If you’ve spent any time at all in online forums where business owners are sharing SEO information and tips, you know that many people say SEO is so hard to do because it’s always changing. This train of thought has been around for just about as long as SEO has been a thing; people have been saying that the concept of SEO is an ever-changing landscape that’s difficult to keep up with.
Even though there’s a widespread belief that SEO is difficult to tackle because it’s always changing, the truth is that the basic fundamentals of SEO remain unchanged. While Google’s algorithm methodology is always getting more advanced, the basic principles have forever remained the same. This means the search engine is always focused on helping those involved in SEO with:
- Getting their sites’ content noticed or crawled by the search engine
- Seeing to it that their content is organized and prioritized correctly
- Making sure their content has a defined purpose or focus with keywords
- Ensuring that their content provides trustworthy information
These are the basic concepts needed to master SEO. However, there’s lots more you can do in terms of optimising all these areas and more. Here are a few more things you can do to help with your SEO efforts.
Clean Up the Structure of Your Site
Your website’s structure should be a key part of your SEO strategy. Google needs to understand the hierarchy and importance of the content on your site. This means you need to structure your site so the search engine knows which are the most important. You can do this by emphasising your most important pages by creating links for them directly on home page. You can also show Google your most important pages by putting links to them on every page like in the navigation bar. Remember that Google works to help users quickly find the content on your site by saving them a few steps.
Make Your Content Shine
One phrase that has always been used in SEO circles is ‘Content is King’. This is because content is what makes the internet what it is. Content is extremely important in helping you build credibility and trust, both with Google and online users. Your content should always be of the highest quality and offer readers the information they’re looking for. Put yourself in the readers’ shoes: You certainly want to consume content that keeps your attention and which gives you the info you need.
Be Keyword Smart
Keywords are used to tell Google what each page is about so it can rank your content for search queries which are relevant to your site. Google frowns upon the overuse of keywords aka keyword stuffing. What it wants from your keywords instead is for your keywords to answer the questions searchers are looking for. Google also wants your keywords to be the actual worlds people use to refer to your topic. So give it some thought and use keywords actual people are using to find what you’ve got to offer.
Build Links
Links have always been one of Google’s key ranking factors. If you have no links or too few of them, your search result will be at the bottom of the pack. When you have links from high authority sites, Google is told that you’re trustworthy. You can build links in a number of ways ranging from guest blogging to submitting your site to directories. Take a look at what marketing guru Neil Patel has to say about building links.
Don’t believe everything you hear about SEO being too complicated to keep up with. Stick to the basics and give Google and your targeted audience what they want. The times are changing but some basic search engine optimization principles will always be around. Finally, make sure you make use of the services offered by the best SEO companies who can help you start up your site.