Darcy Lefebvre, RP Copywriting
Is the traffic to your website stalled? Is your website’s ranking in search engine result pages dropping faster than the snow level on Comox Glacier? Maybe it’s time to fine-tune your website’s content and start playing to the search engines.
SEO fundamentals and why knowing them helps improve SEO
Search Engine Optimization is the science behind improving the organic ranking of your website or page on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) when someone performs a search phrase relevant to your business. Search engines use complex algorithms to determine your ranking, but essentially the engines determine your website’s ranking based on how popular it is and how relevant it is to the search phrase.
Popularity is mostly based on how many people have created inbound links to your content and how credible those links and websites are. Relevance is based on the quality of your website’s content and how well you’ve tailored your content for best possible SEO.
5 Tips to improve your SEO
1. Have relevant page titles
Each page of your website should have a concise, distinct, descriptive title. The page title should accurately represent the page content. And if you want your page to rank high for a particular search phrase, make sure your page title contains those keywords!
2. Create relevant headers on page
Include at least one “H1” header tag on your page and make sure it contains the topic keywords your page is focusing on. If you’re using WordPress, its editor makes it easy to select the H1 formatting for your header (or H2, H3, H4 or H5 for that matter).
3. Insert keywords in page content
To prove your web page’s legitimacy as containing quality content relevant to the search phrase, make sure your web content matches the topic addressed by the title. Your content should contain the same keywords found in the page title and header.
4. Provide quality page content
Provide original, quality content that engages readers and beckons them to share it with their connections. Reprinting content from other websites creates “duplicate content” which can lower your SEO ranking.
Don’t feel up to task? Find a copywriting company that can do SEO writing for you.
5. Limit length of page title and description
When Google displays your page on the SERP, it will truncate (shorten) long title and description tags. With titles, you have approximately 55 characters if you don’t want to be cut short. For descriptions, you have about 115 characters. This is down about 22% from the old, pre-2014 limits.
Other SEO improvement tips
Keep your content fresh and changing. Just like your followers, search engines like something new. Create relevant links within the text; don’t just say “click here,” try to be as specific as possible while also using keywords. For example, we might type, “Find out who’s the best online marketing company on Vancouver Island.”
Finally, consider hiring an SEO professional to see how optimizing your site’s load speed or adjusting internal links and navigation processes can enhance SEO.
Darcy Lefebvre is a marketing consultant with RP Copywriting. Reach him directly at darcy@rpcopywriting.com or 250.897.5450.
