Simple Steps for a Solid SEO Strategy

Your company is redesigning its website and you are responsible for the content. Pretty exciting, huh? Then your boss tells you that you are also responsible for search engine optimization (SEO). Suddenly, the project doesn't seem quite so exciting anymore. You are not an SEO guru. You don't have years of experience in SEO. The panic sets in.

Hang on! Believe it or not, whether you are adopting, improving or just starting your SEO strategy, the basics of SEO are not that hard. In fact, they are mostly just common sense. I'm not trying to take anything away from the rock stars who have made careers with SEO expertise. We need these people. Their expertise is incredibly valuable because SEO is a science that is constantly changing as search engines like Google constantly update their algorithms.

What I'm saying is that you don't need to have a master's degree in SEO to ensure that your website is well positioned for organic search engine traffic.

Take a look at these seven easy ways to build a strong SEO strategy:

Know your keywords

One thing at a time. There is not much you can do without knowing what keywords your target market uses to find solutions to its problems that your company solves. This requires a little research. Follow in the footsteps of the potential customer of your product or service. How would you find solutions to your problem? What would you look for in your search engine? For example, if you sell organic dog food, your potential customer is probably concerned about her dog's health. Perhaps her dog has a food allergy and is concerned about the chemicals and by-products in most dog foods. Start looking. Which websites are displayed? Look at the words used in these snippets.

In my above query "Dog has food allergies", words like "sensitivity", "natural" and "balanced" appear. Don't forget to think about related words like synonyms (thesaurus.com can be your best friend) and word groups. Back to our dog with the search for food allergies. You might consider keyword phrases such as "food sensitivity", "all natural food", "fully balanced diet" and "natural ingredients only".

Write high quality content

The key here is to harness your marketing spidey sense and create engaging content that is valuable to your target market. Valuable content includes content that answers your buyers' questions, gives them insights they can use, and trains them to do their job better. Remember to use natural keywords within the great content you create. Don't try to clutter your pages (i.e., keep inserting keyword terms into your content, meta tags, alt descriptions, etc.) to inflate your site's ranking. It will not help your search ranking (it might even harm it). If search engines catch you (and they will catch you because their bots are super smart!), they can punish your site by lowering your ranking or removing your site completely from their index. Besides, it won't impress your website visitors. Who wants to read the same words over and over again? "Are you looking for organic dog food? If you are looking for organic dog food, you don't need to look any further. Our organic dog food website is the best place to order your organic dog food. Stay realistic - you are writing for one person.

Use keywords in the URLs of your website

Be careful not to overlook the URLs of your pages, because they are important for your SEO. This is where your keyword research comes into play. For example, if a page talks about your solar financing product, the URL for that page should be Products/Solar Financing. Concentrate on the most common and frequently searched matching keywords. If you are trying to choose between "solar financing" and "solar leasing", choose the one with the highest search ranking.

There are a few quick and easy (and free) ways to check the search ranking. One of them is to use the Google AdWords keyword planner. Simply enter your keywords to get an idea of how popular they have been in terms of search volume in the past. You can also use Google Trends, a site that's really fun to use. Compare different keywords to see a quick graphical comparison of interest over time.

Do not overlook any page titles

It is crucial to create appealing and interesting titles for your websites. Make sure that they appeal to your target market. If they don't, people won't read all the great content below. I find that the answer "What's in it for me?" for my visitors helps me focus on what I should highlight. Ask yourself: What is the benefit they can get from the content of this site, and why should they be interested? Once you've done that, shorten your title, use strong words and make it sexy (try a little alliteration for fun). When creating these attention-grabbing headlines, make sure your keyword appears in the heading (H1) and/or in the subheading (H2). If you use the above example for solar financing, your H1 could be "Solar financing made easy".

Check each page for additional keywords

Now that you've created quality content that your target market needs (and wants) and you have attention-grabbing headlines that appeal to them and encourage them to read on, go back and review everything you've written. Look for additional places in your review where you can naturally place keywords. Can you rearrange a sentence to include a keyword? For example, on a page about marketing automation, "Identify the best customers and convert more" could be changed to "Marketing automation helps you identify the best customers and convert more". Are you also considering creating a keyword phrase by adding a word before a keyword? If I have a sentence that talks about "marketing campaigns" and "marketing automation" is a keyword for my site, I would add "automated" to "marketing campaigns". Make multiple passes. You may be surprised at the opportunities you miss on the first and even the second pass.

Improve the user experience

This goes beyond the content of the website, but a good user experience is becoming increasingly important in strong SEO rankings. According to Robert Berris in his blog Three UX Principles That Help Your Website Do Its Job Right: "Over the past two years, Google has evolved to place much more emphasis on sites that deliver quality user experiences across platforms and devices. Although the traditional ranking factors are still king, search engine optimisation is increasingly becoming user optimisation". So work with your web developers to ensure that your site is easy and intuitive to navigate and that every link works and takes your visitors to the next bit of information they are looking for.

Hire an expert

As I said before, the basic SEO is mostly common sense. However, if you can afford it, it is advisable to hire an SEO expert to ensure that your website is really optimized. An SEO consultant or SEO agency can review your site and see how it compares to your keywords. He will provide you with a prioritized list of action points so you can take your website to the next level.

Here's the good news: you don't have to be an SEO wizard to ensure that your site is well positioned for organic search engine traffic. Just use your common sense and the seven simple tips above.