Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips from Digital Marketing in a Week
For potential clients to find your career service on the internet, you need to have a website that attracts them. “Digital Marketing In A Week: Brilliant Online Marketing In Seven Simple Steps ” by Nick Smith is an ideal resource if you want to learn more about SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
SEO is defined as the things you do to your website to ensure that your website is found at the top of Google search results. By optimizing your site, you can increase “traffic” and potentially new customers and clients. Be aware, though, that this is not the only way for your business to be found. If the services you provide and the market you are targeting are not primarily online, this might not be the best place to start. However, for an internet-based business, it is an essential skill to learn.
Search engines, like Google, are always fine-tuning the number and types of factors they use to determine which website pages appear first. Search engines look at search phrases, but they also consider other aspects:
- How many people come to your site. Your goal is to build your own authority site. An authority site is a website with pages that are considered high quality to other subject matter experts. It has content that people are glad to find and read. Google deems these sites highly trustworthy and useful on a particular topic.
- How long people stay on your site. When developing your website, keep in mind how you will keep your prospects “on-site,” rather than clicking to leave your site.
- How fast your web pages load. When your site loads quickly and is well laid out, people can find your content in the easiest and quickest manner possible.
- How many times people like and share your content on social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or LinkedIn, etc.). Ideally, other websites should also have links pointing to your website and its pages.
Search engines are looking for a great user experience. Nick Smith suggests sure-fire steps to SEO.
- Use a content management system like WordPress for your website.
- Your website HTML code should be fully validated with “W3C standards.”
- Improve your website’s “load time” by getting good-quality web hosting.
- Keep your web page file sizes as small as possible to help them load quickly.
- If you have a website already, go to http://webpagetest.org/ and test your site out for free. Load speed should be less than 7 seconds to be considered good and less than five seconds to be the best.
Website visitors want great content. They don’t really care about slick graphics or a “sci-fi” looking interface. They want answers to their questions. They want information they can use. Consider adding a blog to your domain so that your website does not become static. The search engines prefer new and timely content. Experiment with and expand the variety of your links to other useful sites. Don’t just keep going back to YouTube or any other single link source over and over again.
Make your content high-quality. Here are some ideas for content you might consider adding to y0ur site:
- Videos
- Informative, current narrative content, ideally over 1,000 words long
- Upscale images
- Audio recordings of you talking in a radio talk show format or interviews
- Case studies of clients or customers highlighting their successes by having used your product(s) and service(s)
If you want to get an idea of what your customers are actually looking for, use Google’s Keyword Planner. This is available free in a Google AdWords account.
Here is another way to get people to visit your site: create a business account or page on appropriate social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or Google+, etc.) and then post good information there. Link back to your site on that page and you will be amazed at the authority boost you will get.
With time, you will create an authority website that knowledgeable, quality-seeking readers want to return to often and want to link their websites to yours.