SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of getting your website to show up on the first page of a search engine’s results when a user clicks on a keyword or phrase. For example, if you were to type in “accountant” as a keyword, most likely the first page of results for an accounting-related website might look like this:
However, if you wanted to rank first for “accountant”, you might consider doing some SEO work. You would want your website to appear in the organic results for “accountant”, or the ones where a user chooses your website without being directed to the top spot by a search engine.
Now, you don’t need to be an expert or spend a lot of money to do decent SEO. With just a few easy hacks, you can start ranking for competitive keywords without having to worry about being penalized by Google or the search engine you’re using.
1. Create Content To Suit Every Platform
It’s easy to create content for SEO. Just pick a theme or template that you think will suit every device. For example, if you know that a large portion of your audience is on mobile phones, you might want to consider creating a blog post using an adaptive design that can be viewed on a phone, tablet or computer.
The advantage of creating content that can be viewed on every platform is that you avoid the possibility of having a visitor leave your website or blog because they couldn’t see or navigate your content. Creating content that can be easily viewed on all platforms is also great for usability, which helps you avoid potential frustration for your audience and improves the overall user experience.
2. Use Keywords and Phrases That Are Within The Main Content
The main purpose of your blog post is to drive traffic to your website. While there’s no strict rule on how many times you should use a keyword within a blog post or how much you should write on a topic, using relevant and popular keywords and phrases within the main body of your blog post is advised.
If you don’t want to annoy your readers with unnecessary text, you should consider keeping your content under 500 words. For longer posts, having keywords and phrases scattered throughout the text might still get you results, but you’ll have to test and see for yourself.
When it comes to SEO, we’ve all been there, clicking on a popular product or service and getting bombarded with ads for similar products or services. If you want to stop this from happening, consider using the nobrima plugin for WordPress or using the ‘Opt-out Page’ in Google Ads to block out the sponsored results.
3. Include Keywords and Phrases In The Alt Tags
When a user clicks on a link, the browser typically shows an image, a headline, and a couple of sentences of text below the link. If you want to appear on the first page of a Google search for your keywords, you need to ensure that these three components appear above the fold (i.e., the part of the webpage that’s visible when a user first visits the site).
The most common way to do this is to include keywords and phrases in the alt tags of your images. For example, if you have an image that’s relevant to your blog post, you could add the keyword “blog” to the alt tag of the image to help the search engine understand what the image is about.
You should also include keywords and phrases in the link text of your links. For example, if you write “Check out this blog post about blogging”, the reader will know exactly what the blog post is about. If you have a lot of links and the majority of them are relevant to your blog post’s content, you might consider using the nofollow attribute on these links.
4. Measure And Analyze The Results Of Your SEO Work
When you started your blog, you had the ambition of writing a few insightful posts and getting some traffic along the way. You might have even set an initial goal of a hundred monthly pageviews. While this might have seemed like a reasonable goal, eventually, you’ll have to admit, no one set of blogs can thrive in today’s crowded space.
Ignoring the fact that your site won’t make any money, you can put in all the effort you want to get the most out of it. Unfortunately, with so much competition, getting results without doing any of the work isn’t possible. Instead, you’ll need to measure and analyze the results of your SEO efforts to determine the impact they’ve had on your traffic and overall performance.
Fortunately, with the right tools, this is a fairly straightforward process. You can use Google Analytics to determine the number of visitors to your site as well as their geographic location, the time of day they visit, and how often they return. You can get even more information about your visitors by linking your Google Analytics account to the account you’ve setup for your website.
With these tools, you can examine the performance of your site with or without the help of SEO. You can also track the performance of your different content types (e.g., blog posts, videos, product reviews, etc.) as well as the performance of different regions, platforms, and browsers.
From here, you can determine what worked and what didn’t, making it easier to determine what to focus on in the future.
5. Update Content When New Information Is Available
Keeping your content fresh is key to getting views and subscribers. If you want to make your content more appealing to your target audience, consider updating your blog post with new information, resources, or relevant links.
For example, if you’re writing about how to properly cook a chicken breast, you might want to add a tip or two about what makes the process easier or how to prevent some of the mess that often comes along with cooking (e.g., food safety, how to clean up the house in advance, etc.).
The key to keeping your content engaging is to add new and exciting information when you can. If you want to keep your readers interested, consider using a tool like Hemingway to easily create engaging content that draws readers in and keeps them coming back for more.
As you gain experience, you’ll learn how to use tools like SEO to get the most out of your content. If you want to get started, check out our SEO for bloggers course here. Or, if you want a more hands-on approach, consider our SEO for webmasters course here.