If you launched a website, you need to look into actionable SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques to help potential audiences discover your website easily through. Anyone launching a website would need to have at least a basic understanding of SEO.
Why?
Because Google's organic search traffic is one of the primary ways to get your website found. For many small business owners or businesses that just started out, you are in the best position to plan ahead. Your page's ability to rank on the first page on the world's key search engine will determine how much traffic you will get on your website.
In this article, we will walk you through some basics of SEO and more importantly, actionable steps you can take to get your website to the top of page rankings on search engines:
- What is SEO
- Actionable SEO techniques you can deploy for your website
- Wrapping up: get started on improving your website's SEO now
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a set of tactics that increase the chances your website will rank high on the search engine results page for certain keywords.
Related: What is SEO and why is it worth your time?
In general, the focus of SEO is on gaining organic traffic – as opposed to paid traffic from advertising.
For many websites, page rankings literally determine how much of Google's organic search traffic would eventually land on their homepages. Many top-ranking pages rank on Google SERP for various reasons. From the page's URL that relates to their business to having many owned SERP features, businesses need to invest in a great site experience and informational content.
At the most basic level, every website should:
- be able to be found by search engines to be crawled and indexed.
- have content that provides value and answers users’ queries.
- be keyword optimized for users and search engines.
The world of SEO encompasses everything from beginner-level strategies to highly sophisticated search engine optimization techniques.
What do you need to know about SEO?
Before we jump into discussing techniques, there are two things you need to know about SEO.
The first is that there is a lot you can learn about it. You can find many exact SEO techniques that will directly impact your search ranks and site traffic. However, some would take time in order for you to see its impact.
Secondly, there are many action steps you can take right now to improve how your website shows up in search. Yes, for every long term strategy and tactic, there is an easier way to tackle this immediately. This is especially so if you are a new website that do not have to deal with messy sites and other legacy issues.
That’s why this guide was created. To provide four actionable SEO techniques you can start implementing right away.
Editor’s note: Looking for an all-in-one SEO solution that includes keyword suggestions? Try out GoDaddy’s Search Engine Optimization today!
Actionable SEO techniques you can deploy for your website
Technique #1: Keyword research
Keywords are at the very core of SEO. Because keywords tell Google and other search engines that a webpage is relevant to a user’s interest. A keyword is any word or phrase that a user enters when searching for products, services, or information. By including these keywords across your web pages, you’ll improve any page’s ability to rank highly in search results.
Before you start doing research and building up your keyword list, it is good to think about a primary target keyword. In fact, you might even want to come up with a few primary keywords and secondary keywords to help you get started in the right direction.
Primary keywords are the terms that are most important to your business, that you want to rank for on search engines. These terms generally have high search volumes, and can generate significant traffic to your website from organic search results.
For example, if you are selling ice cream online in Singapore, your primary keyword could be "buy ice cream online Singapore" or "order ice cream online Singapore".
There are a number of ways you can get started with keyword research. Many free and paid keyword research tools exist, including Soovle, Ahref’s Keyword Explorer, and Google Keyword Planner. Each tool works a little differently. But all should help you find the most popular keywords to give your website a boost in SEO. Most people tend to start off by using Google Keyword Planner.
Hat tip: use Reddit for your keyword research!
Another keyword research goldmine is Reddit, known as the front page of the internet! Reddit is filled with discussions on almost any topic you can imagine. To start finding untapped keywords, begin scanning through discussions on a topic. Then, keep an eye out for keyword phrases that are continually mentioned. It’s likely people will use these phrases when searching Google as well.
Once you have a strong list of keywords, you can begin including these in your web pages. You should also use these keywords to create a content strategy, but more on that later in this article.
Whatever you do, don’t skip doing at least some keyword research.
According to Digital Butter, keyword research can be “... time-consuming, but bypassing it can hamstring you in the long run.”
Technique 2: Get inspiration from competitors’ top-ranking pages
One of the fastest ways to improve your website’s SEO is to emulate what your competitors are doing well. Find out which web pages are bringing in the bulk of their traffic. Then, look for ways to do the same. For instance, a competitor may have articles that focus on aspects of your niche that you hadn’t considered before.
To start researching competitors, try using one of the many tools available like Semrush’s Organic Research tool. It will allow you to enter the URL of a competitor and see plenty of valuable data about their traffic. One of the main things to look at here is the pages tab. There you’ll be able to see how much traffic each different web page is bringing in. You can also click on keywords to see what the top ranking keywords are.
Editor’s note: Looking for an all-in-one SEO solution that includes keyword suggestions? Try out GoDaddy’s Suite of SEO tools today!
Technique 3: Create a robust content strategy for your website
Once you’ve done keyword research and found what’s working for your competitors, it’s time to create a robust content strategy for your website. A content strategy involves using high-quality content such as web pages and blog posts to meet your goals.
What are your goals?
According to Citrus.ph, content strategy goals can include “reaching a wider audience, growing your following, and fuelling engagement.”
But since we’re focused on actionable SEO techniques, our main goal here is to use content to increase search ranking.
To create an SEO content strategy, consider following these basic steps:
- Create a list of topics you already know you want to have on your website. For instance, let’s say you have an online store selling unique home gardening supplies. You may already have the core pages of your E-store. Think of creating helpful articles that are related to your products.
- Look through the results of your keyword research for new content ideas. Hopefully, you will have come across unique keywords that you can feature on your website.
- Create web pages or blog posts for each topic and keyword on your list. These pages and articles will be written with SEO best practices in mind. This includes writing in natural, human-friendly language; distributing your keywords throughout the content, etc.
- Start blogging and creating new keyword-oriented content on a regular basis. To stay on top of it, create a content calendar. This will allow you to plan what to create in advance and go after the most important keywords first. Doing this consistently will ensure your SEO keeps improving and you stay ahead of the competition!
Technique 4: Focus on link building
Finally, no list of actionable SEO techniques would be complete without mentioning backlinks. As opposed to internal links, which link to different parts of your website, backlinks come from external sources. Google has long considered relevant inbound links as a sign of trust and authority. For this reason, having other websites link to yours is an SEO best practice.
With any link building strategy, it’s important to note that link quality is essential. Don’t try and get links from any old website. In fact, if you have a bunch of links coming from unrelated sources, it could actually hurt your SEO.
Backlinks from credible sources are a vote of confidence for your website.
Now that we’ve introduced backlinking, here are four link building strategies you should consider:
- Write share-worthy content: Create great content that other people will want to share and link to. For example, an in-depth, step-by-step guide for your niche.
- Write guest articles: If you are an authority in your niche, look for opportunities to write guest posts on other blogs.
- Reach out to influencers: Seek out partnerships or arrangements with influencers who may want to feature your website, product, or service.
- Exchange links: Have a links list ready. Look for non-competing websites that may be interested in linking to you in exchange for a link back. For example, if you sell cakes, but you know of a great local bed and breakfast, maybe you can swap links.
On top of that, you definitely do not want to miss out on using internal links throughout your content to help users navigate to more relevant pages on your website.
Wrapping up
As you can see, there is plenty to know when it comes to SEO. In fact, you can go quite a lot deeper than the scope of this article. Thankfully, there are also fairly easy techniques you can start doing right away to get real results.
To recap, we mentioned four actionable SEO techniques:
- Keyword research: Find out the most popular keywords for your niche as well as untapped keywords you haven’t utilized yet.
- Look to your competitors: Research their top-ranking web pages so you can see exactly what’s working.
- Create a content strategy: Put together your list of desired keywords to rank for. Then start creating high-quality content that incorporates those keywords.
- Focus on link building: Create share-worthy content and focus on other strategies to get quality links pointing back to your website.
Take a few or all of these strategies and start putting them to work. With a bit of effort, you should start seeing positive results!
