SEO is a dynamic and ever-changing landscape that has most of us scratching our heads as to what works. One day or week is not enough to fully understand even the basics. So many of the people I work with are so confused as to what they should be doing that they end up doing absolutely nothing at all!
Don’t frown yet because there’s always a place to start. We can teach you some basic SEO strategies that are easy to implement that will stand the test of time. Don’t overthink as to which one generates the most traffic the most. For now, focus on learning the basics, because you don’t need to be an SEO expert to use them.
Basic SEO Strategies You Can Learn Starting Today!
1. Start by creating great content for your audience
Aim to become a resource for your audience. Learn which topic interests them the most. What are the usual questions they ask about the topic? After having an idea, it’s time to write a post about it, and then pull them together on a resource page. If you want to provide one place for your followers to access information, that’s the way to do it.
2. Decrease your bounce rate
Don’t know what your rate is? Check out your Google analytics and see what your bounce rate is. It’s the number of people who leave your site after looking at only one page.
The way to decrease your bounce rate is assuring to make a great first impression and that your content matches the article title. The second tip is to add links to the rest of the articles that may be of interest to someone reading your content.
Another SEO strategy is to have the most important posts listed on the sidebar of your site. I love the WordPress popular posts widget because you can show both your in-demand posts and current posts on a simple widget. It makes a quick way for someone to scan the content and see what else may interest them.
3. Share-ability
Get your content shared on Social Media. Make it easy for people to share your content on Social media, my favorite plugin for this is the WordPress Shareaholic plugin. I also use these buttons to share my content as soon as I publish it, making it super easy and a more effective way to share my content than using Hootsuite.
Additional tips to get your content shared are:
- Have a compelling headline
- Position the image at the top of your post and include words in your image
- Add a call to action to ask people to share your content
When adding images to your content, be sure the images are tagged and files are named using the keywords from your content.
4. Email list – Check this SEO Strategy!
One of the SEO strategies that is usually overlooked is the use of your email list to drive website traffic. Take this as an opportunity to share your content with the people on the email list. Make this a regular habit, and they will appreciate being kept up to date with your new content.
5. Create External content
I love to create short videos and slideshare presentations and add them to posts. Doing this shows that you have more authority on the topic and improves your content and adds to the share-ability.
When uploading videos and slideshare presentations you’ll want to be sure to add the keyword to your title, tags and in the description.
6. Link Relevant Articles
I can’t say this enough: make sure you are linking other content to your post and only when it makes sense. It adds more authority when you do this SEO Strategy. Google will know that those pages are useful because people link to them.
I love creating resource pages for this very purpose.
7. Get other people to link to your content
There is a lot of controversy on external linking, and a lot of people say this strategy is dead. But when done the right way, this strategy still works to get your content out in front of a bigger audience.
Purchasing links back to your site is a big no when it comes to SEO. To improve the domain authority and organic traffic, you should learn the guest blogging SEO strategies. When you do this accurately, sites will link back to your well-optimized content.
Think of this more as a strategy to drive traffic instead of link building. You want to get your content shared by others.
SEO Strategies Bonus Tip: On-Page SEO
Are you doing on-page SEO on your posts? To help you get started, here is a quick checklist to get you started.
Install WordPress SEO by Yoast Plugin – this makes on-page SEO super easy!
Then write your post and start working on your on-page SEO. Your goal is to get a green button to show up for SEO.
Upload the image(s) and add the keyword to the title and in the description. Then add your keywords to the following places on your post or page:
- Title
- Permalink
- The Focus Keyword
- The SEO Title
- The Meta description. I want you to think of your meta description as your advertisement for your post. You want to get your readers interested in reading your content.
Now check the SEO button and see what color it is. If it isn’t green then you’ll want to go into your article content and start adding in your keyword. Make sure you do not stuff your keywords into your content.
I always do this last and am very conservative here. Try putting it into a few key places first like the first and last paragraphs. Check then add it into a subtitle on your page.
Sometimes it is just impossible to get to the green and that is okay. Just doing some on-page SEO is better than none at all!
