Improve Your Website’s Visibility through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

 

Every website owner wants to rank and be on the first page of search engines. Other gurus might tell you ways to start getting there. But for me, the most effective way to improve your website’s visibility is through SEO. With SEO, you are making your website more attractive to search engine ranking, drive more traffic, and make money. 

There are various techniques for building your SEO when it comes to page ranking. Most rely on a combination of site architecture, site speed, content, and links. So before you start writing articles for your website, you need to understand and learn first how SEO works. In this article, I will walk you through the basics. I will also provide you with a checklist of things you should do as well as links that can help you get started. So keep on reading. 

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search engine optimization. In a nutshell, it is a process of improving website visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. On the other hand, it is also a type of digital marketing approach. Over the past years, it has evolved from a technical practice to a strategic and commercial one. Through SEO, you are marketing your website through the use of online, social, and other channels to attract more viewers and drive more traffic to your websites as well as increase your sales in the long run. 

Why Does SEO Matter?

One of the most common mistakes that even seasoned marketers do is not thinking or considering SEO when they are building their sites. They do not realize how important SEO is in digital marketing. As a marketer myself, I paid more attention to SEO. When people need information, they search it online via search engines. Thus, your website should really stand out. 

Based on my experience, the higher my website ranks in the search engine results, the more credible it becomes to viewers. They are more likely to visit websites that are on the first page on Google, for example, than being on the succeeding pages. 

Aside from improving your website visibility, here are my top 5 reasons why SEO still matters in 2021. 

1. Reach business’ target market more effectively
2. Drive more traffic
3. Higher Engagement
4. Increase sales
5. Cost-effective and Long-term digital marketing strategy

Reach Business’ Target Market More Effectively

SEO helps you reach the target market more effectively mainly because you can use both related or long-tail keywords and integrate them onto your page. You can also reach various demographics because they are already looking for specific products and services. Here, SEO works as a form of inbound marketing rather than annoying ads that keep on appearing during online activity. 

Drive More Traffic

SEO is a big deal for marketers who understand it. Simply because SEO can drive 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media. It can get people to visit your website and give them the content they need. So, the better your SEO ranking is, the more traffic you can get. Hopefully, you can convert them into leads and customers.

Higher Engagement

SEO plays a key role in getting higher engagements because it allows you to reach a highly targeted audience. Without it, you will be stuck with low organic rankings and engagement. By improving your internal linking structure and reducing your load page time, you can also achieve higher engagement. 

Increase Sales

SEO strategy is an effective way to increase your sales.  The more people find your site,  the more likely they will click and buy from you. Google and other search engines are the most trusted places to do that. Also, you can improve your sales because you are providing relevant content to your audience which gives you more opportunities to convert leads into customers. 

Cost-Effective and Long-Term Digital Marketing Strategy

SEO is cost-effective simply because marketing is being done online. In digital marketing, you don’t need to pay more money to reach your audience because they are the ones who will find you to answer their needs and not the other way around. That is why about 64% of marketers are actively investing their time in SEO. They need to put a solid SEO marketing strategy in place so that your website gets noticed by people. 

On-Page SEO vs Off-Page SEO: What’s the Difference?

On-Page SEO refers to the search engine optimization techniques that are done on every single page of a website to get that page rank higher in organic search engines results, for example on Google. These strategies may include meta tag title, headlines, meta descriptions, unique and relevant content, internal and external links, as well as site architecture. You use On-Page SEO to make sure that your content gets a higher visibility rate and that your website is as user-friendly as possible. There are two types of SEO methods: On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. Both are equally important in notifying search engines as well as your target audience that you have an existing website. You should use these two together in order to improve your search engine ranking. 

Off-Page SEO, on the other hand, refers to the process that helps search engines find the pages that most often appear in search queries. In other words, this method happens out of the search engines’ eyes. To help promote your page, you can use secrets, tips, and tricks, as well as other techniques to attract search engines to your website to increase your domain’s credibility and authority. Usually, it is done outside of the search engine indexing process and on other resources like videos, whitepapers, paid advertisements, and social media. In many instances, you will encounter resistance and even hostility by Google when you request to use Off-Page SEO. That is why Off-Page SEO takes advantage of creating content and earning backlinks from other websites most of the time. 

Recommended SEO Plugins for WordPress-Based Website

WordPress offers various plugins for content editing, publishing, and even SEO WordPress theme. However, while these plugins are helpful, the results have been lackluster and not that powerful to help increase the website’s ranking on search engines. To solve this problem and keep up with the competition in the SEO space, WordPress site owners use other SEO plugins instead. 

If you are a newbie or just looking for a better alternative for the one you are currently using, here is the list of the best SEO plugins for WordPress-based websites that I highly recommend. 

Rank Math

This SEO plugin is getting a lot of attention from website developers and there is a good reason for it. Rank Math is the easiest and most effective way to optimize your WordPress website for search. Here, you just need to input your keywords and work on your meta title tag SEO, meta description, and permalink to optimize your content. You can use its built-in suggestions based on the widely accepted best SEO practices to get a perfect score of 100. It works for all popular search engines including Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. 

Rank Math has a free version. But if you want to unlock more features, you can upgrade your plan. You can choose between the two pricing plans: Pro ($59) and Business ($199). 

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a WordPress SEO plugin that offers a full spectrum of SEO settings since 2008. It automatically optimizes your website through “SEO friendly” techniques. It allows you to make several SEO tweaks that are powered by the WordPress core such as adding metadata tags and ensuring that your WordPress theme is properly optimized for SEO. 

What’s good about this plugin is that it is completely FREE! So can enjoy and use various features to help your website rank for FREE. But if you want to avail of its premium plan that costs 89 EUR, you can do so. With a premium plan, you can unlock additional features, enjoy 24/7 customer support, and access to Yoast SEO academy courses. 

SEOPress

SEOPress is also a free and easy-to-use WordPress SEO plugin that helps you improve your organic traffic and get high rankings in the search engines by providing XML sitemaps of your posts and pages. It allows you to manage your meta titles, meta description, meta tag, and meta robots (such as noindex, nofollow, noodp, and more) for every post and custom post type. It offers features like breadcrumbs, redirections, schemas, sitemaps, and a broken link checker. 

With SEOPress, you can access the basic tools you need all you want because it is forever FREE. But if you want to unlock more features, you can upgrade your plan and avail of their Pro plan for only $39. 

Squirrly SEO

Squirrly SEO is a SaaS + SEO plugin for WordPress that is a one-of-a-kind, on-demand, as well as offers a high-quality and organic search marketing platform. It cuts out the middleman and delivers SEO services to small businesses so they can rank higher on search engines results for their targeted keywords. This tool is intuitive and easy-to-use that you can install to your website if you want to improve your website visibility.  Aside from this, it has a built-in virtual assistant that would be your writing guidance as you explore the world of SEO. Once your article is 100% optimized, you will receive a green light notifying you that your article is ready for publishing. 

Squirrly SEO offers free plans. But if you want to upgrade your subscription, you can choose among the three plans they offer namely: PRO Plan, Business Plan, and Agency Plan. 

Tips on How to Improve Your Website’s Ranking

SEO is used so that a website can rank high on search engine results. A page is ranked higher on Google for a number of reasons. For example, blog owners are putting numerous inbound links (links from other websites) which help their page rise in the search result rankings. Others rank well because they use social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Pinterest to reach more audiences. And for some, they produce good content that people like to share. 

For my websites, I use the following to improve my SEO rankings. 

• Optimize your site speed
• Optimize your On-Page SEO
• Write engaging and relevant content that is SEO optimized and plagiarism free
• Include internal links
• Build backlinks
• Repeat

Optimize Your Site Speed

Page loading speed matters. It is now an important factor for SEO. In fact, page Google ranks your website based on its page loading time. You need to have a loading page time of not more than two seconds. But what affects your loading speed? The main culprit is the images. When you use larger files images, it slows down your website. That is why, whenever possible, use JPEG files. This is one of the smallest file sizes and loads very fast. GIF and PNG are larger files that will affect your loading page. If you need to put banners, I suggest that you use a maximum width of 1920. For product images, use 900px x 900px size. It is also good to use Photoshop’s “Save for Web” method to keep file sizes to the minimum for fast loading. Or you can use TinyPNG to further reduce file sizes. 

Make sure that your images are mobile-friendly and responsive. Get your developer to create a site-wide HTML/CSS code to make your images responsive. Or you can use the Just Responsive Images plugin and embed other elements responsibly by using Embed Responsively especially for videos from Youtube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion as well as Google Maps, Getty Images, Twitter, Soundcloud, and many more.  

Another tip on optimizing your page speed is by reducing redirects because it causes a longer loading period. Be sure not to direct any links to HTTP once you have redirected your site to HTTPS. Always fix broken links as well. 

And lastly, you need to use reliable, stable, and fast-loading WordPress Hosting. I suggest you use WP Hosting like Exabytes, SiteGround, and WP Rocket.  

Optimize Your On-Page SEO

Optimizing your On-Page SEO is also a key to increasing your website visibility. So better to pay attention to your page titles, header tags, and keywords used in your page because these are the factors that affect search results rankings. 

Make sure to use the right, important, and powerful keywords. You need to make sure also that your product page is ranking for the product keyword or keyword phrase instead of the home page. But do not overuse product keywords on your home page. Keywords allow search engines to easily find your website and index it. These should appear in your product page title, header tags, and product description. 

Also, it is better to use long-tail keywords for your headings such as “How-to” strategies, benefits, tips, and other keywords that people use when they search for information. I suggest that you take advantage of suggested keywords by Google SEO keyword generator, People also ask, and related searches. For the tools, I recommend that you use Google Keyword Planner, Keywords Everywhere, Ahrefs, and Semrush for your keyword research. I suggest also that you make use of the Google Search Console to improve your search ranking in SERPs. 

Another useful method of On-Page SEO optimization is through optimizing your meta description. A meta description is a short preview of the webpage when someone searches for something in Google. Usually, about 155 characters appear in the search results. Google designed this feature to help searchers find information that is really useful to them. Providing relevant excerpts can get the audience clicked on your website because it helps them decide what website to visit. I recommend that you write a highly converting meta description to attract more clicks. Write also interesting titles. The more interesting these are, the more enticing your website is.

Write Engaging and Relevant Content that is SEO-Optimized and Plagiarism-Free

Content is king. So if you want to improve your site’s ranking, the key is to publish engaging and relevant content that is SEO optimized and plagiarism-free. People only read and share a blog if they find it useful, appealing, and original. Also, you need to do it frequently. Updating your website regularly can boost your website’s visibility. 

Include Internal Links

Internal links play an essential part in SEO marketing. It is also an effective strategy in helping your website rank and getting more traffic. When you do internal linking, you can use your homepage links, blog posts, and other important pages. Just use the anchor text and put the links when you are doing link building on your blog. 

Also, by including internal links, you are helping the people searching online to find more information about the things they are looking for. However, as much as links are good for SEO, do not put too many links. Google may penalize your website if it has too many links. So limit your links to 100 per page as this is also the indicated number of links Google can crawl.  

Build Backlinks

Backlinks are inbound or one-way links from another website to yours. It is useful for SEO because your site is getting a “vote of confidence” from another. Without them, your website would not get the traffic you need to reach your business goals. The more backlinks your site has, the more Google will trust and rank your website. 

For building backlinks, I suggest that you find websites or pages that are relevant to your site more than just powerful irrelevant websites. Spread out also your backlink profile and have some powerful irrelevant backlinks. Based on my experience, guest posting and influencer marketing are useful methods of driving traffic to my websites and reaching new customers. 

In a guest posting, you offer a high-quality post to someone else’s site in exchange for backlinks. Site owners get more content (from you) which attributes to more keywords indexed.  Sometimes, you get a backlink for free or you need to pay them. Usually, free backlinks have very low traffic. But this can improve if they consistently build their websites. 

For influencers marketing, on the other hand, their traffic is high converting. In fact, good-quality blogs can help you rank up the search engines very quickly. Usually, you need to pay them but some accept free products instead of money. I advise that you negotiate with them. If possible, ask them also to advertise your products both on their social media pages such as Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube aside from their blog. 

Repeat

The last thing you need to do is to REPEAT the process every single time after following all the tips I mentioned above. Be consistent in applying these things so that your website can maintain its ranking and visibility. It is also important to repeat this process to keep up with competitors. 

Final Thought

When it comes to boosting a website’s traffic and improving website ranking, there is no faster way to get more people to visit through search engine optimization (SEO). It is an essential part of the equation in building your website and growing your business. Usually, marketers use this in their marketing plan to attract more people to buy their products and services. It is also used in expanding a brand’s presence and in converting leads into sales.

Although there is no “one fits all” approach, your site may not be doing well if you have not implemented the necessary strategies to rank and drive more traffic to your website. That is why it is better to employ some techniques I mentioned and suggested above.