Welcome to our “Basics”series. This will be a recurring series where we talk about the basics on various topics.
Our inaugural basics series episode will be about the amazing results that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can deliver your business. We will also discuss how these can be achieved.
SEO has been around effectively since the start of search engines in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. There have been many changes in the SEO world. Going from “keyword stuffing” where you add as many keywords to a page as possible, to backlinks and more.
The current SEO landscape is ever changing so keep returning to this blog as we will update this blog once every few months to a year to let you know the more recent ways of achieving “SEO greatness”.
Below there are five actionable tips that will help you rank high on the search engines.
1 Achieve SEO greatness with the right keyword combinations
Keywords are important. They are the backbone of the way that search engines organise the result pages. If you try to rank for the keyword “inbound marketing specialist” and you don’t mention this word at all, then search engines will not be able to recognise what you are trying to rank for.
Search Engines don’t look at your webpage in the same way that you do. It doesn’t see the beautiful images and all the connections. It sees a plain HTML text file and it looks through these files to see what you are writing about. This shows why keywords are so important. It is the only way search engines know what you are trying to rank for.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t use synonyms or other version of the keyword. In our “inbound marketing specialist” example you could also substitute the word specialist for expert or guru or any other synonym.
Search engines recognise these synonyms and they allow you to rank for those as well.
2 Use headers (H1, H2 etc..)
As we mentioned in the tip above, Search engines look at your website differently. They also read headers and footers.
By adding the keywords and synonyms you are trying to rank for in the page title and the headers, you are increasing your chances of being ranked higher. Because search engines scan these headers for the right words as well, they help your presence online.
3 Use imagery
By using imagery, and adding meta tags, your keywords, to these images as a description, you also have the chance of ranking in the image search of Google. By using the right images, the search engines will favour your posts.
4 Keep titles and your “slug” short
This is a very important tip. Search engines do not favour really big titles. According to research the longest a title should be is between 8 to 12 characters long. With a preference for a 9 to 10-word title.
This title will show in its entirety on the search engines. This leaves a better experience for searchers and for readers.
The same can be said for your “slug”, the text behind your website URL. For example, this slug will be digikat.marketing/seo-101-on-page-seo-tips .. this slug is small, it discusses the keyword (SEO tips) and it provides you with a clear understanding of what to expect when you clicked on this link.
5 keep updating content
The most important thing is that you need to keep refreshing the content and linking to it. If you don’t update the content then the search engines will consider it to be “unimportant” content and this will mean that your pages will keep losing rankings.
If you want more actionable SEO tips let us know below, or on our social media pages!
