There are a number steps involved in developing an effective SEO strategy. The world of search engine optimisation is a vast one, but a good SEO strategy can make all the difference between a highly visible website and one that gets buried beneath the competition.
With Google’s ever-changing algorithm it can be difficult to keep up with what’s right and what’s wrong. At the moment, the success of your site (and therefore your business) hinges on a number of elements including onsite content and structure, inbound links and social media management. Each of these elements combined contributes to the overall success of your site, boosting brand value and distributing your content across numerous channels.
In this article we are going to focus on onsite content and structure. Listed below are 6 key aspects that will guarantee your content is working hard to improve your search engine rankings:
Keyword Research
This involves understanding how your target market searches for goods or services. Use Google’s Keywords Tool to help you find the keywords that your clients are looking for to get to your site.
Develop a list of keywords related to your business, brand, industry, location, products and customers. After developing your list, perform a search using Google’s Keywords Tool to see what related terms Google recommends. Using Google’s recommendations is a great way to expand the list of your keywords; pay attention to both single-word and long-tail keywords to help boost your SEO rankings.
Keyword Structure
Once your list of keywords is ready it’s time to organise that list by looking at the structure of your website and mapping keywords to specific sections. This helps readers to find your site more easily when searching for particular keywords.
Content Optimisation
After researching your keywords your content needs to be appropriately optimised to include those keywords. Content optimisation shouldn’t be an artificial activity. Your content needs to flow and make sense, not be stuffed with keywords at every possible opportunity.
Never aim to include keywords just for the sake of it. Of course, your primary keyword should be included in your article title and metatags, but an individual page should not be overloaded with the same keyword throughout. Target your audience first, then search engines.
User Experience
User experience simply refers to the usability of your website. Is it easy to navigate through? Is it user-friendly and aesthetically appealing? Is it easy to find what you are looking for, quickly? If not, this is bad news for the rankings of your site, and could be dropping them considerably.
Look at Google Analytics to assess the bounce rate of your site. If your bounce rate is high then you need to look at improving the navigation and design of your site.
Site Design
Your site design needs to be clean and uncluttered to be both SEO-friendly and client-friendly. Use a simple, modern CMS system like WordPress or concrete5 to create a beautiful, easily-navigable website.
Blogging
Last but not least comes blogging. Having a regularly updated blog is excellent news for the SEO of your site, and is also very easy. By regularly adding fresh, interesting articles to your site you will be adding more and more SEO-friendly content to your site, improving your rankings and targeting a wider number of users.
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