Whether you’re looking to boost your online presence, build a website, or increase your site traffic over time, one thing you’re bound to hear is… improve your SEO! But what does that mean, and how do you do it? 

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the practice of improving your website’s visibility and ranking on search engine results pages. Your goal is to make your content relevant for your audience while appealing to search engines, so when your audience searches for certain keywords or phrases online, your content will rank at the top of the list. For a more detailed explanation, Wikipedia offers a thorough overview: Search Engine Optimization 

Here are four ways to improve your SEO:  

1) Make sure your website works well 

Google and other search engines take into account the user experience – that you have fast page load times, simple designs, clear call-to-actions, and minimal broken links. You’re looking to create content that can be easily crawled and indexed by search engines, and to optimize your content in a way where search engines can understand and easily index it. Your users should have a positive and intuitive user experience when they’re on your website and engaging with your content. 

2) Create quality, searchable content

The details you include within your content should capture the right keywords, based upon what your audience would be asking online. Your goal is to identify what people would be searching for in your niche, and to create content that thoroughly answers those questions.  

While you want to include the right keywords, you don’t want to overdo it! Too many keywords or over-optimized content can create the opposite effect of what you’re after, causing search engines to distrust the content and prevent it from appearing in search results. My advice is to create your initial content and run it through a program like Clearscope, to give you some food for thought with additional wording you may not have thought of. When you’re finished editing, read the content out loud, and make sure it sounds like something you would say in normal conversation. If certain parts don’t sound quite right, they need re-worded! 

3) Add meta descriptions 

When you think of meta descriptions, think about when you do a Google search of something. The results that pull up have a short, simple explanation underneath, of what the content is about; a reason for why someone would want to select that link. As an example, here’s what our meta description for our homepage currently looks like on Google:

The area in the red rectangle is the meta description. If you don’t enter meta descriptions on your own, Google will select some of the content from that page to display – but it’s definitely a good practice to get in the habit of adding meta descriptions to the different pages on your website. Meta descriptions can be added to images and videos on your site, as well, and will help to boost your content to appear higher in search results. 

4) Build up your backlinks 

Backlinks are links from other websites that point back to your website. And the higher the domain score of those other sites pointing to you, the better! Check out Moz.com’s domain analysis – where you can enter a domain to see their domain authority score, ranking keywords, and more.  

Build up your network of media contacts relevant to your industry. Let them know your team is available for interviews and to provide quotes for content they’re creating that’s relevant to your world. As time goes on, you’ll start to build up a list of other websites that mention your company, quote your team, and link back to different pages throughout your site.  

The world of SEO is unique and ever evolving. Even if you have a good understanding, it’s a solid strategy to continue learning as you go. HubSpot offers an SEO Certification Course that’s free of charge. You can also find helpful content by searching for SEO Training on YouTube or short and simple SEO tips on TikTok, so you can keep your SEO knowledge sharp as changes come about. 

And as you continue to grow your presence online, keep the talent experts at Goodwin Recruiting in mind for all of your hiring needs. We can help find talent in Marketing, Operations, Human Resources, IT, and of course, SEO! If you’re looking for an SEO expert to help you achieve success in the areas listed above, reach out to our expert recruiters today. And if you’re an SEO professional seeking a new opportunity, check out our job board to view the latest openings.