If you are a business owner or entrepreneur who owns or planning to build a website you may wonder.
- How to improve google search ranking?
- How to increase traffic for the website?
- How to do SEO for a website yourself?
SEO (search engine optimization) is very important for your website because it could help you bring more clients without additional investments. No matter what CMS (content management system) or website builder you are using or planning to use, these simple tips will help you to gain more visitors from search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. And we are talking of organic search results not paid traffic.
Many business owners think that SEO is expensive. But these are the simple 3 steps you can follow to improve your website SEO ranking for free. Imagine you want to optimize the home page or one of the pages of your website. Let's say that is a virtual tour photographer's website that wants to sell its services using a WordPress website.
1. Find out your target keywords
Do you know what keyphrases should lead your clients from search engines to your website? Find out keywords and search phrases on which you want your site to be found. This is the first thing you want to do to optimize your website SEO. Here are some examples of keyphrases of the photographer we talked about earlier:
- Virtual Tours Photographer
- 3D Virtual Tour
- Virtual Tour Real Estate
- 3D Home Tour
- ...
These are the queries our artist wants people to find his website. In order to find out more ideas about what people are asking for from search engines, you may want to use free tools such as theGoogle Keyword planner tool.
By using this useful tool you can find out what people are asking search engines and you want to make sure search engines can find what people are looking for on your website or web page.
2. Add target keywords or keyphrases to your website
Add target keywords or key phrases to your website, webpage, or article you are optimizing. If you want people who are looking for "paintings for sale" to be able to find your website, your website should have a "painting for sale" keyphrase somewhere on the page. More precisely this keyphrase should be at least in some of the following areas of your website.
- Title
- Meta description
- Headers
- Page text content.
- Image alt texts
- Link texts
- Link title texts
- Meta keywords
Your website content management system (CMS) should let you edit all of these areas of the website. There are no strict rules on how often you should mention key phrases on the page to get desired search ranking. But remember this - your text should sound natural for humans. Consider the following on how to add keyphrases on different parts of your website page.
Title, meta description are vital for SEO
Search engines use your website title and meta description information to combine the header and description of each website in search results. That is why the title and meta description is so important for your website SEO. In this screenshot, you can see how to set the title, description, keywords, alternate text, headers, etc to your web page or post using WordPress CMS.
1) Type a title that includes one or more selected key phrases. The web page title will appear in search results when your website will be indexed (5).
2) Here you can type a description that will also appear in the search results.
3) This is the URL slug. You can add your search keywords here as well.
4, 6) WordPress will use the image alternative text you set when you upload your image to the WordPress image gallery.
5) Here is an example of how your website will look like in search results on mobile devices.
6) Another way how you can set the image alternate text. Don’t forget to add your key phrase there if it is applicable to that specific image.
7, 8) Make sure you have your keyword phrases at least in some of the level 2 to 6 headers.
User-generated keywords and keyphrases
You may consider letting users create content for you. For example, you let them comment on materials on your website, post public questions about your services, or write reviews. By doing so you are adding more content to your website that can be found by other potential clients.
Sometimes that requires some programmer’s time but often what you do you just can allow comments on your articles and even encourage users of your website to ask questions and write comments. This is a great idea, isn’t it?
Once you have done with keywords the search engines will be noticed about them. It could help a lot to rank your website higher. But your website content is not everything that you can do to help your website get higher positions.
3. Links help a lot to your website SEO
Links are another signal that lets search engines know about what you have on your website or webpage. For example, if somebody posted a link in a forum or another website with the link text say “virtual tours photographer in Tacoma†that tells search engines about what users can find on that page.
If more websites have similar links with similar link text it increases that signal for search engines. So you want other people to post links to your website or web page. But the authority of the website which posts links to your website matters too. The link from some old and well-known websites matters more than the link from some newly created websites.
In addition to links posted on the other websites, you can post links on other pages of your own website. If you add the keywords you selected to the link text it will be a signal for search engines too that the linked page may contain something related to the link text.
Where can you place SEO links to your website for free?
There are a lot of places where you can list your website for free. These are the search engines local business services:
- Google Business
- Bing Places for Business
- Yelp
You can create a profile with them and it will increase your company's visibility on the internet. Learn more on how creating the Google Business profile benefits your website SEO?
Also, you can create an account on social media and place a link to your website there. You can start with creating accounts on social media websites, filling out your profile, and placing the link to your website. Usually, you can place a link to the main page of your website. The link is not the only benefit of using social media platforms. You can also create posts with a link to useful materials on your website and share them with your customers that are subscribed to your social media account.
These are the social media platforms you may think about:
- YouTube
Having profiles in these social media and services certainly benefits your website SEO and brings you more clients.
You can also post information about your website on classified ads websites such as Craigslist. Or you can use free Craigslist alternatives such as AdSitePro. Forums.
Another way to place information about your website is to post on the Forums, Social Media groups, or other websites that are related to your company's activities.
Definitely, links help a lot to your website SEO. But more importantly, make the content of your website so useful to others so they want to share it with others and promote your website for you.
4. Natural links help your website SEO even more
What is a natural link (a good link)?
A natural link is one that occurs organically, not easily seen as being placed by your company.
Natural links don’t have tracking parameters. They do not exist within sponsored or paid content. They are not redirected through JavaScript or monetization tools. A natural link exists as a reference to a piece of content, website, or source. (Search Engine Journal)
How to gain as many natural links as possible?
Make useful content for your users or clients.
It means investing more time and energy to help your customers rather than to help marketing companies that advertise your website or web page. Write articles useful to your customers, answer the questions they ask you.
Learn more about what your clients or customers are interested in and help them by trying to solve their problems by answering their questions. You could write blog articles, real helpful video tutorials or even collections of videos or articles made by someone else also could help gain more natural links to your website and improve your website SEO.
SEO for startups & small businesses is easy
That's right SEO for your website could take time but it is not impossible or too hard. Just follow these simple steps to do SEO for free:
- Find out your target keywords.
- Add target keywords or keyphrases to your website.
- Work on adding links to your website.
- Make sure your website is useful and made for people not for robots.
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