Getting started with SEO shouldn’t be a minefield. But before we get started with getting started with SEO here are a few fundamentals.
Every business worth its salt has a website - and the website's pages needs to be found by search engines, which are peppered with search queries from potential customers who then click on the desired search result and visit the page. Simple.
Informing search engines about your web pages has many layers, a lot of which will be covered in this blog. But for now, if you’re diving into the SEO rabbit hole how should you get started?
First thing’s first, you should familiarise yourself with Search Engine Optimisation and why it’s important for your web pages to thrive in a place more crowded than Waterloo Station on a bad day. Thankfully, I can do that for you by letting you know the SEO fundamentals:
Keyword research
If you haven’t heard of keyword research you should get out more. It's the bread and butter of SEO. Essentially, it’s identifying relevant keywords and phrases related to your web pages. Chossing the right keywords is key to online visibility, which ultimately improves your chances of driving traffic to important pages. But there’s more to it than that.
Gone are the days when businesses would cram their content with keywords. Today, search engines are more sophisticated and take into account search intent and context. For example, if you sell trainers (sneakers if you’re reading this in the US) using the keyword ‘trainers’ isn’t going to get you as far as you’d like. Whereas if you mixed it up and included a keyword phrase with a tad more context like ‘best trainers for jogging’ you’re more likely to get brownie points from Google and other search engines. Using high, medium and low volume target keywords essentially hedges your bets.
On-page optimisation
This is exactly what it says on the tin. On-page optimisation is all about making sure elements on your web pages are informing search engines what they're about. Things like titles, headings, images, meta descriptions, internal linking, and body content must be in good order, otherwise search engines will become confused and your rankings could tank.
Off-page optimisation
Basically the opposite to on-page. Off-page optimisation is all about optimising content that falls outside your website, but links to it. Backlinks, social posts, forum discussions, guest posting, podcasts, vodcasts and webinars are effective ways to promote your website, build followers, increase your website’s authority and drive traffic.
Technical SEO
Web pages are constantly crawled by bots. These bots gather information about your pages. They’re smart because they learn what yours (and every other web page on the internet) is about. This is done so that information about your web pages can be surfaced when someone performs a search.
Important elements like sitemap issues, too much code, page load speed, mobile responsiveness, massive images, broken links, orphaned pages, duplicate pages, duplicate titles and so on, will throw a spanner in the works. You can identify all these issues and more by performing a site audit. Some issues can be fixed easily via your content management system, others may need help from your dev team.
Now you’ve got the fundamentals down it’s time to get busy reviewing and optimising your content. This is where you may need help crafting an effective content optimisation and SEO strategy.
Here are a few tips:
Have a plan to produce high-quality content with relevant keywords and internal linking.
Make your content engaging so that it resonates with your target audience.
Don’t rest on your laurels. Remember, it’s crowded out there. Keep your content fresh and relevant.
If you don’t measure and track your performance you might as well not bother. Knowing where you were and where you are now is a no brainer. For example, how are you stacking up against your competitors? Are you outranking them? Are they outranking you? Has website traffic increased? All these metrics need to be monitored so you can identify areas for improvement.
The entire digital space is always changing. Just look how far AI has come. Make sure you keep abreast of changes and adapt, because if you don’t your competition surely will.
SEO is a long-game. Results won’t be immediate, but given time you’ll start seeing the benefits.
Reach out if you want to talk about how Jump11 can help you navigate your content and SEO journey.