SEO for Beginners — 3 Tips for Immediate SEO Improvement
Among all the phrases that have emerged this year 2020, the buzzword — ‘The New Normal’ absolutely stands out.
For one main reason, it has been articulated and bandied in mainstream media — print, screens and radio since COVID-19 became a global challenge.
Take a look at these breakout terms (From the search term — ‘The New Normal’) on Google Trends to see what I mean.
So much for the ‘buzzword’ or ‘buzz phrase’ of 2020, but do you know the top keywords or phrases that your customers actually use to find your business on Google or any other search engine?
(Especially during these COVID-19 times).
Do you know if your customers are searching differently than before?
If you don’t know your top keywords, nor information on whether your customers’ search behaviour has changed, then it’s also likely that your business has not fulfilled basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) requirements.
And with this in mind, this blog post will highlight three (3) easy activities that any digital business (with a website) can do to improve their SEO, and also show 2 common false expectations that businesses often have when it comes to Search Engine Optimization.
Before we delve into the meat of this post, it will be wise to recall basic SEO terms.
Firstly, Search Engine Optimization derives from the idea is that there are tactics and things you can do to improve the chance that your content (on the internet) will be found by someone in your target audience when they search for it in a particular search engine — (Matt Rouse, Hook SEO).
Keywords and phrases are essential to SEO, and they are terms used by search engines to index your content. The index of a search engine is the database from which content is served to anyone searching.
Therefore, using the right keyword helps a search engine to accurately index your content, from which it serves content to users.
When done correctly, SEO improves your chances to rank higher or come in the first place when someone searches for something related to your product, service etc.
Great. So why is all this important?
SEO is a core part of the process of Search engine marketing.
Now, depending on the platform, it is necessary to create the means for search engines to easily locate your content, index it and share with your searching audience.
On this note, there is YouTube SEO, Amazon SEO, Pinterest SEO; Generally, every platform with search feature has rules that allow content to be ranked or filtered based on the user query.
For Organic SEO, i.e. the ability for your content (product or service) to be seen without paid promotion; the following three easy activities can be done on a website:
- Insert page titles, and H1 headings
A Page title is the top-level description of the page which you see when you hover on the browser tab (See Futuresoft homepage title below).
Ideally, you need to include a search phrase or keyword that people are searching for, in the title itself possible before your company name.
For example, for a hypothetical property Firm in Abuja (COVIDON Real Estate), the page title could read as shown below:
Top Real Estate Company in Abuja, Property Lawyer — COVIDON Real Estate
Use H1 headings — for content such as blog posts on your website, H1 heading is not just for formatting. It is a way of organizing information on a page, and each webpage is only allowed to have one.
H1 headings essentially answer the question, what is the topic of this page?
As a guiding principle, it should Include a related term to the one in page title
For the example cited earlier; an H1 heading could read like so — Affordable Terraced Houses for rent in Abuja.
- Insert images between paragraphs and alt text in all images
Source: primefocuslab.com
Mindful of the visual nature of most internet users, it is in your best interest to use images between paragraphs in blog post content or any web page for that matter.
Furthermore, the image used on the page should have alt text; so that for accessibility options e.g. screen reader, users can decode the content of the image.
Where possible, add keywords to the image alt text.
Still, on the subject of pictures, they are important to the writing of SEO-friendly content.
Although, good structure (plus valuable content) and simple language — which makes for easy readability are good for SEO.
Better SEO can be achieved by:
- Putting the title of each article in H1 format including keyword or phrase that is the topic of the page. (See Tip 1 Above)
- Making sure you have short paragraphs with an image or sub-heading — use H2 headings
- Asking a question in sub-headings and answering it below is great
- Insert website backlinks
Backlinks serve the purpose of certifying authority, so the more quality backlinks there are to a website from other reliable websites, the more likely they are going to be regarded as an authority by Search Engines.
- One surefire way of building your backlinks as a business is writing valuable articles with links to your web asset and placing them on authoritative websites and blogs.
- For a Nigerian accounting firm, sponsored posts on Nairametrics.com and Businessday can go a long way to boost their website SEO rating.
Ok, so those are the three promised tips to rev up your SEO game just a tiny wee bit. When you do try these tips, please don’t forget to share this article with others so they win like you are going to do.
And talking about winning the SEO game, there are two mistakes, misconceptions or misgivings to look out for:
- Expecting unrealistic results
There are businesses who have spent the better part of the last 5 years optimizing for keywords that you are interested in using, and would naturally be ahead of you because they are also doing the right things.
- Secondly, for a properly executed SEO campaign — 60/90 days is the normal time to see results and 6–12 months to see the full effects of the campaign.
