I cannot express the importance of SEO (search engine opti- mization) on your website. In the past I’ve shared many SEO tips but this article is going to focus on six specific SEO tips every online marketer should know to improve organic traffic to your website.
If you were to ask my high school English teacher about my writ- ing skills, she would probably not even recognize my name and once she did figure out who I was, she would probably laugh.
The thing is I actually like writing. At this point, I have written several books, not to mention countless articles, reports, white papers, technical papers and even sales letters. The thing I’ve realized from my high school days is that there’s more to content than just words.
My eyes would glaze over with talk of sentence structure, pas- sive voice, dangling participles, and other things that make me scratch my head with that confused cocked head look that your dog gives you sometimes.
My intention in this article is to share SEO tips you may not have thought of and some things you may not have realized had anything to do with SEO in a way that does not give you that same glazed-over look.
So, let’s get started…
Tip #1 Primary Keyword
A primary keyword is considered the main keyword of your website, page, blog post or article. To get the best SEO ranking, you will want to use this keyword in your headline(s), the first paragraph of your page, and scattered throughout in several other elements of your page.
This would include sub-headlines, alt tags and descriptions of your images, page names, image file names and such. I won’t go into a lot of detail with this tip as that is one SEO element that is talked about a lot (and I have written past articles on). I will warn you NOT to keyword stuff; (blatantly overuse the keyword) this will cause more harm than good.
In regard to the primary keyword, you want relevant keywords associated with your primary keyword. These are additional key- words that may be synonyms or words that are relevant to the primary keyword. This is helpful to get additional keywords into your copy. Plus, it gives you the ability to put plural forms of your keyword in. It has been proven that one word over the other may get you different search results such as keyword vs. keywords.
Tip #2 Headline SEO
This obviously goes along with the first as it is important to make sure your keyword(s) show up in some headlines on your page. But, what I mean here is to be sure to use the H1, H2 and at least H3 tags in your page or post.
Many times, I see that headline and sub-headlines are actually formatted as paragraph text that has just been modified using a larger font size and bolded. While in appearance it gives you the right appearance, it does nothing in relation to search en- gine optimization.
The search engines look at the code to know what the primary headline (H1) is and what is a sub-headline (H2). It uses that information to measure the relevance of the content that comes after it. It doesn’t always seem natural to use the key- word in the headline and in the paragraph after. It takes a little bit of trial and error when making that happen. Changing that headline text is usually just a matter of selecting that text and choosing the appropriate H tag in your editor.
Another SEO headline tip is to have a strong SEO headline. In addition to having your primary keyword, you will build a stronger keyword if you have a number in your headline when you can or what is considered a power word. We usually use power words like “How to…” or “7 Reasons Why…” but there are many other SEO power words to use that build excitement or intrigue making the visitor want to read on. I recently found an excellent article on this at https://www.orbitmedia.com/ blog/increase-website-traffic/
Tip #3 Behind The Scenes SEO
This is something that is often overlooked. It’s the part of SEO that people either forget to do, don’t feel is important or just don’t know about it at all.
Most of this step is usually done once; if done correctly it takes care of itself, and you only need to check on it from time to time to make sure everything is running smoothly.
You will want to make sure your site is using https. If you need tips on this, check out my YouTube channel at youtube.com/ frankdeardurff. If you don’t apply this step, many browsers will give an insecure warning which will deter visitors from pro- ceeding to your website. Also, search engines find secure sites more favorable.
Another technical step you will want to do is to register your website with Google and Bing webmaster tools and submit your site. This will help the search engines find and cite the content much faster.
One other tip you will want to do is make sure your website has a sitemap.xml file. If you’re using a SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO or Rank Math (these are two I’m using currently), they provide this file for you but you will need to add it to your Google and Bing webmaster tools profile.
