The landscape of digital marketing is shifting constantly. But whilst the overseers at Google tinker with algorithms and the nuts and bolts of the internet, there are some very essential basics of SEO that shouldn’t be overlooked in the turmoil of this shifting landscape. Here’s a brief overview about some of the crucial but simple elements of SEO.
Natural & Informative Content
The era of thin content is long gone, so get writing. Content needs to be what comes naturally to a good, well-informed site. Robust information needs to be on every page to keep your audience’s attention. Ultimately, leave the user satisfied – that means no duplicate content, say goodbye to copy and paste jobs, and au revoir to one-sentence wonders.
Blogs are a great way to deliver useful, informative content to users regularly, reinforcing your sites quality and strength as a helpful fountain of knowledge. Why not break down and review your products or services, provide top tips, or even make recommendations for your audience based on your expertise? All of this will contribute to search engines recognizing the strength and trustworthiness of your site.
Enticing Titles and Descriptions
Your website’s pages need to be correctly labeled, else they’ll get lost in the plethora of indexed pages out there. The title of a page is the heading that’s underlined in the search results – the label that captures you, causing you to click through to the page. For it to work, you have just a few seconds to convince the user your page is exactly what they’re after. The image below highlights this.
You need a clear, concise and convincing title that underlines the purpose of the page in just a few words. It’s not just for the user’s benefit either; search engines like Google will acknowledge the fact that your titles are relevant and tidy.
Next is the description. These two or three sentences need to hit home the essence of your webpage. Acting as your sales copy, the description should summarise what the user will find on the page and why it’s useful to them. For example they may be able to book a room from this particular page, so that would be a useful piece of information to include to seal the deal.
Linking
There were plenty of little tactics used by websites several years ago that were supposedly helping them in Google’s search results. But times have changed. Spamming your page with excessive links to every nameable page won’t help anymore. Google will unleash its packs of penguins, pandas and hummingbirds, and penalize your website in its search results for ‘cheating’. By all means keep building any natural, quality links from other sites, but forget any paid or spammy links. They’ll do more harm than good.
Links need to be natural. Help the user navigate round your site as they look for the content they require. Do they need the contact page? Link them there. Do they require the bookings page? Link them there. When you’ve got the user at the core of your motives you’re site will naturally become useful, and Google will reward you for this.
Whilst the tricks of the SEO trade are vast and extend far beyond these few practices, these basics should form the backbone and foundations of your SEO plan. Of course, it’s always best to bring the professionals in so don’t fret as Upperdog can put together a comprehensive and all-encompassing digital marketing and SEO strategy for your business’s website. Contact us today!