How to implement SEO on your site?

Implementing SEO on your website is not an easy task. Although search engine optimization is considered one of the most difficult marketing techniques. 

Back in the early web 2.0 days, it was very easy to rank your website on short tail keywords. As time passed it became a daunting task to rank your site on search engines.

Today, there is so much competition. Thousands of websites are optimizing their site for the same keyword and it is getting harder and harder to rank high on short tail keywords.

Many SEO experts now strategies their search engine optimization on long tail keywords.

How to start implementing SEO?

Before you start optimizing your website you need to keep in mind that you are optimizing your website not only for search engines but for your prospective customers. 

This technique will not only provide you better ranking but also a good customer experience. 

Implementing On-Page SEO

On-page SEO refers to the optimization of your internal website structure and usability. If you are trying to build backlinks for your site and you are not focusing on your site content then you won’t be able to get the results you desire.

There is one bad practice of on-page SEO is that marketers try to put a lot of keywords on the page. Remember your website exists for your customers, not for search engines.

• Keyword Tag

In the early days of web 2.0, many websites got high ranking just because of putting many keywords in the keyword meta tag. Now, search engines don’t even bother to go through them they just simply ignore them but it’s still a good practice to use this tag. it is important that you use this tag and put a maximum of 5 keywords not more than 5.

<meta name=”keywords” content=”Ibrahim Manzar, Marketing Blog”/>

• Title Tag

Search Engines need to know your website name and here the title tag comes in. The title tag is used to tell search engines what the page is about. Usually, title tags only have the name of the site but you can put some extra information also. Try not to make it too big just keep it simple and short.

<title>Ibrahim Manzar - Understanding the Online World</title>

• Alt Tag

You might have an experience when a website doesn’t load properly and instead of an image, there is a text which is telling you about the picture itself. You can say alt tags describe the picture. It tells the search engine what actually a picture is about. This helps them to match the keywords in the picture and rank them accordingly.

<img src=”images/onpageseo.jpg alt=”On page SEO”/>

• Meta Description Tag

A meta description is a highly recommended practice because it defines your page to the search engine and helps them to show this information in a snippet form on the search result. Try to write an accurate and informative description in this tag.

<meta name=”description” content=”Providing you the knowledge about right marketing techniques. My blog will help you to better understand your customer which will eventually double your profits.”/>

• Header Tag

Breaking your content into pieces of information is the best practice for on-page SEO. This not only helps your users but also helps search engine to crawl your pages. The most important thing to remember about header tags is to only use one H1 tag on each page because it describes what the whole page is about. Header Tags come in handy when writing blogs. Use H2 for the second heading and if there are subheadings for H2 then use H3 for them. Using Heading Tags correctly is a crucial step in on-page SEO.

• Linking Structure

Enough of the tags now you need to check your linking structure. Your website’s internal linking is the most important and crucial part of your website optimization. Be sure that your internal links are not broken and that you have provided all the page links on your header and footer. Make sure your website linking structure is in order and don’t forget to check broken links.

• Sitemaps

Including sitemaps files in your website is also considered a good practice. A sitemap is a file that contains all the website pages and mostly it is created for search engines so they can crawl it and add essential pages to search results. If you don’t know how to create one, then go to XML-Sitemaps.com and create your site’s sitemap. 

Implementing Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to all the activities and marketing techniques that are done outside of your website.

Off-Site optimization is all about authority building and visibility. 

Optimizing social media accounts and making a presence on a listing like Google My Business listing.

• Link Building

One of the major components of off-page optimization would be to get as many backlinks from high-ranking websites and remove any toxic or spammy links to your website from another site. If your website has links coming from high-ranking sites. You will not be rewarded with higher rankings but also with higher organic traffic.

• Social Media Marketing

Having a presence on social media is a plus point but running constant ads on different platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, e.t.c will give search engines an alarm. Although, search engines consider social media as not an important factor for rewarding higher rankings. But they still rank social profiles on search engine result pages.

• Guest Posting

Guest is another great way of getting quality backlinks.

Writing informational articles on popular sites or paying a newspaper or community platform to write an article for your site is also a great way to build backlinks. You need to remember that Content is king and you should always focus on content rather than shoving keywords and links in the content. 

• Local Listings

Local listings or directory listings will help you in your local SEO. Showing up on Google Maps or Google listings is a great way to get more visibility from local users. Consider it as an opportunity for you to increase your organic traffic and brand awareness.

• Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing refers to marketing your product on SERPs. Researching short tail and long tail keywords and understanding your customer’s intent on search is the skill you need to accomplish great results on SEM. Showing up on results when your customers are on a research journey is the best way you can increase the authority of your website. 

• Google Search Console

Many marketers take for granted the power of search consoles. But it really helps. With the Google search console, you can see many insights about your site, and eventually, you can use that data to optimize your site. You can also put sitemaps links directly in the search console which google will crawl and automatically update. 

How to audit your site?

Measuring the success of your SEO efforts and checking for issues on a routine basis is essentially the job of every marketer. There are many auditing tools that can help you with SEO like Ubersuggest, SEMrush e.t.c. My favorite is SEMrush but you can use whichever tool you think better serves your needs. 

Auditing your site with SEMrush

Auditing your website with SEMrush is a great way to improve your website’s SEO. SEMrush is a powerful tool that can help you identify and fix a variety of SEO issues, from technical problems to content optimization. 

1. Step

Sign up on SEMRush and goto projects, click on create a project, then complete the details.

2. Step

After creating a project click on-site audit on the bottom left. Click on Add new project.

3. Step

Goto SEO dashboard and check all the useful insights there. 

Reviewing Your Results

After all the data and insights are available to you in the dashboard. Now, you need to check all the warnings and notices. You might have to ignore some issues but if you think these issues are solvable you should try and then check the results.

Conclusion

Implementation of SEO can be hard sometimes but it is a crucial part of your online success. If you have done it properly then there is nothing that can stop your site from getting ranked in the top 10 SERPs. Implementing SEO is not as difficult part as you might think it is the most difficult part is keeping your site updated and optimized. Consistency is the key to success.