Essential Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Practices Every Website Owner Should Know

Having a website isn’t enough to attract traffic. And sometimes, it can be challenging to identify the reasons behind not getting the traffic you want. For that reason, you might think about improving your SEO strategy. You have the option to hire an in-house SEO specialist, engage with a marketing agency, or hire a freelance SEO professional. Or you can explore the possibility of handling it independently.

What is SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) involves a variety of practices and techniques aimed at improving a website’s visibility, position and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). By naturally increasing site traffic, SEO employs diverse approaches customized to various aspects of online presence. When seeking a business, service, or product, online consumers typically favor one of the top 10 results displayed by a search engine.

Wondering where to start?

Familiarizing yourself with some of the key essential SEO practices and techniques can boost your website traffic. This knowledge empowers you to address certain issues independently and delegate the remaining tasks to a specialist.

On-page SEO (also called on-site SEO) refers to the optimization strategies and practices implemented directly on a website’s individual pages to improve its search engine position and visibility. This includes optimizing the website content, title and meta tags, headings, URLs, and internal linking structure, among other factors, to make the page more relevant and authoritative for specific keywords or topics.

On-Page SEO focuses on enhancing the user experience and ensuring that search engines can effectively crawl and index the page’s content.

What to do?

• Keyword Research: Identifying relevant keywords and phrases that potential customers use to search for your products or services.
• Content Optimization: Creating high-quality, valuable content that incorporates targeted keywords naturally.
• Meta Tags: Optimizing meta titles and descriptions to be relevant, engaging, and keyword-rich.
  Headings and Subheadings: Using H1, H2, and other heading tags to structure content and include keywords.
• URL Structure: Creating clean, descriptive URLs with keywords.
• Internal Linking: Linking to other relevant pages within your website to improve navigation and SEO.

Off-page SEO (also called off-site SEO) refers to optimization efforts undertaken outside of a website’s individual pages to improve its search engine position and visibility. Unlike On-Page SEO, which focuses on optimizing content and elements directly on the website, Off-Page SEO is a strategy for bringing attention and authority to your website which involves activities conducted off-site, such as building backlinks, social media engagement, and online reputation management.

These efforts aim to increase the website’s authority, trustworthiness, and relevance in the eyes of search engines, ultimately leading to higher rankings in search results.

What to do?

• Backlink Building: Acquiring high-quality backlinks from reputable websites to improve authority and rankings.
• Social Media Engagement: Using social media platforms to drive traffic to your website and enhance brand visibility.
• Guest Blogging: Writing articles for other websites to gain exposure and backlinks.
• Influencer Outreach: Collaborating with influencers to promote your content and gain backlinks.

Technical SEO is the process optimizing the technical aspects of a website to improve its search engine visibility and performance. This includes optimizing website structure, code, and server configurations to ensure that search engines can crawl, index, and understand the website’s content efficiently.

Technical SEO focuses on factors such as site page speed, mobile-friendliness, crawlability, XML sitemaps, schema and structured data. By addressing technical issues and implementing best practices, Technical SEO helps websites achieve higher search engine rankings and provide a better user experience for visitors.

What to do?

• Site Speed Optimization: Improving page load times for better user experience and search engine ranking.
• Mobile-Friendliness: Ensuring your website is responsive and performs well on mobile devices.
• XML Sitemap: Creating and submitting an XML sitemap to search engines to help them crawl and index your site.
• Robots.txt: Using the robots.txt file to control which pages search engines can crawl.
• Structured Data Markup: Implementing schema markup to help search engines understand your content and improve rich snippets.

Local SEO becomes crucial when you have a brick-and-mortar store. While traditional SEO caters to a global or national audience, local SEO specifically targets regional search outcomes. It aims to increase a business’s visibility for local searches, such as “near me” queries, by optimizing its online presence for specific geographic locations. Local SEO involves various strategies, including optimizing Google My Business listings, local citation building, managing online reviews, ensuring NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) consistency, and targeting location-specific keywords.

The goal of local SEO is to help businesses attract more local customers, drive foot traffic to physical locations, and increase online visibility within their target local area.

What to do?

• Google My Business: Creating and optimizing your Google My Business profile for better visibility in local searches.
• Local Citations: Ensuring your business information is consistent across online directories and local listings.
• Local Reviews: Encouraging satisfied customers to leave positive reviews on platforms like Google and Yelp.
• Local Keywords: Using keywords that include local terms and geographic locations.

• Regular Content Updates: Keep your website fresh with new, relevant content to engage users and attract search engine crawlers.
• Optimize for Voice Search: With the rise of voice assistants, optimize your content for natural language queries and long-tail keywords.
• Images: Optimize images with descriptive filenames and alt text for better visibility in image searches.
• Stay Updated with Algorithm Changes: Keep abreast of search engine algorithm updates and adapt your strategy accordingly to maintain or improve rankings.
• Improve User Experience (UX): Prioritize user experience by ensuring easy navigation, clear CTAs, and fast-loading pages to reduce bounce rates.
• Track and Analyze Results: Use analytics tools to monitor SEO performance, identify areas for improvement, and track the impact of your efforts over time.

By combining these practices, you can create a comprehensive SEO strategy that increase your website traffic, improves search result visibility, attracts more visitors, and drives business growth.