With more people using the internet to find new products and services, it’s important for every online business to incorporate SEO practices to rank high on search engines. But most businesses don’t know how to optimize their pages for SEO. Here are six of the best practices to use for optimizing your website content.
Optimize Your Page Titles
Before you write any content on your website, you need to optimize each of your page titles. When it comes to the overall look and feel of your website, nothing is more important than your page title or your title tags. Your page titles are the first thing that search engines will read when searching through your websites. Page titles are so important because they’re informing search engines what you’re trying to get searched for.
You should optimize your page titles with the right keywords that you’re trying to rank for. Including the page titles “Home” and “Services” is going to impact your chances at success. You should title each of your pages according to the keywords you want to get found for.
For example, if you’re a fashion blogger based in New York City, you don’t want your page title to read, “Fashion Blogger.” Instead, your page title should read something like, “Fashion Blogger in New York City.”
Optimize for Local SEO
Location is as important for your online business just like it is for your brick-and-mortar business. Including your location with your SEO keywords results in less competition. Having less competition makes it easier for people to find your company. It’ll also allow your website to rank high on search engines.
It’ll also ensure that your target audience is able to find your business. To go back on the previous example of the fashion blog, you’re not likely to get business from New York City unless you include this location in your page titles. It’s important to optimize your keywords and pages with your geographic location.
Create High-Quality Content
High-quality content can help increase “dwell time,” or the amount of time that visitors spend on your website. This can significantly impact your SEO rankings. When you write high-quality, evergreen content, your visitors are more likely to stay on your website to absorb more information and therefore increasing the swell time. It’s no secret that content that’s between 1,500 – 2,500 words rank the highest on search engine results.
While word count can vary among niches, longer content gives you the opportunity to include more keywords, incorporate outbound links, provide more value, and get more people to spend time on your website. High-quality content can also lead visitors to bookmark your website, which improves the SEO ranking of your website.
Improve Page Load Speed
Bing and Google take page-loading speed seriously. Visitors may leave your website if they have to wait several seconds for a page to load. This can decrease dwell time, increase the bounce rate, and decrease traffic – all of which can hurt your SEO ranking.
There are several ways to improve page load speed, some of which require caching plug-ins, optimizing images, making sure the code is streamlined, minimizing redirects, and reducing the number of plug-ins on your website.
The use of high-quality images can help increase the conversion rate. Optimizing each of your images can increase trust, generate empathy, and improve the overall experience without negatively affecting your SEO ranking.
Keep All URLs Clean
Your URLs should follow the page titles. URLs that are filled with numbers, symbols, and underscores are not good for SEO. Google analyzes URLs to determine the content for each of your pages. Create a URL that’s easy, yet reflects the contents of your web page.
Optimize Each Image
It’s important to create content that’s readable, including your images. You also should make your bullet points, headers, and other components readable and scannable across your website. Images are important because they make your written content more valuable and appealing. If you use them properly, your content becomes more appealing to search engines.
One way to do this is to give your image a file name that’s similar to the content title. It should contain the keywords that you’re trying to rank for. Another way is to include alt tags, which allows you to use keywords with a small piece of text that’s included in the code of your images. This can help you create a call to action that converts.
Each of these elements will help improve your SEO ranking. Don’t focus all of your time and effort on SEO rankings. Instead, improving the overall user experience can help increase conversions. By focusing on conversion, revenue, and visibility, it can help you prioritize user experience instead of relying on cheap SEO tricks.
