Quick SEO Tips for The Busy Marketer
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If you’re an Internet marketer, you might know about search engine optimization and all the benefits it can bring to your company and clients. You might know that 75% of Internet users never scroll past the first page of search results. You might even know that 70% of the links search users click on are organic—not paid.
But did you know that you don’t necessarily need your own SEO team to reap the benefits of this marketing tool? It’s true – you can optimize your own site with hardly any time or money.
Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Well, I promise I’m not selling you a miracle pill or an infomercial product. If you can find a spare half hour of your time every day (easier said than done, I know), you can do enough SEO to see some real results! The best part? You can be a total SEO newbie and still find success with these optimizations hacks:
1. Blog
If you’re blogging for your company and/or your clients, then you’ve already got the ball rolling! Blogging is a great way to optimize your site for a better likelihood of being found on Google. The more blogs you publish, the more pages Google has to index from your site, making it infinitely more probable that you’ll be found. In fact, once you write 21-54 blog posts, blog traffic generation increases by up to 30% (Source).
Regardless of your industry or product, it is important to blog about a multitude of topics. Making sure to cover both current events and evergreen topics ensures that you’ll show up in all kinds of Google searches. Writing about lots of topics also helps you rank for a wide variety of keywords.
2. Do Some Keyword Research
So I threw in the term “keyword” in the last section. If you’re familiar with this concept, good on you. If not, here’s a quick definition: in SEO, a keyword is simply what people are searching for on search engines. Keywords can be as short as “pancakes” or as long as “where to find the best pancakes in Nashville TN” (this latter search is called a longtail keyword). So if you run a pancake restaurant in Nashville, your website needs to be optimized for all kind of keywords about Nashville, breakfast, restaurants, and, of course, pancakes. When it’s optimized properly, you’ll show up.
But what are the best keywords to optimize your website for? Here’s where a little research comes in. But don’t worry – this research isn’t difficult or time consuming. One great way to look for keywords is to visit the site UberSuggest.org. On this site, you can type in basic key words or phrases, and Uber Suggest will find other popular web searches similar to what you’ve entered. An even simpler way to look for good keywords is to make a visit to the source of SEO itself – Google.
You know when you start typing in a search query and Google fills in what it thinks you might be looking for? What it’s doing is simply offering you other popular searches that begin with the letters or words you’ve typed in. Playing around on Google and seeing what search suggestions it offers you is a good, quick way to find potential keywords.
Don’t just try to memorize those keywords though! Create a spreadsheet on which you can post all relevant keywords you find. This way, when you’re writing a blog or creating a new page for your site, you can easily pull short and longtail keywords from this spreadsheet without having to do loads of research every time.
3. Optimize Old Pages
So your website has tons of pages indexed by Google – awesome! But I’ll bet they’re not all optimized properly. Take some time to revisit old pages and blogs and re-optimize them. Try adding in some of the keywords from the spreadsheet you’ve created or rewording page titles so that the most important keyword comes first.
4. Get a Free SEO Extension
To aid you in optimizing older pages, download an SEO Extension to your browser. These extensions will help you to update old and new pages by pointing out aspects of the page you may have forgotten to optimize. For example, my favorite SEO extension SEOquake can give you a diagnosis of your page, helping you to see if your images are missing ALT texts or whether you need to add any headings. It even offers suggestions for how to fix problems it finds and lets you know whether these fixes are quick and easy or may require more time than you have.
5. Network for Backlinks, AKA Inbound Links
If you can network, you can ace this aspect of SEO. When a high-quality website links to your site, Google gives you SEO credit for it (as long as it’s a follow link, that is). In the same way, when your high-quality website provides a follow link to another website, you give them SEO credit. When you ask others for a backlink to your site, you need to be aware of two things. Firstly, you want to make sure your site is featured on only high-quality websites. If it is featured on a spammy site or one with little to no authority, it won’t do you much good. Secondly, you have to be willing to reciprocate the backlink. If someone is willing to scratch your back, you’d better be willing to scratch theirs in return.
Another way to build backlinks is to guest blog. Submit guest articles to popular sites on a regular basis, and make sure to include a link to your site in the article. This way, you’ll drive traffic to your site and hopefully your guest blogging site will give you an inbound link or two.
6. Stay up to date on SEO
Google is constantly tinkering with their search algorithms, which means that SEO is a topic you’re never finished learning about. If you run across an article about SEO or a change to Google’s algorithm while having your morning coffee, take 5 minutes to read it. The more ahead of the curb you are, the less help you’ll need.
So I’m issuing you a challenge – spend 30 minutes a day for the next 30 days working in the 6 areas above. Make sure to track your organic search traffic metrics during this time and even several months afterward and let us know what you find in the comments below!
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Image Credit: freedigitalphotos.net/Stuart Miles Image may be NSFW.
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