Search engine optimization is an incredibly powerful form of marketing and can drive valuable customers to your business without costly advertising budgets. Yet many marketers see SEO as a time-consuming and overwhelming practice. Marketers often ask, “Where do I start? How do I get the best return on my time? Do I have the technical skills to really make a difference?”
The tips below will help you increase your website’s rank on search engine results pages (SERP) and take advantage of low-hanging fruit without advanced technical skill.
“When writing title tags, get inside the searcher’s head and deliver on their expectations.”
Review your URL structure
Shorter URLs tend to rank better, yet too many websites use URL structures that are extraordinarily long. Additionally, many URLs fail to reflect a website’s structure. A logical hierarchy helps search engines better understand exactly how the page fits into the website. Review your website’s URL structure and adjust for length and hierarchy transparency.
Improve page speed
Page speed is essential to SEO and to user experience. While we could provide you with many tips on how to optimize your page speed, we recommend using Google Analytics to check which pages are slowest and get page by page recommendations based on your specific situation. From Google Analytics, navigate to Behavior -> Site Speed -> Speed Suggestions for specific suggestions from Google.
Leverage existing references for inbound links
Link building is no easy task. However, many businesses don’t realize that they already have the foundation for a link. Do a search for your business name on Google. You may find blogs, articles or listings that reference your company, but don’t link to your website. A quick email to the website’s administrator asking for a link may earn you a quick win!
Add alt tags to images
An image’s alt tag is the meta text that describes that image. Simply adding descriptive text for images to your website will help search engines index your content more accurately.
Edit your title tags
Title tags are one of the most important on-page SEO elements. They are displayed on SERPs and should describe your webpage in a compelling and descriptive way. A strong title tag will improve click through rate and decrease bounce rate.When writing title tags, get inside the searcher’s head and deliver on their expectations. Think about how your website will meet the need of someone who is searching for relevant keywords.
Optimize H1s
According to SEO expert Neil Patel, the H1 is a tag that indicates a heading on a website. The H1 will usually be the title of an article or the largest, highest text on a page. Many H1s are too short, lack description, or are duplicative. When writing your headers, make sure they include descriptive long-tail keywords your audience may be searching for.
For a deeper dive into SEO best practices, visit Google’s SEO Starter Guide.