Webpage Titles & Meta Descriptions
Naming your pages correctly and smartly is important. Page titles are what people see if a search engine for your various pages. It is also what makes them click on it. Page titles should always help you rank for a key word, and they should always entice a viewer to click through to your site. Meta descriptions are what shows up under your page title that a viewer will be able to read to help decide if they want to click through to your page. Meta descriptors do not determine SEO ranking, but they are still important. They are important because click through rates or CTR are measured for SEO and good meta descriptors combined with good titles will improve CTR – plus educate your potential viewers!
Have Good Site Structure
Another excellent way to improve website SEO is to have a good site structure. Good translates to simple. As we have mentioned in other blogs, there is beauty in simplicity. A simple and logical site structure makes it much easier for search engine bots to crawl your site and to index your content so that it can come up in search results. If a bot can not figure out how to navigate your site, it does not bode well for people to navigate it. A business’s SEO score will suffer because of poor site structure.
Have Good Internal Linking
Having smart internal linking on your site will also help to improve website SEO. It will also simply help people navigate your site better. Internal links helps Google and other Search engines better understand your site and its structure. Internal links establish a hierarchy and let search engines know what content is most important. This all helps drive better SEO. Consistently linking back to your most important content and your cornerstone and pillar content will also increase the chances visitors read and receive your core message.
Use Backlinks
SEO for business can also benefit from a backlinking strategy. Backlinking is having other sites point to your content. Backlinking also relates to the bots that Google and Microsoft use to crawl the internet and discover web pages. Link building is an important part of any SEO strategy and the more links the better. However, not all links are created equally. Some can actually hurt an SEO score if they are of low value like those which are purchased.
Google Maps Listings
One last best practice we will leave you with (there are tons more) is using Google Maps. Local SEO scores biggest driver is Google Maps and the associated Google Business Profile (formerly called Google My Business). Google Business Profile works with other off-page and on-page SEO efforts and scoring. It is an essential strategy especially for SMBs doing business in a local geographic area.
Want to Learn More?
We hope this blog highlighting eight best practices concerning SEO for business and the best ways a company can improve website SEO was informative. Our list is far from being all inclusive, but these are most of the first things we focus on when we are engaged with clients for digital marketing. The importance of SEO in business and the benefit of SEO is significant. As we have mentioned in other blogs it is possible to get up to speed on SEO and learn the basics and more. But SEO is a full-time job and requires consistent effort. At Valenta we are all about optimizing the business of our clients. We believe our clients should focus on what they do best and allow us to offload work for them and bring expertise that may not be inhouse.
At Valenta we exclusively service SMB clients. SMBs can sometimes struggle with Digital Marketing and do not have large staffs in house to support their efforts. At Valenta we offer managing partners, plus local or regional senior marketing experts, and offshore staff that can economically execute back-office tasks, content creation for digital marketing, implement SEO, run social media, and email campaigns, perform video editing and graphic design and all manner of digital marketing activities. If you would like to explore additional information about digital marketing our website is a good start.
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