If you own a website, you probably have heard the term SEO. The most common way people search or find a website is via search engines. More often than not, people do not go further than searching through the first two pages of the search results.
Now, getting a place on these pages is what is achieved by optimizing your website. Thus, doing SEO online is essential for all website developers and owners. It helps you get organic traffic which results in the most amounts of conversions, which is your ultimate goal!
Having an attractive website is not enough; you need to get a high Google search rank in order to attract more visitors. This is why employers are looking for SEO specialists who can take their website from the bottom to the top! Professionals can take an SEO Training course to gain the necessary skills and become an SEO expert.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of structuring or developing your online content in a way that helps increase the visibility of your website. If your website is search engine optimized it appears at a higher rank or position on a Search Engine Result Page (SERP). This attracts organic and unpaid traffic which is good for your online business.
Why do you need SEO?
- It helps you get quality traffic, that is, visitors who are actually interested in your content
- The higher your SEO rank is the more traffic you attract
- You do not need to pay Google for this organic traffic
How to Optimize Your Website?
- Start with Keyword research
The first step in optimizing your website is doing keyword research. You may think you know what the customers will search in order to get to your website; however, you might be completely wrong!
Not everyone is aware of the industry jargons that define your business niche. People use more familiar and understandable terminology to search for your products and services.
Performing keyword research helps you understand exactly what is being searched to find your products, the search volume, and the areas it is being searched, so on and so forth.
You can target such keywords and use them in your content to help people find your website.
There are plenty of Keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner that can help you in your keyword research.
- Structure your website
You need to plan and structure your website in such a way that people can find relevant pages on searching specific keywords.
Your website structure revolves around the keywords that you use. The highest and medium priority keywords should have related pages dedicated to them. Also, a good SEO website is one which has a target keyword for each web page.
This allows visitors to navigate through your content easily and find what they are looking for without trouble.
- Make your website Responsive
Google knows the importance of mobile phones in our lives and realizes that today most people use smartphones to search the internet. This is why Google gives higher SEO ranks to websites which are mobile friendly.
Make your website responsive for mobile phones and other devices also. This not only helps you gain traffic from different platforms but makes Google believe that you care for your customers.
- Choose the correct URL
You may not pay attention to URLs, but they affect your SEO too. Google bots should be able to crawl through your website in order to understand its structure and content. The simpler your URL is, the better is your website crawl-ability.
- Create Title for each page
Google looks at the title of each page to understand its content and rank web pages. You need to create informative titles which describe your content in the best way possible.
Webpage descriptions are also critical. Short, informative and unique descriptions and titles which are keyword rich will help you get a better SEO rank.
However, do not stuff your title and description with keywords as it gives a wrong impression.
- Add Alt-text in all Images
Optimizing your images is another great SEO practice. Search engines cannot find images unless they contain keywords too. This is why adding primary keywords in the Alt-text of your website images is a great way to increase your website’s visibility.
- Linking to other pages is important
You need to link your pages to other relevant pages on your website to allow Google to understand your website content through the anchor text. This makes search engine see how the different pages in your website are connected and how relevant your content is.
Internal linking is a great way to get a high SEO rank. However, do not overdo linking and do not link irrelevant pages.
- Gain good backlinks
When some other website includes a link of your website on their web page, it is called backlinking. This is another important SEO practice as it shows how credible your content is and how many people are ready to vouch for it.
You should include links of other websites whose content is related to yours in order to gain backlinks from them.
- Quality content over quantity content
You should focus on increasing the quality of your content by making it relevant to the keywords that you use. When users search the keywords and click on your website, they should see the content which they are looking for.
Google gives keyword rich content a high SEO rank which is relevant to the keyword.
- Keep up with the latest SEO trends
As Google keeps changing and updating SEO algorithms, you must keep up withal the newest SEO trends. This will ensure that you always get a high SEO rank and show up in the top search results.
Wrapping Up
Understanding SEO is a very important task if you want to gain organic traffic and increase the credibility of your content. It is a vast topic of study nowadays because of its complex and ever-changing nature. As companies look for SEO experts to gain traffic, you can benefit from the available job opportunities by mastering your skills through an SEO course. Taking an SEO course online helps you start your SEO journey, so why wait?
