4 Tips to Mastering SEO Basics
On today’s episode I want to talk about SEO basics.
That’s right, we’re talking search engine optimization.
SEO is the practice of improving and promoting a website in order to increase the number of visitors the site receives from search engines.
I’ve actually found that a lot of people can get a bit confused about the basics of SEO.
There’s so much information that we could cover on the topic of SEO. But, I’d like to share 4 beginner SEO tips, just to help you get started.
Tip #1: Create Truly Amazing Content for Your Audience First
Make sure you’re creating great content for your audience first, before you focus on your SEO content.
Why?
Well, search engines are smart-they only want to show their audiences the most helpful and relevant content out there.
They can tell when you’re just trying to please them as opposed to being genuine. In fact, you’ll actually get penalized for working the system which can decrease your page rank.
And you don’t want to sound like a robot to your audience. You want to be helpful and sound human.
So, make sure you’re writing content for your audience first and for search engines, like Google, second.
Creating educational and helpful content will increase traffic to your site, build trust with your audience, help establish you as a thought leader, and attract inbound links and social shares to help your content spread.
Great content is the most important tool that you have for SEO.
Tip #2: Focus on Keyword Placement
Make sure you have one keyword around which to focus your content.
Not only will this help you with structure and thought consistency throughout your post, it will also make it easier for search engine crawlers to understand what your content is actually about.
To help with this, make sure you take your keyword and place it verbatim in the following six places:
Tip #3: Create Internal Links for Your Website
Internal linking is when you position hyperlinks throughout your site that link to separate pages within the same domain.
For example, here at SmartBug Media we might link from our Inbound Marketing page to our Case Study page.
Why is this important?
Internal linking increases the time people spend on-site as they click from one page to another. It also allows users the opportunity to more easily navigate your site.
And, from an SEO perspective, creating those internal links is sort of like voting for yourself-and letting everyone know that you’re voting.
As you know, whoever gets the most votes in a competition wins.
Tip #4: Build Relationships
Search engines recognize when other websites have links that direct to your site. That tells them that your site is important, which increases your ranking.
Building relationships, online and off, with industry influences and other well-respected sites can increase the odds of getting inbound links to your site. And it will ensure you get valuable visitation.
This can set you apart as a thought leader and bring you more followers.
So, those are four beginner SEO tactics you have to know to get going on your SEO journey.
What are your favorite SEO tips that are working in your own business? Tweet me or SmartBug at @jenspenceror @smartbugmedia.
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Originally published at www.smartbugmedia.com.
