Just about every small business owner will have heard about SEO by this point. If you have a website that needs to show up in searches on sites like Google, you’ll need to work on search engine optimization before you can get there. There are a range of different jobs that have to be done before you can achieve your SEO goals, but this post is here to help you out.
1. Page Structure
Page structure is an incredibly important element of SEO. Title tags need to be used in the right hierarchy (from H1 to H6), lists should be used to help Google to find the right information, and images should have alt-tags to make sure that screen readers can understand them. This gets much easier once you get used to it, and you don’t have to do a huge amount of work to find success with it.
2. Keywords & Content
Google loves to see sites that are consistently producing fresh content for their visitors. Keyword research is a crucial element of this process, so you’re going to need to learn how to choose keywords for SEO. The content you produce needs to be unique, and it’s always worth working to create articles that are designed to help your customers, rather than simply persuading them to buy something from you.
3. Backlinking
This next element of SEO happens away from your website, with backlinking being one of the trickier elements of this job. Other websites with good domain authority need to link to your site in order to show Google that you are legitimate. There are loads of backlink scanners around the web that can show you how many backlinks you have, but you also need to look for opportunities to guest post and add your website to niche directories.
4. Website Performance
With so many users visiting websites on smartphones nowadays, the speed of your site on a computer is becoming less and less relevant. Your site needs to load quickly for Google to rank it highly, and it can take a lot of work to make sure that you are performing as fast as possible. Caching, code minification, and CDN tools are some of the most popular ways to get started with this, but you also need to make sure that your images, videos, and other content is compressed.
5. Local SEO
Local SEO isn’t important to every business out there, though it can help those who don’t want to work outside of their own area. Google makes it much easier to rank in searches made local to you with their Google My Business tool, essentially making it possible to show up in searches without any real SEO work at all.
With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to take on the challenge of improving your SEO. People work hard to make this part of their website shine, though you will always have to do some learning before you can excel in a field like this.
