Search engine optimization is a powerful marketing tool. It is one of the most reliable ways to drive organic traffic to your website. It also can amplify your other marketing efforts such as publishing content on your blog. However, if you get it wrong, your SEO can seriously harm your website. You may find yourself with fewer visitors than ever. These tips will help save you from an optimization disaster.
Plan Your Keywords Carefully
As you likely know, the keywords you are targeting are at the center of all your sear engine optimization efforts. Selecting the right keywords is essential to bringing the right traffic to your website. A common error is to target keywords that are popular rather than the ones that represent intent to buy.
Consider the goals of searchers when they enter your current targeted keywords. Are they seeking to buy your product? Which keywords would better represent an intent to buy?
Deal With Links
Linking is a big part of optimization. Search engines look at your links as well as the links from other sites to yours to determine how authoritative your website it.
Clean up any broken links on your website. If you have links that are leading to 404 errors, that is a big issue. A common strategy is to redirect traffic from broken links to newer, more relevant pages.
Additionally, you need to build backlinks to your website from authoritative sites. One way to do this is to do guest appearances on other brand’s blogs, podcasts, and other content. Many marketers are willing to switch off, being a guest for each other.
Don’t Forget Your Metadata
Don’t forget about the basics of search optimization. Spend some time making sure all your pages have good metadata including image alt tags, short page titles, solid meta descriptions and more.
This data is how search engines know what is on your page. A computer algorithm doesn’t understand the visual aspect of design that people immediately “get.” Make sure your website is as easy to understand for a computer as it is for a person.
Get Started
Nailing your SEO strategy isn’t easy. The above tips may help save you from an optimization disaster. However, you may need even more help if you want to really make the most of your search traffic. Fortunately, getting help from an outside search engine optimization provider can be a huge boon to your business.
