When you’re running a small business, every little bit counts. If you can manage to improve traffic to your website by even 10%, that can mean a significant increase in the number of customers for your business. But in order to get those 10% more potential customers to come to your website and read your content, you have to have an SEO strategy.
SEO or search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website for search engines like Google and Bing. What exactly do these search engines look for in websites? What causes a website to show up first in a list of searches? And is there anything you can do to make your website more popular and get more hits? Fortunately, there are many things that will help you to achieve this aim.
Keyword-Stuffing
In this day and age, keywords have got a bad rap. This is because initially, when people realized that search engines looked for popular keywords, they started filling up their web content with them. This is called “keyword-stuffing.” And, as the term itself might suggest, it’s not a good idea.
Search engines soon wised up to the fact that people were stuffing their content with keywords to show up at the top of the search results. And they started penalizing these websites instead.
Using Keywords Judiciously
Does this mean that you shouldn’t use keywords at all in your content? No, you can still use keywords but don’t overuse them. You can mention the keyword about once every 100 words or so. This is not a hard-and-fast rule. If the content seems to flow when you mention the keyword once every 50 words, that’s also great.
Keyword Variety
Often, when you keep repeating the same word, the writing becomes monotonous. Most writing manuals will tell you to use different words that mean the same thing instead.
You can do the same with keywords. Figure out the most popular keywords given the topic at hand and use them all in your writing. This will also lead to your showing up in a number of different searches.
Subdividing Your Writing
Using keywords and introducing keyword variety in your writing will lead to more traffic to your website. But once you’ve got these viewers to come to you, you still have to entice them to stay. And this means that the writing on your website has to appeal to your audience.
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- Brevity: In order to do this, you should try to keep your writing brief and to-the-point. Not a lot of people browsing the internet have the time to read long pieces of writing.
- Subheadings: In fact, even when people read something short, they generally glance down at the subheadings first. So make sure that you break your writing up into short paragraphs with subheadings.
- Bullet Points and Lists: You can also write in lists and bullet points (the lists are often referred to as listicles!) This way, if the reader is already familiar with some of the points mentioned in your subheadings or list headings, they can skip over them and read the rest. This makes things more convenient for the reader. And everyone appreciates convenience.
Add Value to Your Customer’s Life
Remember that the main thing that people are looking for on the internet is more information about whatever they’re searching for. So if you can actually tell them something useful that pertains to their lives, they’ll appreciate it.
It can be anything from “how to make a smoothie” to “how to enjoy your life and your job.” Eventually, SEO is just about providing value to your reader. Given them something they can take away and use in their lives.
To learn more about how to improve your marketing strategies, give us a call at 661-702-1310!
