What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the practice of getting traffic from search engines to increase the number of visitors to your website.
There are two types of SEO: On-site and Off-site.
- On-site SEO refers to optimizing your own website. You can optimize your content, keywords, titles, meta descriptions, images, etc.
- Off-site SEO refers to increasing the amount of links pointing back to your website. These links are known as backlinks.
Here’s how it works: When people perform searches online, they type in keywords related to what they want to find. If your website shows up in the top results, you’re doing well.
What are the best ways to improve your SEO?
You can get these results by using SEO techniques that are proven, easy and improve your views:
- Use appropriate keywords in your title
The title tag is what appears in the browser tab when someone clicks on your website link. Make sure that the words you use in the title are relevant to the content on your page so that it also generates the proper title tag. If you have a blog post about “How to Grow Lemons”, make sure your title for that post contains the word “Lemons” somewhere in it. You’ll want to ensure the title accurately describes what’s in your post so the right people see it when searching. - Include keyword-rich URL’s
When people visit your site they want to know what it is about right away. A good way to do this is to create unique URL’s for each page on your website. When someone visits your website they should be able to find exactly what they were looking for without having to click around. - Optimize images
Images are great for SEO because they help users navigate your site easily. However, if you don’t optimize them properly, they won’t rank well. You need to ensure that your images have alt tags. You’ll want to make sure these alt tags are optimized for web browsers, and that they are not blocked by ad blockers. It also helps to save your images with proper names prior to uploading them onto your website. These efforts are small but adding them to your marketing practice makes such a difference overall. - Create internal links
Internal linking helps Google understand how related pages are to each other. By doing this, you increase the likelihood that your website will show up in searches. Internal linking is done using anchor text. Anchor text are the actual words that appear in the hyperlink. For example: please see all that Apictiv has to offer, on our services page. We could have also simply linked with the word ‘here’. This helps more easily navigate visitors of your site to the pages they’ll naturally want to go and can save them time and effort. That’s a win for everyone! - Add social sharing buttons
Social sharing buttons allow visitors to share your content across various platforms. These buttons include Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Whenever others share your content, more people get a chance to see it – some of these new viewers may become great connections for you that you wouldn’t have otherwise been able to connect with. You’ll want to add these social buttons to your website. - Link out to authoritative websites
If you have a website about gardening, make sure that you link out to other sites that cover similar topics. This shows Google that your content is useful and trustworthy.- However, do this sparingly. Too many external links away from your page can have a negative effect on how Google trusts your site. The general rule of thumb is usually 300 or more words per external link. This shows you have relevant information, plus helps add additional keywords.
- Write original content
Your audience wants quality content. Google wants to see that you are providing valuable information to your readers. To do this, write original content that isn’t just copied from other websites. Original content includes things like videos, infographics, blogs and podcasts.