An Introduction to SEO and Keywords
When launching a new website, there’s an SEO process that you’ll need to go through, so the right people are finding your website. Optimizing your website isn’t a one-off process, to keep your site ranking highly on SERPs your site will require maintenance, tuning, testing and routine monitoring. SEO can be a challenging and lengthy process, but the rewards are unmissable.
To help you reach your SEO goals, use our 4-step guide! Good luck!
Step One: Analysis
Look at your website; how well positioned are you for search engines? Is there a lot of code compared to not a lot of text?
Look at the competition. What keywords are your competitors using? What other businesses are using keywords you potentially want to use? How are you going to rank higher than them?
From the beginning, it’s advisable to start nominating appropriate keywords. Start a list of targeted search terms, relating to your target market.
Do some extra research; ask your target market how they would find your business website. Run email campaigns or polls on social media. The more research you conduct, the more likely it is your chosen keywords will help to drive traffic to your website.
Step 2: Development
You’ve already nominated a few keywords from step one. It’s time to take your research one step further; review competitive lists to see who is competing for each of your potential keywords
You need to be confident your consumers will be able to find your pages. So, prioritize some keywords and key phrases; even common misspellings, plurals and singulars for a higher chance of people finding your website.
You need to know where your current ranking is at the beginning, so you can assess your future rankings (which as time progresses should be a higher position on SERPs). Keep a note of your ranking weekly to begin with, then as you become more confident with your position you can check less frequently. Over time, you should start to see an increase in traffic to your website, which will indicate the effectiveness of your keywords.
Step 3: Optimizing
Content optimization is a key element of SEO and keywords.
You should try to weave your keywords into …
- – Page titles – it’ll help to create a page theme, so your audience know what to expect in your main body content
- – Meta tags – this will help to provide context to viewers
- – Sub-headers – doing so will emphasise the content below and it’s useful to capture the attention of people who are quickly scanning your content
- – Page Content – be careful not to over do it. You want to sell your product to people, not to search engines, so if you’re content is constantly emphasising the name of a product, for instance, it could make a bad impression and it won’t help your chances of conversion.
Step 4: Measuring
The work doesn’t stop here. SEO requires routine testing, measuring and maintenance. There’ll be new sites popping up all the time using the same keyword phrases as your own website and competitors constantly improving their own SEO to achieve a higher ranking.
SEO and SERPs ranking is a constant competition. Test the results of your pages, monitor your ranking and implement reviewing your keywords as a part of your digital marketing strategy.
About the author:
Marie Harwood is a Digital Marketing Assistant at Different Gravy Digital, Hale, Cheshire.
Different Gravy Digital are a full service Digital Marketing Agency operating in the Hospitality & Leisure, Financial Services, Legal & Property sectors. Products and services range from; 3D & 360° Tours, Website Design & Build, Social Media, Video Production, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Content Creation, Email Marketing, Online Feedback / Review Systems and Paid Advertising (Google, Bing and Social Media).
Contact Details:
marie@differentgravydigital.co.uk
0161 706 0004
120a Ashley Road, Hale, Altrincham, Cheshire, WA14 2UN