30 Effective and easy SEO tips to improve your online marketing.
SEO can be a great tool in the business world. Even though it can seem quite complicated to the uninitiated, it does not have to be. We have compiled a thorough list of easy SEO tips to assist you in your online marketing.
1. Set up a Google My Business account
First on our list of easy SEO tips, you must set up a Google My Business Account and upload all your details. It is absolutely free and will enable your business to appear in local search results for queries in your area of operation.
2. Create a fast and mobile-friendly website
Developing mobile websites can be very easy with the plugins available for your CMS (such as WordPress). Thus making all your content available to mobile users, can be done quickly and at a low cost. Plugins can also be used to speed up your loading speed. This will help you stand out from your competition in terms of performance.
3. Conduct thorough keyword research in order to identify gaps in the market
If you target the same keywords as your larger competitors, you will not make much progress as they have more online coverage. By using a keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner in order to spot gaps in the market, you can find better suited keywords for your business.
4. Use Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool which provides you with a great deal of information about how your website is performing in Google search, as well as any errors on your website and any issues you should address.
Trying to improve your website without Search Console is pointless. Search Console provides you with keywords that are relevant to your website and information like whether there are problems on your website, whether your website is mobile friendly, and much more. It is a great place to start with improving your website.
5. Thoroughly understand your online audience
Who are your typical online customers? What do they want? How are they spending their time online? What type of content do they prefer?
If you thoroughly understand your clientele, you will know what you need to do to attract their attention. For instance, if they tend to spend a lot of time on Facebook, you should invest your effort in social media.
If you do not understand your audience, you will not be able to make proper use of the online channels that are at your disposal. You will only end up attempting random things which will result in a loss of precious resources.
6. Look how search engines display results in your niche
More often than not, small businesses do not know who or what they are competing with in search engine results.
For example, if your focus keyword is something that has several large international companies ranking on the first page, you should probably lower your expectations. Also if your focus keyword search produces a lot of videos and images then you should consider creating similar content instead of focusing purely on text.
Search engines will also often show local businesses as search results. If this is the case then your efforts need to be shifted to focus on those types of results.
7. Get Screaming Frog to check your site for any possible onsite issues
Check for security issues as well – Sucuri Site Check is absolutely free and while it will not be able to see all possible site issues, it can however catch some of the most widespread ones.
8. Claim your physical address on Google Maps
If it is a local business with offline customers and a physical location, be sure that you claim your physical address on Google Maps.
9. Be genuine
It may seem like a tempting idea, but when you hire someone inexpensive to build links or run your Twitter account, it can – and probably will backfire.
If you do not have a large marketing budget, take one step at a time but do it yourself. Nobody knows your business or your customers better than you do.
10. Beware of agencies that promise too much
Unless you are prepared to buy PPC (Pay Per Click) ads, then there is no way to guarantee a page one listing (even with PPC ads it can be difficult on competitive terms). Even these easy SEO tips aren’t guaranteeing you a page one listing.
If an agency or salesperson makes this promise to you, ignore them. They are lying and will most likely only damage your long-term search visibility.
11. If you do make use of an agency, keep an eye on them
Agencies who make use of the wrong methods can do a lot of damage.
Often by dubious link-building which may bring some short-term results, but it will expose your website to the risk of penalties in the long-term.
12. Keep up to date with industry news
This is one on of the more important among our easy SEO tips – make sure you aren’t breaking any rules. Things can change quickly in SEO world, so things that work for a while, could become against the rules of Google.
As with the bloggers who recently received penalties for reviewing products, Google will seldom spell everything out. They will give advice and some hints, but they will not contact you. You will usually only know that you have done something ‘wrong’ when you log in to Google Search Console and receive a notice similar to this one:
13. Do not rely on Google too much
Google can change the way they display results or the way they rank websites at any time. This could possibly affect your search traffic adversely.
Be sure to use social media, built email lists, etc. in order to attract customers from a wide range of sources – not just from Google.
14. Launch a blog and create content
Content will help you rank for your target terms. However it should not be purely for SEO reasons. Blogs gives you the opportunity to talk about your products and services, as well as the issues that surrounds them.
This will allow you to create the type of content that your customers will appreciate, and it will aid you in building an audience.
15. Blog regularly
Halfway through this list of our easy SEO tips – remember to blog regularly. There is no need to write several articles every day, but regular updates will give your visitors something to read and you will be creating constant fresh content for search engines.
16. Do not focus only on the keyword
Even though you want to target the terms that possible customers are most likely to search for, your content still has to be decent and interesting – after all, people will be reading it.
17. Create evergreen content
This is quality content that will address your customers’ issues and will have a long ‘shelf-life’. Evergreen content has a better chance of achieving search rankings over a long period of time. This one of our easy SEO tips might take some extra effort but it will be worth it.
18. Use a clear URL structure
The topic of the page should be clear by simply looking at the URL.
19. Optimize your site through internal linking
Effective internal linking is all about linking topics to themes in a sensible way, for both readers and search engines.
For instance, if you provide home decorating services, you will have several articles containing that phrase. However, they are not all going to rank for that, so you must select the pages you would like to rank for that term and then point the internal links to those pages.
20. Find terms to target through your site search data
You can find the terms your visitors search for, by looking into your analytics data.
For search, the keywords that people use on your website could be terms that you are not currently targeting through PPC or SEO.
If so, by analyzing website search data you will find more relevant terms to target. It will also provide you with information on the type of language that customers use.
21. Encourage customer reviews
Reviews will not only help to drive conversions – they will help drive your local SEO visibility.
22. Optimize images
Useful and easy SEO tips can be as simple as choosing images that relate to your content (copyright free images can be found on websites like Pixabay). Your image should probably be resized in order for fast loading and convenience. Before uploading the image to your website, provide it with a suitable title/file name. Next you should edit your alt-text with a proper description or if applicable, your focus keyword. Lastly you can add a description and caption. This might not add to the SEO value, but it will add to the appearance and detail of your content.
23. Set up Google Analytics
It is completely free and an essential tool to help you understand traffic sources, customer behaviour, etc.
24. Consider user experience
For one thing, after Mobilegeddon, your mobile ranking will depend on factors related to user experiences.
Site speed is just one contributing factor. Make use of tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to learn more about your website and how you can improve it.
25. Improve your Google My Business profile
After you have added your basic details (type of store, trading hours, directions, etc.), be sure to add extra details like images and regular updates in order to optimize your profile.
26. Notice who is linking to you and learn from it
With the use of tools like Majestic, you can easily view the links you receive. If you are attracting links from relevant websites, note what type of content are attracting the links?
27. Provide every page with a unique title
This is one of our very useful and easy SEO tips – Google allows you a limit of 55 characters to make the topic of your page clear in the search results. Make sure this title is unique and clear.
28. PPC is worth it
If it is possible with your budget, PPC ads can increase the traffic to your website. It can also provide you with information on your SEO efforts. You will be able to see which keywords are most effective.
29. Create your own product page copy
If you are selling products that other websites will also have, adding unique and high quality descriptions of your products, can help your website to stand out.
They are also better for conversions since the manufacturer descriptions probably have not been tested for effectiveness, you can try variations and see what works best for your website.
30. Be patient for results
And finally the last of our easy SEO tips – Rome was not built in a day. Keep in mind that good SEO takes time and effort.