SEO, otherwise known as search engine optimization, is a process of going through a website and making it the best that it can be in accordance with search engine algorithms so that it will rank higher and get more traffic. Many companies don’t really understand how to use SEO properly, so here are lists of SEO Dos and Don’ts to help explain it better:
SEO Marketing Dos
- Website Content— needs to be precise and up-to-date, as well as interesting to read so as to keep the interest of your customers. It should also contain appropriate keywords (but not overused), and should contain a good mix of text, graphics, photos and videos. Your content should be free of grammatical errors, as this turns off a reader very quickly. Plus, photos and graphics should be clear and not blurry and shouldn’t take more than a few seconds to load, or you will lose the attention of potential customers. Make your articles at least 800 words, as this is just long enough to give useful information and not so long that your readers will get bored.
- Website Design – needs to be user friendly and easy to navigate so your customers can get around in the site easily. It should be attractive, but not too gaudy or have too many banners or crazy moving graphics. It should have proper grammar, colors that don’t clash, and appropriate arrangements of all the content that will make a visitor want to keep reading. Be sure not to use frames either, as these tend to annoy and confuse some readers.
- Blogs and Social Media Use – Making a blog, as well as signing up for social media pages on Facebook and Twitter about your business and its products and services will also help you to get more traffic to your main website. This is a great way to announce new products, talk about updates or anything that is coming soon in your business arena, etc. It also lets customers interact and can help your company gain popularity when they share the information with their friends. Be sure to monitor your social media pages daily and keep up the interactions with your customers, as the object is to get more popular and not answering their comments will do the opposite.
- Backlinks use – Be sure to incorporate backlinks into your website. Backlinks are when you use the URL from your pages to get people to click on them and go to your site. You can put these backlinks into articles you post in directories, on Facebook or other social media, on a blog as a guest writer, etc. It’s also a good idea to trade links with well-known authoritative sites like those with .edu or .gov if possible. You can ask them if you can somehow list your URL with them and vice-versa to help you to get better ranked by Google.
- Be Patient – Good SEO isn’t instantaneous. It takes time to get a website properly optimized and for Google and the other search engines to index your new pages and change your ranking.
SEO Marketing Don’ts
No Duplicated Content – Be sure to never use duplicated content on your site or you could find it being banned by Google. This is plagiarism and is stealing other people’s articles, photos or videos. Fresh and original writing in your articles will get you more traffic than old, copied content. You can use a website called “Copyscape” to find out if there is any duplicated content in your website.
Don’t overstuff keywords – Properly used keywords attract more traffic to your websites, while using too many keywords is considered to be SPAM. Be careful not to overdo the use of keywords in your content. Be sure to put in some research in your niche to find out what keywords are trending and are the most popular. Be sure to check on this often, as the popular keywords may change several times.
Don’t hire the first SEO expert you find – If you decide to hire SEO consultants to help you to optimize your site, and then don’t just pick the first one that you find. Be sure to look over their qualifications, talk to some of their former clients, etc. Unfortunately, not all the supposed SEO experts advertising out there know what they are doing, and you want the best one that you can find. Plus, once you find a good one, be sure to actually follow the plan they develop, as it can’t do you any good if you don’t use it.
The bottom line is that by properly using SEO you can get more traffic and customers and by using it wrong, you will lose them. Be sure to pay attention to these Dos and Don’ts of SEO marketing.
