How to Practice Great SEO – Search Engine Optimization Part 2

If you were convinced by our previous post on why SEO is important for your business, you are probably wondering where to get started. The climb to great SEO is simple, but not always easy. It takes quite a bit of thought and consideration. Here’s what you need to remember:

Good SEO is powered by great content. The more frequent, quality content you plug into your website or blog, the better your positioning in search engines. Content marketing has become the secret weapon for small business success, and your website is the perfect place to put that content. Uniqueness is also vital here. People want to know why you’re special. Keep everything fresh, new, and insightful. This will help you hone your skill and climb the search engine results. Not only should the actually content be spectacular, but so should how you place it on the page. Make it easy to read, know your target audience, and organize your content in a way that is visually appealing to the reader.

 Promote your posts. It doesn’t just stop at creating great content. Great SEO isn’t just about the posts – it’s mostly about who clicks, shares, and bookmarks them. According to MOZ.com’s Infographic on Search Engine Marketing, “The engines by themselves have no inherent gauge of quality and no potential way to discover fantastic pieces of content on the web. Only humans have this power – to discover, react, comment and link to.” SEO isn’t about technical details or web development, it’s about marketing. If your content is being talked about, your SEO will improve.

 Utilize keywords. This is where you get into the head of your reader. You want to start out understanding the words a customer might use when looking for your business. Make a list of these words and use them to your advantage.  Consider using your site analytics to figure out what is already bringing in viewers. Use these words as often as possible when creating your content. Courtney Seiter of the Huffington Post says in her post on Improving SEO, “Those are your keywords, which you’ll want to be well represented on your site. Without overdoing it, use them as often as they make sense to guide users and represent your content. ”

Make everything mobile friendly. It is so important for your website to be mobile responsive these days. Mobile is most definitely the future of communication and business, and it is vital that your company has a presence there. Eugen Oprea at Copy Blogger says, “Give even more attention to how the most important pages on your site — like your Contact page, your product or services page, your menu if you’re a restaurant — look to mobile viewers. Be careful about technologies like Flash or PDF that are less usable (or completely unusable) on popular devices.” People will be searching for you with their cell phones, make sure they have a good experience when doing so.

 Make sure it’s working. Analyze the results of all your hard work! Make sure that SEO is working for you, and your business, to grow your presence online. Use what works for you and toss what doesn’t. Monitor your target keywords very closely so that you may maximize on what is working. Oprea at Copy Blogger also said, “If you are doing it right, you should start seeing the traffic going up within weeks from starting to work on your local SEO optimization campaign.” If you are monitoring your progress and making necessary changes, your search engine optimization should constantly grow.

 If this isn’t enough to get you working on your SEO, you might want to consider what your competitors are doing. “If you’re moving forward and improving your position, you’re losing ground to a competitor who is,” Jason Bayless, Owner of BestSeoCompanies.com, “That’s a simple face of how the process works.” If you ignore this vital tool for your business, chances are you will be left behind.