10 Essential SEO Tips for Long-term Gains

As more people turn to the web to meet all sorts of needs, the need to achieve prominent search rankings has become a necessity for a large number of businesses. It is estimated that more than 90 percent web surfers rely on web search engines to find what they need, among the lot, less than 5 percent browse past the third page. Hence, whenever a prospective customer searches for a product or service offered by your business, it is important to ensure that your website is visible in the first three pages of the search results. That is the reason almost every business is resorting to SEO in order to improve its search placement and connect with prospective customers.

The question, however, is: how to go about leveraging this methodology?

To begin with, it is advisable to seek professional help, as any move outside the quality guidelines laid out by search engines may get your website penalized, or worse, get it completely blacklisted. You can opt for essential SEO services that bundle all the basics of this methodology, and offer a low-cost solution to gain enhanced search rankings. Nonetheless, if you believe you have the capability to execute the fundamentals by yourself, here are a few handy tips.

Also Read: SEO On Page And Off Page Tips

1. Website Analysis: Get Under the Hood

First of all, setup Google Analytics – a free and unarguably the most used website analysis tool. In case you find it a challenge, you can find all the assistance you need in Google’s read on Getting Started with Google Analytics. Once done, conduct a comprehensive analysis of your website and check its architecture, canonicalization, link profile, broken links, and other such elements.

2. Keyword Research: Find Trending Search Terms

The next phase is to discover the most searched terms relevant to your line of business. The research can be performed using Google’s Keyword Planner. You can also use tools such as WordStream and UberSuggest to get useful insights and suggestions. In all cases, it is advisable to target long-tail keywords as they drive more accurate traffic and are also easier to rank compared to short.

3. Content Analysis: Evaluate the ‘Value’ Element

Content quality is one of the primary factors that come together to decide the search placement of a website. In fact, the last couple Google updates have made it all the more important to focus on content quality, as ignoring this aspect may get your website penalized. In addition to ensuring uniqueness and value, you also need to focus on creating content that drives conversions.

4. Meta-Data Update: Optimize for Better Understanding

The meta-data of your website is like a character-sketch for search engines, which enables search crawlers to decide the contents of its landing pages. Make sure all the tags of every page of your website are clearly defined, so that search engines can comprehend what you have to offer. The elements to check include title tags, page descriptions, heading tags, image tags, etc.

5. URL Restructuring: Tell What They Are About

Auto-generated URLs aren’t too well understood by search engines, and thus, are often marked down in search results. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the URLs of all the pages provide a clear overview of what the page contains, through URL canonicalization. It is the process in which the URLs pf a website are modified and standardized in a consistent manner for better clarity.

6. Social Integration: Be Where Your Customer Are

Social is unarguably the next big thing in the realm of digital marketing. It is therefore extremely important – even for B2B entities – to ensure that they have prominent and active presence on all popular social platforms. In fact, setting up your business pages on Facebook and Google+ page is particularly important in order to connect with your customers on an individual level.

7. Blog Integration: Showcase Your Competencies

Maintaining a website blog is one of the most effective ways to establish authority in the virtual space. It is particularly vital as sharing ‘usable’ insights about your offerings on the website’s blog helps improve its search presence. In your posts, you can share any information that addresses any real concern of your target customers and use other channels such as social and microblogging to promote it.

8. Sitemap Creation: Enhance Website Indexing

Sitemap, as the name suggests, is a list of all the pages of a website that are accessible to visitors and web search engines. When a user searches a keyword, the search engine begins the screening process of the possible websites by referring to its master index that contains the sitemaps of all the websites submitted to its directory. In missing, you can create a sitemap using tools such as XML-sitemaps.

9. Activities Scheduling: Ensure Regular Submissions

If your business operates locally, it is important to get your website listed in top local business directories such as Yahoo! Local, Yelp, YellowPages, and the like. The submissions, however, need to go way beyond this requisite. In order to create backlinks, discover some suitable online platforms to submit relevant content, and prepare a submission calendar to ensure consistency.

10. Review and Reform: Assess Your Tactics and Results

Regardless of how adept you get at SEO, there is always a better way, always. Hence, closely monitor all the activities and the changes yielded by them. Based on the findings of the observation, you can modify the activities being employed, your approach, target keywords, or any other aspect of the campaign. In all cases, it is extremely important to measure the ROI yielded by your SEO initiatives.

Conclusion

The virtual revolution has touched almost every aspect of human existence, completely transforming the way we shop. Consequently, all z-gen businesses, especially direct sales entities, need to ensure that their website is not only efficient, but is also equipped with all that is required to rank on the top SERPs of relevant web searches. By employing the essential SEO tactics discussed above, you can sure hope to experience a notable improvement in your website’s traffic and conversion; however, it is important to remember that SEO is a gradual process, and your initiatives may take a while to start producing results.

Also Read: 41 SEO Tips To Get You Most From Search Engines