You have created an awesome website, that’s amazing. But there are over 1.7 billion websites on the web, and with each second, more numbers are adding to that.
The really popular ones are around 170 million. The majority of websites are not known or active, probably because no one found out about them, and the same will happen to your website if you don’t market it.
It’s not enough to have a website, you need to market it to the right audience to ensure that it scales. We have brought together some of the easiest SEO tips to implement that most people don’t know about. They’ll give you a competitive advantage.
1. Use The Right Domain Name
Your domain / URL is what visitors type into their browser to find your website, it’s like the signpost on the entrance of a physical store.
Before you launch your website, you need to select the right domain name carefully. Ensure that your domain name is in sync with what your business is about. This is because as soon as you go live, Google looks at your domain name (among other things) to understand what your site is about and decides how to rank it.
The preferred domain name should include your business name. If you can, you can add in a relevant keyword for your business to increase your chances. For example, if you’re into agriculture, your domain name should be something like www.yournameagro.com
2. Create Optimized Meta Data
When you search on Google, the information that Google gives you is based on metadata.
If you don’t create one, Google will create one for you, and it might not truly capture what you’re about.
Metadata are of two categories: title and description. The title is more like the headline. In this place, capture what you’re about in as short as possible. As you can see with ours, it’s a bit too long, but from the text that can be seen, you can easily know what services we offer.
Ensure that keyphrases that your target audience type on Google are in there as well. Here you should use short-form keywords.
For the meta description, that is a bit longer but should still be precise and distinctively depict what your business is about. In this place, you can use long-form keywords. Also, if you’re looking to rank for location, this is one side where you can use it. You can use it in your title as well.
3. Write Optimized Blog Posts
If you want your visitors to be engaged on your website when they come visiting, then you need to start creating blog posts.
Blog posts help to generate leads as well as improve your SEO rankings.
If you’ve been following us, you’ll realize that we have been preaching about content marketing. You see, creating new, updated, and relevant content drives people to your website, and when they come, they are happy to stay for a while. One of the most effective ways to do content marketing is by ensuring you create blog posts as frequently as possible.
If you can garner a large group of audience who are faithfully reading your blog posts daily, then rest assured that your website will have lots of traffic.
It’s not only about creating the blog posts, though; you need to optimize such posts for search engine results.
Many people ignore this, but website activities need to be replicated on social media.
Why?
Many people are on Instagram, Facebook, and co for minutes/hours every day rather than Google. The chances that they are going to come across you are higher (of course, if you use the right social media tactics.
Also, most people don’t know this, but your search engine ranking can be boosted when traffic comes into your website from social media. The more traffic coming to your pages and the more shares you are getting, the more Google and others realize that something great might be going on in your pages and rank you for that.
Encourage your content to be shared on social media. You can achieve this by including social media share icons on all your content on your blog. For your social media pages, actively engage and use the right tone to draw in your target audience.
Links should also be shared on your social media pages.
5. Use Keywords
Using Keywords people search for throughout your content plays a significant role in improving your search engine optimization and digital marketing results.
There are many tools out there for keyword research that are truly powerful in getting you the keywords that are used highly for searches and yet are not so hard to compete in. Running for a highly competitive keyword is much harder than moderate or lower competition.
Long phrases should be used as keywords otherwise called long-form keywords. It is highly important now because the use of voice search is on the increase. So when people do a voice search, and your keywords match their search, your website will have a greater chance of getting higher ranked.
People talking are more likely to say “red velvet cake in Yaba” instead of “cake.”
It’s not only about the main keyword, but also latent semantic keywords. If you sell cakes, for example, using red velvet cake in Lagos in your content is good but also use LSIs like bake, eat, delivery, etc. There are tools for researching LSIs as well.
Search engine bots get smarter every year, and you need to upgrade your info-base as they do. A long time ago, packing “red velvet cake in Lagos” 500 times in your content will get you noticed and ranked high, but now, that will get you in the spam folder. Keyword stuffing is highly frowned at.
So, use your keywords in moderation, else Google will know that you’re overusing them, and it will hurt your ranking.
6. Use Quality Images With Optimized Titles
The use of images for your website can not be overemphasized and the images you use can either make or mar your rank.
Ensure that the file type and size of the pictures used are optimized. You can do this by resizing and/or compressing your pictures. Large images can slow down page load time and increase the bounce rate. With bounce rate increase and low loading, search engines would push you down in rank.
Aside from resizing, you can use image compression tools so that you don’t lose image quality. Also, if you use Apache or cPanel, there are ways to handle image compression from your server efficiently.
Ensure also that the title of the image is optimized. Google still ranks images. Let’s say you uploaded a picture of your make up product instead of naming the picture “makeup kit 1,” you can write “best makeup kit for professionals,” and when people are looking through Google images, yours will come up among the first and voila! they are on your page.
7. Get A Google My Business Page
If you have a physical address and you don’t have a Google My Business page, you are leaving a lot of money on the table. It is essential and places you on the map, literally. I’m sure you have seen something like this before:
Setting up a Google Business Page is free and takes only a few minutes. Google My Business Page is important for local SEO.
It’s the first result Google gives you when you search – if such information is available.
Google Business Page allows you to monitor reviews, add quality images of your products and services, create information on your opening hours, create a make-shift website, and lots more.
If you use this resource effectively, it can give you a massive advantage over your competitors.
8. Do Link Building
Link building is essential to growing your SEO in Nigeria. To do effective link building, you’ll have to get links from other websites. Not just any website, but quality websites. Many people get link building wrong and think it’s just about getting links from comments, forums, and terrible betting websites. If you do that, your search ranking and visibility will drop. We have covered everything about link building and doing it easily in this post.
Click here to read on how to do link building effectively.
Last Words
Digital marketing and SEO isn’t just a phenomenon that’s going to phase out soon. You need to concentrate on improving your ranking on Google now more than ever. You can’t keep relying on Google ads only to promote your company.
If you do, you’ll end up spending lots of money in the long run, but with SEO, you can spend at the beginning, and once the traffic starts pouring in massively, you only need to maintain it.
If you haven’t started focusing on SEO, it’s not too late to begin strategizing as we pointed out in this post.
Claiming the first page on Google search is achievable. Reach out to us to find out more: [email protected] or +2349086160358.
The Brand Ally is a web design and digital marketing company. We provide great website designs, mobile app development, SEO, social media marketing, and Google Ads.