By now, almost all modern business owners understand the need for a comprehensive search engine optimization plan in order to boost visibility and get their website pointed in front of the right eyeballs. Nonetheless, understanding what's involved has changed significantly over the years. In the (long) past, you could have thrown up subpar content and pointed enough links to it; you would have ranked.
However, this hasn't been the case for years, and to successfully rank your site so that it shows up for the right people, you need to take a far more holistic approach and really get to grips with the subtleties and nuances of modern SEO. Throughout this post, we will explore four of the most pertinent SEO tips most experts recommend to their clients. While it is recommended to bring in an expert, these tips should give you a good start.
Get Your Branding On Point
This might sound like a peculiar place to start an SEO-related post but bear with us. BRaniding is hugely important when it comes to pushing your site up the rankings since most search engines (read: Google) have an innate desire only to rank those businesses they believe offer true value. One aspect of providing value is being able to be seen as a real business that offers a genuine product or service, and that tends to lie in having a brand that follows you around the web.
Fly-by-night operations that only focus on raking in cash short term will tend to forgo this part and aim to spam the web with vast amounts of (often AI-generated) content and play the grey hat game until everything ultimately comes falling down around them. Instead of this, you should focus on a longer-term approach and ensure your brand is something recognizable and trustworthy.
This will obviously change among industries, but the fact remains that by getting this step right from the start, you will gain a tremendous advantage as you move forward throughout your SEO journey. In fact, according to the Israel-based Digi SEO team, a site that appears high on Google conveys strong branding that will eventually become instantly recognizable across platforms.
This means consolidating an image across your website and social media presence. By making an effort to brand yourself effectively and look like a genuine business, you will complete the part of the puzzle that most folks tend to avoid until the last moment.
Run A Deep Audit Of Your Existing Site
Once you have created a strong brand, the next step is starting the actual SEO part. However, before you get overexcited and jump right into creating all sorts of amazing content and squirting links from around the web, you should run a complete audit on your existing site. An audit allows you to identify any issues on the site that could potentially hinder its searchability or user experience.
A proper audit will reveal technical issues like slow load times or broken links (both internal and external) that frustrate users and search engines alike. It also examines the quality, quantity, and relevance of on-page text to determine if adjustments are needed. Page titles, headings, and metadata must be optimized to express clearly what each page is about. The site structure is also evaluated to ensure the most important pages are accessible for bots to access and index.
Addressing these kinds of issues through an audit means you can avoid wasting efforts on optimization strategies that may not pay off (which is far more common than you might think). With a fuller understanding of your website's strengths and weaknesses, you should be able to create a customized SEO plan focused on improving the most impactful areas first.
Aim For The Low-Hanging Fruits First
When beginning your SEO campaign, it is prudent to focus initial efforts on what is often referred to as “low-hanging fruits” in the industry. These are essentially quick wins that you can “pluck” with relative ease compared to some of the more advanced tactics that you will need later.
Tackling optimizations that require little time and resources allows for quick wins that build momentum and see top rankings attained for necessary (albeit lesser searched-for) keyword targets within a short period. This early success further motivates continuing optimization work and gives credibility to your overall approach.
Starting with improvements like fixing broken internal links, simplifying site navigation, or enhancing important page copy with targeted key terms and phrases means progress is made rapidly (all of which should have been addressed in your audit). Handling these types of issues provides an immediate boost to technical soundness and on-page optimization, helping the site rise up the SERPs.
With traffic and leads beginning to flow from the easy tweaks, the business is better positioned to undertake more involved strategies. Rather than taking on complex technical upgrades or extensive content development from the outset, prioritizing low-hanging fruit for the initial phase sets reasonable expectations and allows resources to be judiciously allocated.
This strategy proves the value of SEO through visible results that encourage continued investment. With early fruit plucked and initial rankings secured, the business can then scale its campaign through more ambitious goals and long-tail keyword targets.
Focus On Technical Aspects To Get Your Site
When beginning any SEO optimization campaign, it is crucial to focus initial efforts on improving the technical aspects of the website. Getting the site to function optimally lays the foundation for organic search success. Taking the time to address issues like page speed, links, security, and coding helps ensure the technical side of the house is in order before expending energy on other strategies.
Slow load times, broken functionality, and other technical problems frustrate site visitors and raise red flags for search engines. Bots are unable to thoroughly crawl and index pages if these issues exist. With the technical performance strengthened, search engines can seamlessly access all critical content.
Furthermore, users will have a positive experience, which impacts engagement metrics like time on site that search algorithms factor into rankings. Rather than rushing headlong into content production or link building, concentrating initial work on the technical optimization of the site builds confidence with search engine spiders.
When crawlers encounter a well-optimized site that prioritizes the user experience, they reward that business with higher search placement. With the technical side strengthened, SEO efforts going forward can be implemented with the knowledge that the site foundation is sound.
All the tips in this post may appear to be relatively common knowledge, but they are usually recommended by those in the know simply because they work. When you place your focus on these points, you will begin to see slow but steady gains that net real value over time.
