With all of the content out there on the constantly changing technical strategies behind good, solid SEO management, it can be daunting for a DIY website manager with little technical SEO background to tackle. There are over 200 ranking factors that contribute to the health of search engine rankings for any given website.
These factors are all scored and then compared with those of other websites in the same geographic areas and in the same industry to help determine the search index for a given keyword, keyword string or search phrase.
When you look at it from that perspective, it seems quite a massive chore to manage your own site’s search engine health and overtake competitors out there vying for targeted search traffic.
The truth, however, is that while there are some very complex technical strategies that help to overcome the challenge of toppling competitors, there are also a number of straightforward paths to a successful SEO strategy that don’t exactly require certification in the field.
Here are some very easy to navigate steps you can take to boost your website’s SEO and get ahead of the competition:
(1) Plan a Well-Laid Out Website That is Easy to Navigate: One of the ranking factors that Google evaluates to determine a website’s search engine positioning is User-Experience (UX). User-experience is exactly what it sounds like, the quality of the time spent by a web visitor on your site. Sometimes that time can be frustrating, confusing and altogether unpleasant. Broken links, pages that don’t load quickly or fail to load altogether, confusing navigation menus and a host of other issue contribute to a failed user-experience on websites. Google doesn’t looking kindly on websites that don’t plan a positive user-experience. It’s always important to see your website from a user’s perspective. Ensure all of your links work properly and that your layout is clear and focused. Make sure your navigation menu works properly and that it clearly presents the most important content buckets on your website. This will go a long way toward presenting a positive user-experience for your website’s visitors.
(2) Write Well-Written Copy that Answers Your Customers’ Most Pressing Questions: Well-written copy is the sweet sauce of any potent SEO strategy. Avoiding duplicate content and poorly written language that doesn’t put forth strong ideas that support your key customer questions and needs is a great start for any cogent SEO strategy. And be sure to incorporate logical use of your keywords. The keywords your customers use to find the kinds of solutions you provide are enough to get you started on a solid SEO plan for your website.
(Read: Why SEO Content Marketing Should Start and Stop with Customer Needs)
(3) Optimize Your Metatags: Yes, it sounds rather technical, but metatags are simply technical names for content you access when designing your website. It’s true they are found in the HTML structure of your page, but if there is nothing there, Google, Yahoo and Bing will use content on the page itself to suffice for these important elements. First, we start with the URL. Make sure the keyword you are targeting is in that URL. It’s one of the most important page elements for SEO. Secondly, take a look at the page title. Typically, the first line of the page, this title can be optimized the same way as your title tag, describing the page’s function (with primary keywords in tow). Finally, there’s the description. If you don’t know how to access the meta-description, Google will typically use content from the first paragraph on the page. Use that language to summarize the page’s content, and you’ll be golden.
Of course, this is just the start of a cogent SEO strategy, but it gets you on the path that avoids many of the minefields encountered by those with no knowledge of SEO principles and very little technical knowledge. Thorough, frequent and consistent application of new and useful content that meets your customers’ or clients’ needs can help to form an approach as competitive as you can get short of hiring an agency.
If you would like to discuss ways Proctor Digital can power your SEO management strategy and get you to Page 1 of Google search, call us at 773.664.5819. We’d love to help!