Tips & Tricks To Improve Your Website's SEO
WHAT IS SEO?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is an often overlooked yet important way to increase your website's traffic. SEO is the process of increasing the visibility of a website on search engines like Google or Bing. This means that when someone uses Google or Bing to search for something that pertains to the content on your website, your website will show up on page 1 or 2 of a Google search ranking.
Question: Do you remember the last time you went through more than three pages of Google search results before finally settling on a website to click on? Most people don't, which is why SEO is so important.
WHY IS SEO IMPORTANT?
Nowadays, everyone seems to be fixated on social media. People believe that through social media alone, you can maximize the reach of your brand. However, while social media is a valuable tool for any brand, search engines are still oftentimes the most effective way to get more people to visit your website, many of whom have never been on your website before.
HOW I CAN START? WHERE DO I BEGIN?
Although SEO can be someone's entire job (there are lots of agencies out there specializing in SEO), it's also something that you can do on your own. For the most part, SEO isn't about overhauling your entire website. Rather, it's about making decisive and effective small changes. These small tweaks add up over time, boosting your website's SEO.
In this blog post, we're going to outline a few things that you can do to keep your website's SEO in tip-top shape. Although this isn't a masterclass in SEO, it will help you begin to pay attention to all the small fixes you can make to your content to improve your website's performance.
FOCUS KEYWORD
A focus keyword is a small group of words or a phrase. Some examples of focus keywords are "Best Sonoma Wines" or "Santa Barbara Luxury Hotels." The focus keyword that you choose for your webpage will be the way in which people will be able to find your content through their search engine results. Therefore, it's imperative that you choose a good focus keyword.
A good way of thinking about what your focus keyword should be is to ask the question: "How would I search for this content if I were looking for something like this?"
For example: If you're traveling to Paris and you want to stay in a luxury hotel in the 3rd Arrondissement, you would probably type into Google something along the lines of "Luxury Hotels Paris 3rd Arrondissement." If you're writing a blog post about luxury accommodations in the 3rd Arrondissement of Paris, you'd want your focus keyword to be as close as possible to this search entry.
SPECIFICITY
Another consideration when choosing your focus keyword is to be specific. Very general keywords like "Gardening" or "Flowers" will have billions of results on Google. Unless you're Home Depot or Wikipedia, you probably won't be anywhere near page 1 of that keyword's Google search ranking, no matter how good or relevant your content is. Therefore, when choosing a keyword, adding specific details such as location will make it more likely for your webpage to show up on page 1 or 2 of a Google search.
For example: "Residential Landscaping Naperville IL" will be more effective than just "Landscaping.”
Ultimately, search engines want to provide the best answers to their users' questions. If you can position your webpage to be the best answer to a user's question, SEO will work in your favor and lead more and more users straight to your content.
Although you may think of Pinterest as a form of social media, in terms of SEO, it acts like a search engine. Through Pinterest, users can discover accounts and their content (in the form of pins and boards).
Therefore, something you can do to stay ahead of your competitors is to work on your brand’s Pinterest. Link your Pinterest to content from your website and your social media handles.
Make sure your pins and boards have appropriate names—ones that you can anticipate people searching for. For example: If it’s almost Christmastime, make sure that one of your boards is Christmas-related and has the keyword “Christmas” in the title. Look at your competitors and see if they have boards that you don’t (and should) have.
If we were to rank engagement tools from highest to lowest priority, it would go like this: Website SEO, Pinterest, Instagram, Other Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Source: Her Life By Design Podcast.
If you’d like some inspiration as to how to amp up your own Pinterest, check out EME’s Pinterest here, as well as our Gary Farrell Sunday Supper Wine & Cooking Fun Pinterest board here. If you want to read even more about Gary Farrell and the Sunday Supper, check out EME Founder Emily’s blog post here on the JetSetting Fashionista.
CONTENT
Here are a few guidelines for creating content to boost your website's SEO:
Break up your content into several sections and have a subheading for each section. Research has demonstrated that people will scan a webpage for subheadings before deciding whether or not to read the entire page. Having subheadings that are eye-catching and relevant will draw in the reader.
Keyword in subheadings. Even better, include your focus keyword in a few of your subheadings as well to boost SEO performance. As a rule, big blocks of text are not good for SEO. We want to maximize your website's readability.
Weave in "calls to action." If you're providing a service, don't just talk about what your brand is offering. Be explicit about how people can take action to access your service ("Buy Now" or "Call Us").
Include internal links. Link one part of your website to another part with a clickable link. This will keep people on your website for longer, providing them with relevant answers to their questions.
Maintain website health. Broken webpages, unoptimized posts, duplicate posts, missing meta-descriptions, and broken links all contribute to poor website health. Be vigilant and meticulous about fine-tuning your website to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
We hope that this blog post has been helpful for you to think about how to improve your own website's SEO. We have more engaging and informative articles about social media strategy and digital marketing, so check out our blog posts here, including this article about Instagram best practices.
Additionally, although there are tons of resources out there pertaining to SEO, we wanted to uplift an episode of a podcast that has been especially informative. The podcast is Her Life By Design by Christina Galbato and the episode is "How To Improve Your SEO To Skyrocket Your Blog Traffic With Jordan Becerra." Jordan Becerra is the founder of Influencer SEO, a consulting agency that specializes in SEO. You can listen to the podcast episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.