Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of getting targeted traffic to a website from a search engine’s organic rankings. Common tasks associated with SEO include creating high-quality content, optimizing content around specific keywords, and building backlinks.
In other words:
SEO is all about improving a site’s rankings in the organic (non-paid) section of the search results. The main benefit of ranking for a specific keyword is that you can get “free” traffic to your site, month after month.
How SEO Works
SEO works by optimizing your site for the search engine that you want to rank for, whether it’s Google, Bing, Amazon or YouTube.
Specifically, your job is to make sure that a search engine sees your site as the overall best result for a person’s search.
How they determine the “best” result is based on an algorithm that takes into account authority, relevancy to that query, loading speed, and more.
(For example, Google has over 200 ranking factors in their algorithm).
In most cases, when people think “search engine optimization”, they think “Google SEO”. Which is why we’re going to focus on optimizing your site for Google in this guide.
If you have a blog, chances are you already understand the importance of business blogging. But do you know how to optimize your blog posts to make them more search engine friendly?
The truth is, many bloggers fail to take advantage of the enormous marketing potential of their blogs. In fact, a recent study by blogger.com shows that although roughly 60% of businesses have blogs, 65% of those blog owners haven’t even updated in the past year! By providing fresh, relevant content and performing basic blog post optimization, you can take advantage of the many benefits blogging offers.
Here are six easy search engine optimization (SEO) tips to help get your blog noticed.
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- Do your research. Keyword research is essential for on page optimization. Chances are you are naturally including keywords without realizing it simply by providing valuable content on a topic. However, there are a variety of tools and techniques for finding related keywords relevant to your blog post that you may not have considered. The Google Adwords Keyword Tool and semrush.com both offer great tools that allow you to find keywords related to your topic and even spy on your competition to see what words and phrases they are targeting to bring traffic to their sites.
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- Utilize keywords throughout your post. Once you have targeted a couple of valuable, relevant keywords, it is important to place them where they will have the most impact for humans and search engine crawlers indexing your content. Try to include them in the following places:
- Title
- Headings and subheadings
- Introductory sentence
- Concluding paragraph
- Anchor text (text you hyperlink to other related pages on your site)
- Title tags and meta descriptions
A word of caution: Don’t engage in keyword stuffing, which is the act of filling your content with so many keywords that it becomes difficult to read. Not only will this irritate your blog followers, it will also get you penalized by Google. A couple of strategically placed keywords will do the trick.
- Optimize your images. Whenever you upload a photo to your blog, be sure to include keywords in the file name and fill out the alternate text field with a brief, keyword rich description of the photo.
- Utilize keywords throughout your post. Once you have targeted a couple of valuable, relevant keywords, it is important to place them where they will have the most impact for humans and search engine crawlers indexing your content. Try to include them in the following places:
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- Reference others with links. When you mention another blogger or article in your blog post, include a link to the information you are referencing. Not only is it good blogging etiquette, but you may also get lucky and receive a link back. Quality links are a valuable commodity for any site looking to rank higher in search engine results pages.
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- Give readers the opportunity to subscribe to your blog. Include prominently placed RSS or Feed Subscription Buttons and offer viewers the ability to subscribe to your posts via email when possible. This allows your blog followers to have instant notification of your latest posts without having to periodically check your site for new content.
- Use social media to broaden the reach of your blog posts. As a small business, you may be utilizing Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or other social media sites to create connections with potential and current customers. Why not promote your blog content on these sites for even more web exposure? Free programs like Hootsuite make it easy to post links to your latest blog post on all of your social media sites with just a couple of clicks. You can even schedule your posts ahead of time!
By following these simple SEO tips, you can encourage higher rankings in SERPS, increased web traffic, and higher customer conversion rates.
Too busy to keep up with your blog optimization? We’ve got you covered. OpenVine’s search engine optimization experts can help you get more prominent positioning on search engine results pages.
read more: http://www.openvine.com/small-business-internet-blog/6-ways-to-optimize-your-blog-posts-for-seo
While on-page SEO refers to the factors you can control on your own website, off-page SEO refers to the page ranking factors that occur off your website, like backlinks from another site. It also includes your promotion methods, taking into account the amount of exposure something gets on social media, for example.
Off-page SEO factors:
Backlinks
The number and quality of backlinks you have to your site is undoubtedly the biggest factor of off-page SEO. The more sites linking to your content, the more domain authority Google grants your site, boosting your ranking. This has led marketers to try questionable paid link-building tactics, but there are several organic approaches you can take that produce effective results, such as guest blogging, being featured in industry trade publications, and seeking out contacts in the industry who’d be happy to share your content.
Domain Authority
Measured on a scale from 1-100, your domain authority is a number given to you by search engines to determine the strength of your website. Think of it as a grade, essentially. Websites with a higher domain authority receive preference in the search results, while websites with a lower domain authority are more likely to rank near the bottom. Domain authority is measured by a few different factors, including how long you’ve had your domain name (the longer the better), the history of the domain name, the number of backlinks, and the number of 404 pages. By ensuring you have a technically sound website that follows the SEO best practices, you can maximize your domain authority and improve your ranking.
Social Promotion
While page ranking isn’t tied directly to the interactions on a social media post, social posts that generate a lot of clicks will certainly help boost traffic to the site and generate a ton of link shares. Content that’s shared on Google+ is also indexed immediately, helping in that regard.
On-page and off-page SEO work together to improve search engine rankings. By working on what you can control today—producing quality content that is supported by high-quality on-page SEO—you’ll be well on your way to earning backlinks, improving your domain authority, and controlling your off-page SEO.
read more: https://www.weidert.com/blog/difference-between-on-page-and-off-page-seo
On-page SEO (also known as “on-site SEO”) is the practice of optimizing web page content for search engines and users. Common on-page SEO practices include optimizing title tags, content, internal links and URLs.
This is different from off-page SEO, which is optimizing for signals that happen off of your website (for example, backlinks).
HOW to do on-page SEO?
Mastering on-page SEO requires broad knowledge, as it includes many aspects. In this guide, we’re going to walk you step by step through the most important on-page success factors and techniques.
WHY should you work on the on-page SEO?
Because it is an integral part of SEO that can help you get higher rankings, reach a bigger audience and get more organic traffic.
Unlike off-page SEO, on-page SEO is fully under your control.
WHEN should you do on-page SEO?
Some things require a one-time setup when starting with the website (e.g. page structure, HTTPS, website speed optimization), other activities are needed every once in a while – you need to take on-page optimization into account every time you publish a new blog post.
On-page SEO should be be done even if you rank #1 in the search results because SEO is an ongoing process.
WHO should be doing on-page SEO?
Any website owner, blogger, online marketer or SEO specialist. In fact, anyone trying to rank a website in search engines.
read more: https://mangools.com/blog/on-page-seo/
Although most on-page SEO guides do not deal with keyword research, it is an essential step when creating new content. So it deserves some space here.
Why is keyword research important? It helps you to:
- find new topic ideas
- find phrases that are popular, relevant and easy to rank
- understand what people are interested in
The last point is especially important when it comes to on-page optimization.
Keyword research will tell you what people are searching for (and how many of them). It also helps you to see what exact questions they have and what phrases they use to find the answers.
Based on these insights, you can start creating content that will be perfectly tailored for your visitors, and both Google and your visitors will love it.
As Google has evolved over the years, so did keyword research. Today, the focus lies on these things:
- Quality content – keyword research (and SEO in general) won’t help you if your content sucks, great content should be your #1 priority
- Topical keyword research – keyword research is no longer only about finding one focus keyword, it is also about understanding the whole topic and its related terms and subtopics
- Search intent – search volume and keyword difficulty are not the only things to focus on when looking for the keywords, be careful about the intent behind the query too
read more: https://mangools.com/blog/on-page-seo/