4 strategies to improve your SEO
The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to make your website visible to crawlers. Once they have detected your web pages, these small robots are responsible for inspecting the information contained in them and ranking them according to their relevancy level in the search engine index. SEO is a science that is constantly evolving, so search engine optimization is not a one-off strategy, it’s an ongoing strategy. In order to obtain optimal results and not finish last in the race against your competitors, the constant monitoring and maintenance of your website are essential.
To help you improve your site’s optimization, here are four important SEO strategies to put in place:
1- Analysis of your website, competitors and target audience
- The analysis of your website. Run an analysis of your site, meta-descriptions, title tags, header tags, keywords and texts to assess your situation and identify glaring errors. To better understand this task, read: The 2020 Search Engine Optimization Guide, and request a free SEO audit of your website.
- Identify your main keyword. Start by identifying the main keyword that identifies your business and make a list of the terms that your target audience is searching for in your industry. To choose the right keyword, compare the keywords that receive the most traffic and ask yourself the right questions. For example, what would you search for on Google to find your website or a web page of your business (without using the company name of course)? Then ask the same question to your customers and friends. Do not be too generic. The keyword “Best Poutine In Quebec” is much more appropriate for a small restaurant than “Poutine”. You can create a free Google Adwords account and use the Keyword Planner tool to help you identify relevant keywords. Ubersuggest is also a great tool, which does a good job at no cost.
- Make a competitive analysis. To determine if your SEO strategy works well, be sure to do an analysis of the current keywords on your site and that of your competitors. Then, compare your current SEO ranking with that of your competitors’ websites. Select the top five results that come up on Google for the most important keyword. Then, do a study of these 5 pages. How many words do they contain? What are the H1s and other header tags? Where is the main keyword located? Which secondary words are used to support the main keyword? The PageOptimizerPro tool offers you a free trial that will help you complete your competitive analysis and make improvements on your site.
2- Research and development of keywords
- Analysis of keywords. From the first list you have created, now identify a targeted list of new keywords. It can be a single word, a sentence or a question. Use your list to determine the traffic associated with each keyword and the number of websites competing for each one. You must create a page for each keyword (and its close synonyms). Don’t try to put several keywords of importance on the same page.
Tip : Since users are humans, the keywords to consider may be expressions, singular or plural words and may also contain spelling mistakes. You should know that if users often search for a misspelled keyword, you will need to identify it and use it.
- Analysis of your ranking. You need to understand your current ranking in order to put in place a strategy that will allow you to climb your way up the search engine results. To do this, you can use an Excel file and write down your results on a weekly basis. To determine your actual ranking, do your search with the incognito mode on your browser, otherwise, Google will first show you the list of sites that you visited in the past, which will distort your data. If your strategy works well, you will see an increase in traffic to your website. Be patient, Google can take several weeks to adjust rankings.
To know : Traffic is a key indicator of your evolution. Some SEO experts will say that ranking is less important than traffic and conversions, but it’s still a great indicator of your performance.
- Set goals and objectives. Make sure you determine your goals in advance so that you can calculate your return on investment. Start simple, but don’t neglect this step. For example, you can set a goal of doubling your website traffic from 150 visitors per day to 300 over a six-month period. You can also improve your current conversion rate from 2% to 3% over a certain period of time.
3- Content optimization and web page submission
- Create title tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.). Keyword-based titles help define the theme of your page and divide it into sections, which makes it easier for users to read.
- Create meta-descriptions. Meta-descriptions can affect clicks, but they will not have a direct influence on your ranking.
- Place strategic search phrases on your web pages. Include your keywords in the source code of your website as well as in the content of the pages of your site. Create quality content on new pages to include the rest of your keyword list.
To know : Write your texts by considering the words associated with the keywords (so-called keyword variations) in your content. For example, if your main keyword is “home chef”, use variations such as “home cook” and “private chef” in your content. This will allow search engines to more easily understand the content of your page. Many tests show that pages that contain 800 to 2,000 words outperform pages that have less content.
- Create new sitemaps. The sitemap is a file that contains the list of all the pages of a website. Sitemap files make it easy for search engines to discover and analyze web pages. In order to succeed in your SEO strategy, be sure to submit your web pages to Google and Bing for indexing. To do this, use the Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Create two versions of your sitemap, one XML and the other HTML. The HTML version is the first step.
- Submit your website to directories. It’s a quick and easy way to get links to your site in a natural way. These links will allow your site to be indexed by the search engines. You can send your URL to directories such as Yellow Pages, My Index, etc.
4- Tests and continuous analysis
- Test and measure. Analyze your search engine ranking, web traffic, and keyword performance to determine the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy. Test the results of your changes and modifications and keep track of how your performance evolves in an Excel spreadsheet.
- Frequently add and edit keywords and content. This will improve your search engine ranking and help maintain stable growth. Also, be sure to review your link strategy and verify that incoming and outgoing links are relevant to your business. Creating a blog will provide you with the structure you need to add the necessary content. Make sure to publish new content each month, always keeping a new keyword in mind.
Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
7 tips for an awesome and SEO-friendly blog post
Blogs have been evolving over the years and today they are a very valuable tool from a commercial point of view and a great source of traffic for many websites. Brands of all kinds create valuable and useful content to interact with their clients and attract their target audience.
Optimized blog posts allow products or services to become known and businesses to expand, as long as it is high-quality content. In this article we tell you how to write an SEO-friendly blog post!
What is a blog post?
A blog post can be an article, a news post or a guide published in the blog section of a website. On average, blogs are between 600 and 2000 words long and contain other types of multimedia content (images, videos, GIFs, infographics, and interactive graphics).
Typically, a blog post is informative and talks about a particular topic or query. Blog posts allow businesses to post ideas, thoughts, opinions, or stories on any topic. They also serve to attract traffic to a website, increase brand awareness and improve conversion rates thanks to call to action (CTA).
What is SEO writing?
SEO writing refers to the process of planning, creating as well as optimizing content for search engines and users. SEO copywriters take into account keyword density, latent semantic indexing (LSI), structure, style, tone and readability to organically increase a website’s content in search engines.
SEO copywriting is a mix of science and art which requires analytics proficiency as well as high-quality copy skills. It’s important for blog posts to respect SEO best practices but also make sure content is adapted to maximize the user experience. Good SEO copywriters have the ability to develop content that targets customers and guides their behavior on a web page through call to action as well as hyperlinks.
Google’s algorithm takes into account the browsing experience of users and the relevance of the content. This means that the quality of the content is essential to rank well in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
The importance of keyword research
Regardless of the article that is written, there are certain steps that must be followed so that the article is effective and ranks well in search engines. The most important thing is to perform keyword research and define the most appropriate and relevant keyword for the subject in question.
Positioning a website in the SERPs depends on several factors (site structure, authority, meta tags, quality of content, etc.) but the choice of the main keyword is one of the most important aspects. Take into consideration the search volume of the keywords before choosing them as this will determine how easy or difficult it will be to rank in a certain location.
The content must be aligned with the chosen keyword, and also include long-tail keywords, similar terms and synonyms of the keyword. Apart from the main keyword, it is highly recommended that you identify keyword variations and LSI that are related to the topic. These should be different from the main keyword but relevant in order to provide more context to crawlers and increase your chances of being indexed higher.
Google’s algorithm for ranking websites is constantly evolving and tries to understand what the user is looking for beyond the keywords they type in their query. There are many tools that are at your fingertips to perform a keyword search to effectively position your article in the SERPs. Some of them include SEMRush and Ahrefs !
Expert tips to write SEO-friendly blog posts
1. Choose a good headline (H1)
Having a good headline is one of the main factors that will make users click on the article and reduce your bounce rate. Obviously, the success of an article does not depend only on this, but without an effective title (H1), even the best content will not have visits. You should also make sure to include your main keyword in your H1 for optimization purposes.
Do you khow to write an attention-grabbing headline? The recipe for the perfect headline is complex. You need to make it stand out in SEPRs as well as inform and engage the user by convincing them to stop and click. All of this must be done in less than 65 characters!
2. Structure the article
Once you have identified the main keyword and chosen a powerful title, you have to create a clear structure for the article and insert the keyword in the most natural way possible. To do this, the best thing you can do is start by writing down some ideas for the titles of the paragraphs (H2) and subparagraphs (H3). By using H2 and H3 tags in your blog, you can organize the text on the page, dividing it by subtopics or subject areas.
This makes for much better readability and increases the chances that users will read the post until the end. In addition, it is very useful so that readers can quickly find the information they are looking for. Remember that a good article should always have a clear and engaging introduction, a development of the topic and a conclusion. Keep this in mind as you build the blog structure. Creating lists, adding internal and external links, using bold and italic to highlight information as well as adding call to action is also helpful !
3. Include call to actions
At the end of your well-optimized blog post, you should insert a call to action (CTA) to guide user behavior and influence what the reader will do next. Depending on your business objectives, you may want the user to download content, subscribe to your newsletter, schedule a consultation, register for an event, buy a product or service, etc.
After visitors read your blog post, they will click on the CTA and, in the best case scenario, they will become a potential customer or perform the action you wanted them to perform in the first place. A call-to-action is also a valuable resource for the reader, as you can use them to deliver more content similar to the topic of the post they just read.
4. Image optimization
All the articles you publish should contain images, infographics or videos to better represent what you are explaining to readers and make the content dynamic. You should know that images are not read by search engines like normal text, so it is necessary to optimize them so that the search engines know what they are about.
One of the most important elements to optimize an image is alt text, which is the alternative text that describes the content of the image. It is good to focus on the keywords contained in the text and include them in your alt text.
5. Optimiser pour le référencement Web
Once you’ve finished writing the article, you should go back and optimize the elements on your blog post. You shouldn’t exaggerate or obsess over the number of keywords to include (this is known as keyword stuffing). However, if you find opportunities to incorporate more target keywords without negatively affecting the reader experience, go for it. Also, you should optimize your URLs and make sure they include your main keyword.
Here are key on-page elements to review on your blog:
- Keywords
- Keyword variations
- Title tag and meta description
- Internal and external links
- H1, H2, H3… tags
- Page URL
- Structured data
- Etc.
6. Meta description
This is the description that appears below the blog post title on the search engine results pages. Meta descriptions offer users a short summary of the post before they click on it. Ideally, your meta description should be between 150 and 160 characters long and should start with a verb, such as “Read”, “Discover” or “Learn”. Meta descriptions help improve your search click-through rate!
7. Anchor text
Anchor text refers to the word or words that link to another page, either on your website or on an external website.
Make sure to choose the keywords for external links or on your site carefully because search engines take this into account when ranking your page for certain keywords. It is also important to consider which pages you link to.
You should consider linking to the pages that you want to rank for a specific keyword. Doing this can end up placing your website on the first page of Google’s results pages!
Are blog posts good for SEO?
Content marketing is an essential part of any SEO strategy. Blog posts use different on-page SEO tactics in order to help businesses rank better in search engines. Nowadays, investing in content production is key to increase traffic to a website, generate leads and optimize link building.
Here are some of the reasons why blog posts are good for SEO:
- They increase traffic to your website
- Google’s algorithm prefers new and updated content
- Backlinks help you improve your website authority and rankings in Google
- Blog posts help you improve the structure of your website
- They allow you to get organic click through rate (CTR)
- Blogs can turn your website into a lead-generating machine
- You can use blog content for your social media posts
- Content marketing drives long-term results
- They help brands manage their online identify and build trust
- And much more !
Do you wonder about the health of your website? Let ProStar SEO assess its condition and ranking in the search engine results pages.