8 Steps to Successful Search Engine Optimization or SEO

"Increasing graph above the abbreviation SEO meaning Search Engine Optimization"

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Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is an important aspect to consider when creating or improving any website. Whether it’s a personal blog or an online store, your goal is to bring more views to your page. If your web page shows up on the third or the second or even the bottom of the first page of results when searched on google, you are severely limiting your audience. This is where good SEO practices come in. while there are many different important aspects to SEO, each with many facets to consider, here are 8 important factors for successful SEO:

Keyword Research

Keyword research is important in order to bring more traffic to your website. You need to be able to identify what terms people will be searching when they want to find your information. You want a mix of both head terms (generic) and long-tail (specific terms for your topic) included.

Competitive Analysis

Want to know how to best end up near the top of search results? Find your competitors that produce similar information as you but end up higher in the search results. Try to find what SEO features they use and copy and improve on what they do.

Website Optimization

Help search engines find what your website is all about. Make it easy for search engines to correctly index your website to end up higher in the results and bring traffic in that is looking for your information.

Address Domain Authority

Make sure you start off with a strong domain name that relates well to your information that you provide. Along with that, try to get as many other websites and blog posts to link back to your website as possible.

Content Strategy

Make sure you are actually providing valuable information that will make viewers want to stay on your website. This is one of the more important strategies. Consistently create high quality content on your website. Quality is much more important than quantity.

Social Media Strategy

Social signals associated with your website are important as well. The more your content is talked about through social media, the higher the strength of your content is presumed.

Image SEO

Alt tags and title tags also help your web page’s optimization. Alt tags provide information about what is in your pictures to help those who can’t actually see them. This strengthens the message to spiders and improves your web page’s accessibility. Title tags are also important for people viewing your website. It provides helpful information to you when you hover over something. One great example is explaining what will happen when you hover over a button on your page.

Measure, Report, Improve

SEO isn’t something you only do once. It is a constant process of finding what works and what doesn’t. Not only will trial and error be a part of this process, staying on top of changes made by search engines will help you constantly adapt to make your website look the best to them.

Hopefully this information was helpful in your website optimization! If you want to see another students ideas on important steps in SEO, be sure to check out Heather McCormac’s post here.