SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of improving a website’s visibility in search results with the goal of getting more organic, or non-paid, traffic. To make the most of your website’s online presence, a successful SEO strategy should involve optimizing content, optimizing the site structure and links to the pages, building quality backlinks, and tracking and analyzing data. Following these steps can help you gain visibility and get more traffic from search engines:
- Choose Keywords: Start by researching the keywords or keyword phrases your potential customers are likely to use when searching for your business online. Once you have those keywords, create content for each one.
- Create High Quality Content: Effective SEO starts with high quality content that is relevant to the targeted keywords. This content should use targeted keywords naturally, not be stuffed with keywords.
- Optimize Business Pages: Optimize each page of your website to target a different keyword, then create unique navigation that leads visitors to the pages associated with the keyword.
- Optimize Tags: Optimize all of the HTML tags on your website, including the title and alt attributes.
- Build Links: Earn links to your website by referencing and creating quality content that people are likely to link to, such as blogs and press releases.
- Monitor Results: Monitor SEO performance by measuring the rankings of your website in the different search engines, as well as tracking web traffic.
- Social Networking: Use social networking sites to spread the word about your business.
- Analyze Site Structure: Improve the structure of your website by adding an XML sitemap, an internal linking structure, and building a keyword hierarchy for your content.
- Monitor Competitors: Monitor your competitors to understand how their SEO efforts might be affecting your rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
- Utilize Google Webmaster Tools: Monitor how search engines view and index your website using the Google Webmaster Tools.