The New Rules of Website SEO Optimization

Forget what you’ve learned about website SEO optimization in the past. Search engines are getting smarter, and your old SEO strategies aren’t doing much good anymore. In some cases, they may actually be hurting your site’s ranking in search results. Here are the five tips you need for successful website SEO optimization in 2018.

1. Choose Your Keywords Carefully

When search engines crawl your site, they’re looking for recurring keywords that teach them what your site is about. The exact keywords you choose will depend on your business and its goals, but in general you should choose words and phrases that describe what your business does or sells. If you are a local business, also consider keywords that indicate your service area or where you are located. The keywords you choose should be the ones for which you want your site to rank highly when a potential customer performs an Internet search. For example, if you are a dentist in Riverside, CA, you might choose words like “dentist,” “dental care,” “pain-free dentistry,” and “dentist in Riverside.” Quality is more important than quantity. Try to rank for too many keywords and you’ll end up confusing the search engines and ranking for none at all.

2. Write Your Content for Users, Not Search Engines

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing need to make money. To do that, they need to provide a great experience for their users so they can attract ad revenue. Search engines want to show their users the most relevant and helpful sites on the Internet for the specific query the user put into the search box. That’s a tall order – think of how many websites there are out there! To do this, search engines have increasingly started to view websites like a human would and not like a machine. That means you can say goodbye to silly website copy that says, “Are you looking for a dentist in Riverside, CA? Don’s Dentistry is a great dentist in Riverside, CA. If you need a dentist in Riverside, CA, call Don’s Dentistry.” This is known as keyword stuffing, and it’s a major no-no these days. Your website copy should be written for your users, incorporating your keywords naturally as it makes sense to do so without taking away from readability.

3. Get Some High-Quality Links

Again, there’s an easy (wrong) way to do this and a hard (right) way. The easy way is to spam links to your site all over the place, even purchasing access to online directories. This will do wonders for your SEO – in the absolute worst way possible. Instead, focus on obtaining high-quality links to your site from partners, vendors, customers, and more. Perhaps your web designer could feature a link to your site in their customer testimonials section. Maybe the restaurant across the street that you always recommend to your clients would be willing to put a short blurb about your business and a link to your website on their site in return. Link building is undoubtedly the hardest part of SEO – there’s no substitute for taking it slow and doing it right.

4. Pay Attention to Your Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

We’ve already talked about the copy on your website, but we can’t neglect the behind-the-scenes aspects. Specifically, we’re talking about page titles and meta descriptions. You can usually edit both of these sections of your pages in your website’s control panel or dashboard or using a special plugin. (If your site is built on the WordPress platform, we highly recommend the Yoast SEO plugin.) Again, everything has to be natural. Just repeating your keywords over and over again everywhere you can will lose you serious points. Remember that searchers will still see the page title and meta description in search results, so employ the same natural and descriptive writing style you used in your main website copy.

5. Go Beyond Your Website

Website SEO optimization is critical, but it’s not the only thing to consider. Your business information is also listed other places around the web, such as social media platforms, online directory listings, and more. It’s important that your key business details match on all of these sites. If you’ve recently changed your phone number, moved to a new location, or made other changes, it’s time to update your listings. There are various services available that will update your directory listings for you – usually for a fee. Additionally, although not all sites support this feature, update your business description with what your company does, incorporating those keywords naturally like always. Consistent information across the web will give search engines confidence in the usefulness of your business and make them more likely to rank your website highly in search results.

Building the Right Habits

Improving the website SEO optimization for your business won’t happen overnight. In fact, it could take weeks or months until you see the results you’re hoping for. That’s because search engines are skeptical and want to make sure you’re going to consistently deliver a good experience for your visitors over a period of time. You know what you should be skeptical of? Your credit card processor (see what we did there?). Too many processors take advantage of their customers and treat them like mere account numbers. 360 Payments is different. Give us a call at 1-855-360-0360 or drop us a line on our website. We’d love to show you what sets us apart.

PS – Want to know why no one is reading your content? Check out this post.

PPS – Here are the top three reasons why your business needs a social media strategy.