You have great website, but no one is going to see it unless you can attract visitors. Today, that means you need to place competitively in search engine rankings. You may wish to hire professionals to manage your content marketing, However, if you take a go at it yourself, you can use these great SEO tips to boost your efforts towards a higher search ranking.
Keywords
A keyword is a singular word or phrase that is used as a search term. When writing a blog post or webpage content, you’ll want to choose a keyword as a focus of your content. With an emphasis on a single keyword or phrase will keep your content focused and it also helps you attain a higher search engine ranking by matching your content with people searching for the same subject.
What Are the Best Keywords to Use?
There isn’t a singular set of keywords that are best to use. The best keywords are those search words or terms your target audience uses to search for content. Use the words people are using to search for information when deciding on keywords. If your text doesn’t match what your target audience is looking for, they won’t find and visit your site.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Years ago websites used to trick search algorithms by repeating a keyword numerous times to rank higher. Those times are gone and too much keyword or phrase repetition will actually hurt your search engine rankings. Be creative and create valuable content for your audience in efforts for a higher search engine ranking.
Backlinks
Backlinks are hyperlinks directing users to your website from other websites. Backlinks generally help your SEO score and improve your search engine ranking, however there are former back linking practices that were used to game the rankings, and now search engines penalize websites that use these now frowned upon practices. You want high quality links from legitimate websites or internet users. You DO NOT want backlinks from link farms or through the practice of “link for link”, where you place a link to another website in exchange for that website linking to your website.
Think of backlinks as a vote in support of your high quality and valuable content.
Content Structure
Long and complex sentences are not search friendly. When drafting content, try to keep sentences simple and under 20 words in length. Also, be sure to use your keywords or phrases in the headline, the introductory paragraph, and a subheading. Spread your keywords throughout the content at a keyword/phrase to word ratio of 1:100.
Meta Descriptions
Don’t forget your meta descriptions! Be sure to use your keyword or phrase in your title and meta description. The meta description is a short snippet of 128 to 155 characters. A tag in HTML, it will look something like:
<meta name=”description” content=”A page’s description, usually one or two sentences.”/>
The purpose of a meta description is to to generate clicks through your website with traffic generated from search engines.
Lastly, don’t forget that images need meta descriptions. Image search can be a powerful tool to leverage.
Style & Voice
Use active voice whenever possible and keep passive voice to minimum. Write in a tone that motivates the reader to take action. If you have trouble writing in active voice, remember to put the subject at the beginning and the object of the action after the verb. If you find a passive sentence without an actor or subject, an easy fix is to add one.
Use Transitions
Use transitions like “and” or “because” to make reading easier for your audience and to more effectively communicate the relationships between ideas and statements. Also open up paragraphs with “first”, “second” other words linking topics.
But this sounds a little odd, right? Isn’t it natural to use transitions? It is, but sometimes people start writing like a robot because they’re goal is to achieve a higher search ranking. Google likes useful content that is easy for humans to understand. so write like a human.
Blogging
Blogging is essential for strong search engine optimization(SEO) today. It provides regular content that can be indexed by search engines and establishes your website as a valuable resource for knowledge sharing. You can use blogs to not only achieve a higher search ranking, but also to market your brand and demonstrate your expertise to potential customers.
Get That Higher Search Ranking
Content development for the purpose of achieving a higher search ranking is a mix of art and science. The art is making content that is engaging and useful. The science is understanding the type of content and how to write for the right search terms being used by your target audience It also requires patience, because a piece of content won’t skyrocket your rank overnight, it’ll take some time, usually about 3 months before you see results.
Extra Note: If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, you might want to install a plugin such as Yoast. These plugins help you improve and calibrate your text to be search engine friendly.
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shane@3catslabs.com | Call +65-3159-4231
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