While SEO is one of the best ways to drive quality traffic to your site, it’s also deceptively labor intensive. SEO isn’t a “set it and forget it” tactic – but rather requires constant attention to make the most of your efforts.
Where do you start, and how do you know if any of it’s working? Are you winning or losing your SEO battle, and if you’ve hired an (some other) agency to manage your search profile, are they doing all that they can? These are questions that anyone who manages a website should be asking. Below are a few easy tips that you can use to spot check your SEO.
Work with the search engine
Site operators can easily monitor their SEO performance by using some simple tools. For instance, Google’s Webmaster Tools – The tools will tell you what keywords you are ranking for, which keywords are driving traffic to your site, which pages are in the Google index, who is linking to you, and if there are problems on your site.
What does your link text say about you?
Are you the No. 1 website for the phrase “Next Page?”. If so, it’s because your linking to that phrase. When you link from one page to another, the search engines use the words in the link text to determine which keyword phrase to look for in the content of the page that the link is going to. You should be linking to your ‘apple pie’ page with the link text ‘apple pie.’ The search engines will confirm that ‘apple pie’ appears in the title, description, and body content of the page that you are linking to and award the page with rankability.
What do inbound links say?
You want all the inbound links you can get, but what really makes the difference is to make sure that the linked copy from the other website includes a term that people would naturally search for, rather than the name of your website.
Here’s an example: “A motorcycle website can identify key terms, such as ‘front end components,’ ‘discount exhaust,’ and ‘seats.’ Then, the website can encourage outside websites, including blogs to link on these terms instead of the name of the motorcycle website. Over time, the website will start to position itself on these key terms and improve its search engine positioning.
Meta matters
If you’ve ever wondered why some websites have a full-blown directory in the Google results and others offer only a lonely link, the answer is in the meta data. Marketers need to be cognizant of what story that information tells a prospective visitor to your site, and that means entering useful copy in your site’s meta data that will inspire the user into actually coming to your site to hear more.
Ask about relevance everyday
If you’re not asking about relevance, you’re definitely failing at SEO. Much like a credit score, no one knows exactly how specific factors affect rankings. But as a general rule of thumb, always ask yourself: What more can I offer the users who I want to attract? How can I be the most relevant website on a particular topic? This means an abundance of informative content, and a diversity of content that a user might be interested in. Don’t just load your site down with text. Make sure to include PDFs, videos, and even links to outside resources that would be helpful for your users. Do anything you can to make your site extremely relevant and useful for a visiting user, even if that means providing links to outside resources. This will rank you higher in search engines.
98% of all new technology purchases begin with a key word search; make sure your offering is at the top of these searches.
To learn more about the current state of your site, or if you’re looking for SEO help – Contact us today.