Six Fundamental Tips For Better SEO in 2018

Better SEO starts with the fundamentals and here are six of them that seldom if ever change that can also have a huge impact on visibility in search.

1.Put Careful Thought Into Choosing Your Keyword For Better SEO

When you sit down to write a post, spend some time researching the keyword phrase that you want to optimize your content for. For instance, if your post is going to be about dog toys, decide what type of toys you want to focus on. Then, use a keyword tool to research the actual phrases that people are typing into a search engine when searching for those types of toys.Google’s Keyword Planner is one of the most effective tools to use for this task. Best of all, it is free. To start using the tool, all that you need to do is set up a free Adwords account.

Within just a few minutes of researching your keyword with this tool, you should be able to quickly see which search phrases get the most traffic. Don’t jump right in and start focusing on those keywords, though. Instead, you still need to do a little bit more research before deciding on a search phrase for your content.

2. Check Out The Competition

Matthew Woodward advises that once you find a couple of search phrases that seem promising, the next step is to research the competition for those keywords.

Open a browser window in incognito mode. The reason for doing this is that it keeps Google from taking your past search history into account when deciding which sites to display for your search.

Next, search for the keyword phrase that you are interested in using. Check out the top 10 results that come back for that phrase. Do the websites that are returned offer high-quality content? Do you think you could do a better job of creating content for that particular keyword?

3. Focus On A Company Blog

Blogging can be a powerful tool for generating leads. In fact, a study done by InsideView found that marketers who took advantage of blogging were able to generate 67% more leads than marketers who chose not to blog. Another study conducted by ThinkCreative showed that businesses that had blogs were able to capture more than 125% lead growth over businesses without blogs. What it really boils down to is that blogging is a great way to generate leads. Focus on consistently creating new content for your blog to start seeing amazing results.

4. Don’t Forget Offsite Optimization For Better SEO

Offsite factors such as the number of sites that are linking to your website can have a major impact on how well your content performs in the search engines. When other sites are willing to link to you, it lets the search engines know that your content is worth reading. This is particularly true if the links coming to your site are from other sites that are well respected in your industry – especially if the text that is used to link to your site is related to your content. The best way to start getting more incoming links is by creating high-quality content that people will actually want to share and link to.

5. Optimize Your Images For Better SEO

The text on your site isn’t the only thing that needs to be optimized. Your images should also be taken into account since they will show up anytime someone searches for images.

One great way to put your images to work for your business is by taking advantage of the Alt tag. Pinterest pulls the description for a pin directly from this tag. By including keywords in the tag, you can be sure that any pins include relevant text.

The title tag is also important. Try hovering over an image on a website. The text that shows up when you hover is pulled directly from the title tag. Make sure that you include your keyword in this tag.

Finally, name your images wisely. Don’t go with a generic name. Instead, name your images in a way that is descriptive and that lets the search engines know what they are. For instance, if you are posting an image of a finished recipe, don’t just title the image “recipe.jpg”. Instead, give it a name like “baked-ziti-pasta.jpg”.

6. Create High-Quality Content

The most essential thing that you can do in terms of SEO is to create great content. Every piece of content that you write should be as valuable as possible for your visitors. The search engines go above and beyond to reward websites that provide excellent content. Additionally, when people are happy with the content that they find on your site, they are likely to return again in the future. This can help you build your business over time.

These simple tips for better SEO should help you start getting more traffic before you know it.