When there are more than 600 million active websites on the internet, as a business you need to find every way possible to outperform your competitors. One sure-fire way is through SEO, both onsite and offsite.
It is important to first understand the difference between onsite and offsite SEO.
Onsite SEO is making your website as friendly as possible to search engines. It includes anything you do on your own website to improve your Google rankings.
In order to really improve your onsite SEO, let’s start with the basics.
One of the first things you should do to improve your onsite SEO is to optimize the SEO title on every single one of your pages.
Next is your SEO title, which is the text that shows up as the main header for your pages on search engine result pages (SERPs). This is also what shows up in your browser as the title of your page. Always keep in mind that Google will only display the first 55 to 65 characters on their SERPs, so keep yours in that range. Be sure to always include that page’s keyword at the beginning of the SEO title. Also, include your city and state if you are a local business trying to attract visitors.
The Meta Description is the adjoining text underneath a page title that shows up on Google. Your meta descriptions are very important because they can help influence your audience to click on your link. To make sure your pages rank as well as possible, you should spend some time optimizing the meta descriptions throughout your site. Make sure you include your keyword and if you’re a local business your city and state here as well.
An H1 is your page’s main heading. Paying attention to these on each page is crucial because they let your audience know what your page is about. This is vital for onsite SEO.
H1s also tell Google what your page is about. Google will scan your pages to look at your H1s. So make sure they include your keyword and city and state if applicable.
While Google is great at scanning your text, it can’t see your images. So image alt tags are a way for you to help Google identify your images. Be sure to include your keyword for that page. This will be one more way to impact your rankings for that specific keyword.
Remember, search engines like to see that your content is up to date and they will prioritize sites with fresh quality content. One excellent way of keeping up to date is to take advantage of your blog. Consistently update it with new posts and insights. This is great because it will help your SEO massively and it will also engage your visitors and improve your bounce rates.
Off-site SEO is the other way of improving your search engine optimization efforts. This means everything you can do to improve your SEO that isn’t directly on your site. Let’s go over a few of the key strategies you can do to improve your off-site SEO efforts.
Guest Blogging is when you write blog posts for another blog somewhere on the internet. In exchange, they will link back to your site throughout the post. Be sure to find sites that have a great reputation on Google as the better the reputation, the more that link will mean.
Social media simply keeps getting bigger and bigger and is a great way to improve your off-site SEO efforts. Youtube alone is one of the major search engines out there, so including searchable videos on Youtube is really important. When you link to your website from your social media account, this counts as a link. So as you’re planning your social media strategy, make sure you link back to your site often in your social posts.
If you are a local business, you should always list your company in local directories. Local SEO is very important for search engine optimization. Start with a Google My Business account. Then also utilize profiles on Yahoo Local and the Yellow Pages. Doing this will provide you with great quality backlinks to your site.