SEO – To Do or Not To Do?

As a website owner, you surely have heard the phrase: “you have to do SEO,” but what does it mean? How you do it? Why website optimization is important for my business? 

Over time search engine algorithms have become more sophisticated; SEO has changed over the years.

In most cases, this is a good thing. It improves the user experience and ensures that spam sites or sites with weak content do not rank high on search engines.

Do: Use Analytics To Measure Performance

Before you start writing content, you must know the keywords you want to rank for. Using keyword analysis is an effective way to inform this decision.

Several tools can help you with that task, such as Alexa, Moz, or Marketo.

Try to rank keywords that are relevant to your business but have a lower difficulty score-this means fewer companies or websites are competing for them. 

The use of specific long-tail keywords usually leads to the best conversions.

When you start writing content, you should conduct keyword analysis to understand the phrases you need to pay attention to. 

When your ranking declines or opportunities are discovered, use these tips to help your keywords regain their rankings.

Don’t: Try To Cheat The System

Link schemes such as buying backlinks, using hidden links, and participating in linked networks are all ancient ways to increase SEO. 

As search engines have become more and more intelligent every day, these technologies not only do not work but will also be actively punished. 

Not only will you be penalized, but the quality of the content generated when using these strategies will also be reduced, which is a critical factor in generating higher quality leads.

Taking these metrics and using them as part of an inbound marketing strategy should improve your SEO. 

You have to keep in mind that SEO is a time-consuming process, so please be patient, and eventually, your website will bring high-quality traffic and potential leads.

Do: Optimize Images For SEO

When using various media forms on your website, remember to label them, mark them, or add alternate text so that they are visible in search engines.

Once traceable, search engines can learn more about what your content provides users, and if relevant, you can improve your ranking in the process.

Don’t: Overuse Keywords

Yes, search engines do want content with a clear theme, but excessive use of keywords can turn off customers, and potentially reduce conversions.

In terms of search engines, we found that they did not directly penalize them, but they may find that your duplicate content has resulted in a higher bounce rate, resulting in a lower ranking.

A simple solution is to use synonyms. This ensures that the search engine can still identify the subject of the content without affecting the user’s readability.

Do: Create Relevant Content

SEO can be very simple. Just focus on creating relevant content that customers will enjoy reading. 

As more and more users enter your website, this increases your chance of improving your ranking. 

This is the foundation of the inbound marketing approach, create high-quality content, and customers will come to you!

Besides, creating quotable and shareable content will increase your chances of getting backlinks from other sites. 

Search engines treat backlinks from another website as a vote of confidence in your content.

Don’t: Link Too Often To External Sites

Too many links to external sites may harm your SEO. Google recently began to punish unnatural outbound links.

However, the real negative impact comes from your content and therefore looks like spam.

This will make your content difficult to read and will likely result in a high bounce rate search engines that will use this approach.

Do: Focus Your Content Around Keywords

First, make sure that your title (and meta title) is related to the content or keywords. 

When searching on Google, you will use 55 characters to impress the user before Google shortens the title. 

As long as the first 55 characters of the title are attractive, this is not a big problem!

In the body of the text, make sure that your content is simple and highly targeted to the subject area. 

Trying to obtain extraneous and irrelevant information will usually not help your SEO. 

Moreover, search engine algorithms can now understand context and dialogue language. 

This means that you don’t have to repeat exact keywords or phrases, but instead suggest that you use keyword variations, such as long-tail keywords and keyword expansion.

Don’t: Copy Large Pieces Of External Content

Copying your content does not seem to harm your SEO, but it does not help it either.

However, copying others’ content, it’s something entirely different. 

As search engines become smarter, they tend to prefer original content, thus pushing down non-original content. 

Copying a small amount of content will not cause harm to you, but copying and pasting large fragments will.

Do: Make Web Pages Mobile Responsive

Make sure your website is mobile-sensitive. 

Google will favor mobile-friendly websites because they can provide a better user experience. That also means that you must have links and buttons that you can easily click on your phone. 

The benefits of designing for mobile devices are twofold. Not only are mobile-friendly websites favored by search engines, but they are also generally favored by users. 

Adaptive web designs can reduce the bounce rate-search engines analyze this metric to determine your ranking. 

The lower the bounce rate in your site, the better the SEO.

Conclusion

If you use SEO to increase website traffic for conversion, we hope you choose the latter! 

Before embarking on SEO, make sure you have set business goals, and then use SEO to help you achieve your goals-not the other way around.

SEO’s achievements go far beyond vanity indicators. If done well, it will help real businesses achieve their true goals of success.
If you are ready to improve your website but do not have an in-house team to do it, Optimal Websites has a great group of experienced developers that know how to tailor optimization for your unique needs. Contact us or browse our website for more information.

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