2020 was a year we all want to leave behind. But it was a huge year for the ever changing world of SEO. The last 12 months may not have been how anyone planned, but with our first blog post of the year, we can provide you with tips, tricks and steps you can take to make sure 2021 is your year with SEO.
Start by setting your SEO goals
Delving into the world of SEO can seem vast and intimidating but with a clear step by step plan laid out with your goals included can make it seem less daunting.
The goals you lay out will highly depend on the nature of your business and how your business generates revenue. For example, if your company gains its revenue through online ads already, you may want to focus on organic traffic generation and content marketing. SEO helps to boost brand awareness which drives more traffic organically to your website.
Create a keywords list
Starting a campaign and expecting to get the most out of it without a list of keywords won’t help you much. Search engines revolve around users entering keywords into the search in order to find what they are looking for. So, to be able to increase visibility to your site by using keywords, you will need to first start with some keyword research. This can be done manually through Google suggest, or you can find a keyword research tool. Here at Colewood, we especially like to use SEMrush’s keyword magic tool. You are looking for two things in particular. Are the keywords highly competitive or are they reasonably low in conversion? And the other, are the keywords high or low conversion rates? These factors will help you choose the right keywords to track for your site and to get ranking for.
Optimise your website
Creating a beautiful looking website and writing fantastic content is only half of the work if you want your site to be successful. Optimising your website is key in order to make sure you are doing everything you possibly can to portray and present a successful and efficient website. One of the best ways to see where you sit, is to conduct a site audit. This will show you exactly what you are doing right and exactly what you are doing wrong or need to improve on. Ways to optimise your website can include;
- Internal links
- Meta data (descriptions and title tags)
- High-quality content
- The use of keywords
- Reviewing and disavowing any toxic backlinks
Build high quality links
Now your site is looking and performing well, it is time to make sure it is getting seen. Waiting for people to find your site through searching in a search engine can take time, so to ensure people can find you quickly and efficiently, you will need to build high quality backlinks.
But what is a backlink? These are all the links that are directed back to your website from another. This is called referral traffic. Users that have come from another site, have seen your link, and clicked through to your site. Backlinks can also be responsible for increasing your website’s DA and finding new audiences.
Some links that are pointing to your site that you may not know you already have, can be harmful to your site. Common examples include link networks and spam sites. These are toxic backlinks. So when you are putting together your link building strategy, it is important to run a backlink audit. This will give you an idea of which links Google thinks are toxic and damaging to your site, and which are good. You can disavow any toxic links as domains or singular pages to ensure they do not damage your site any further.
So, there we have it. A few tips and tricks to get you started. To start your 2021 with the best possible SEO contact our team at Colewood today.
