Knowing that SEO is important for your online marketing efforts is another thing. Effective planning is another matter. Here are some basic strategic ways to optimize your website for search.
1. Use keywords appropriately
Now you know that you need to have keywords and use them on your web pages. However, to get the most out of search engines, it’s important to know where to place them.
The keyword must appear at least once in the title tag. This is what readers will see when your article appears in search engine results. The URL must also include the keyword. This tells search engines what your page is about. Include keywords in the first 100 words of your content. Some experts and tools like Yoast prefer to use keywords in the first sentence. In any case, let’s move on to telling the reader what the article is about, i.e. the keywords.
These three are important places to include your keywords. You can also use it throughout the text, but try not to overdo it as it can be considered keyword stuffing. Best practice is to include 5 to 7 times per 1,000 words.
2. Avoid pogo-sticking with related content
Pogo-sticking is when a user lands on your site and immediately leaves. Search engines know how long users stay on your site, giving you more credibility with search engines that keep readers there longer. It’s not just about getting clicks to your site, it’s about keeping people on your site.
If someone pogo sticks to your site, it means they didn’t find the answer they were looking for and will come back to the search results to find a better resource. If this happens frequently on a site, his SERP ranking will be lowered by search engines.
So how can you prevent pogo-sticking? Create content that meets the needs of your keywords. Don’t be vague; instead, stay to the point so readers know you have relevant content and want to read more to find the answers they’re looking for. For example, you can use bulleted lists and headers to break up long text to make your content easier to read and more visually appealing.
3. Use long-tail keywords to boost your rankings
Long-tail keywords take a keyword and expand it with a trailing word or phrase. These keywords take your search a step further and pinpoint exactly what your users have read. You can get a feel for long-tail keywords by entering them in your search query and seeing what other keywords appear in the drop-down list.
Incorporating long-tail keywords into your content will help you get better search results. By creating content that addresses long-tail keywords, you can ensure that your readers know what they want to know.
4. Delete poorly performing pages
Poorly performing pages are often referred to as zombie pages, which simply exist and don’t get any traffic. These do not help your site’s rankings as they are not considered to contain useful content. Therefore, it is ideal to remove it. This will help search engines re-index your site and help them see all your content as relevant and useful.
Use tools like Semrush to see which pages are getting traffic and which aren’t. Remove anything useless from your site. Search engines prefer solid pages of relevant content to lots of small pieces of content that can’t be categorized or considered useful.
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5. Do industry research to get backlinks
Keep in mind that backlinks are links from external websites that endorse content on your site. This means that the website used you as a source or felt that your website was a good source for further reading. But getting backlinks can be difficult.
In this case, doing industry research can be very helpful. Conducting research makes you an expert in your industry. The statistics you collect from your research may be used by others in your industry who backlink to you as a source of data. This may be time consuming and expensive, but in the end it’s worth it to become the industry data leader.
