10 Basic SEO Tips
As you know yourself, Google is a place where most people go to find the things they need, and this is no different when it comes to your business. People are searching for your services and you must be there when they need you.
Being one of the first results could be the difference between you getting a sale or your competitors, so here are 10 basic SEO tips for you to get your website up the rankings and beat your competition.
1. Keyword Research
Firstly you need to know what keywords you want to rank for and to do this you need to do keyword research. Here you will find out what relevant keyword phrases are searched for often, and how the strong the competition is for that phrase. Ideally, you want a keyword or phrase that has high search volume and low competition. There are many ways you can carry out keyword research including Google Adwords keyword planner which gets you off to the right start with your SEO.
2. One Keyword/phrase per page
Now that you know what you want to rank for, you need to match these keywords to specific pages to give them the best chance to rank. If you were to decide on multiple keyword terms for the same page, the keywords will start competing with each other having a negative effect on your SEO, taking away the chance of each keyword ranking due to Google not being clear on what you want this page to rank for.
3. Create quality content
Write your content for your users and not Google. It is Google’s job to serve the best content for the query asked so give Google what they want.
4. Get quality backlinks
Through creating quality content you can generate high-quality backlinks to your site, or maybe do guest posts on other websites to get a link back to yours. Either way, Google sees backlinks to your site as votes of confidence and is one of the biggest ranking factors in their algorithm.
5. No black hat/Do it properly
Getting backlinks is a good example of how you can do SEO so wrong if you go about it the wrong way. That way is buying backlinks on the web, these links are generally poor quality and Google will punish your website due to spammy, low-quality sites pointing at yours. Don’t risk it. Take your time and get the right results, no quick fixes.
6. Register your website to Google search console/Bing webmaster
Registering your website to these tools help you check what you are ranking for, identify issues which may be stopping you from ranking as well as allowing you to communicate to the search engines and tell them when to crawl your websites new content.
7. No Duplicate content
Don’t have the same content on multiple pages as Google can punish you for this, it wants unique quality content. Same goes for content from other websites. Take product descriptions, for example, don’t copy the supplier’s product description, try and make your own version.
8. Register your business with directories
Keep a consistent name, address and number registered in the top directories. The more Google sees a consistent citation of your business the better Google will view you.
9. Use headings and titles right
Make sure your headers and titles are labelled correctly and contain your keyword for that page. And remember to make them appealing for the reader, remember we are writing for our users, not Google.
10. Image Alt Text
Search engines like Google cannot see images as we do, so be sure to add image alt text which tells the search engine what that image is.
Here you have it, 10 Basic SEO tips to help you improve your search engine visibility.
Any questions about anything raised in this post, please get in touch and we would be happy to help. Or visit our SEO service page here.