We all have seen how much technological advancements have impacted the world we live in today. And although the traditional media for business and marketing are still necessary and relevant, the reality is that companies and professionals worldwide have also had to keep up with the times and adapt to modern ways. One of the most significant changes is the need to have an online presence. Whether you are a business owner, a professional in the industry, or a veteran or a beginner, occupying a space online is a necessary part of the job. Besides opening up opportunities you wouldn’t want to miss, it also gives you a badge of credibility, reliability, and resourcefulness.
Having a website, for instance, is one of the crucial ways to take your business to the next level. And while that may cause worry for those without prior experience building one, you should not fret because Strikingly has your back! Strikingly is a website builder that helps you to create a website from the ground up. It provides you with hundreds of templates you can start with and which you can easily modify with different tools and features. Once you have a website, you should learn more about SEO guidelines and the SEO best practices.
SEO stands for search engine optimization. And this is very important to know and learn about if you want your website to be successful. Your website will be part of a whole world of websites. Search engines are what people all use to find information, like Google. When you make a website, you should follow SEO guides so you get on top of the results. Not following any or majority of SEO recommendations is a big mistake because your customers or clients (or potential ones) will have a harder time finding your website. If search engines do not direct them to your website, you lose the opportunity to show them everything you have to offer - and that’s not good for business.
10 Best SEO Strategies
To help you get started, here are 10 SEO tips that can help you ensure that your website makes it to your target audience.
1. Optimize Your Website Page Speed
No one likes a slow website. It only makes sense then that one of the SEO best practices is ensuring that your website does not take a long time to load. You can use several tools to check and monitor this SEO recommendation. Doing so would give you the necessary data and information that you can use to fix the problem or make your website better. Google’s PageSpeed Insights, for instance, not only gives you an overview of your website speed, it also gives you the details and SEO tips on how you can improve it. More often than not, improving site speed includes compressing images, using lightweight themes, deleting necessary plug-ins, etc.
2. Mobile Website Optimization
While a lot of us rely on our laptops and computers to do our work, mobile devices remain to be a key tool in our everyday lives. With technological advancements being what they are, we can more or less do a lot of our tasks on our phones - even the ones we used to only do with our computers. This fact brings up the need to create a website that looks good on laptops, computer screens, and mobile devices. Ensuring that all your features are mobile-friendly improves user experience and is also one of the SEO best practices because search engines also use this as a factor. Strikingly helps you to easily achieve this SEO recommendation by allowing you to edit your website in the mobile view like you see above.
3. Learn All About Search Intent and Keywords
Search intent refers to what users want to see in the search results. It is the reason or explanation behind their search query. Now, all the SEO best practices revolve around making the users or potential customers satisfied and ranking high on the search engine results. For this particular SEO recommendation, we have a couple of SEO tips to help you.
First is for you to understand search intent - particularly the one you would like to address. Secondly, you have to learn the correct language that you can use to address these search queries. And finally, do your keyword research and use the right ones for your website.
4. Make Sure Your Keywords are Just Right
Image taken from Strikingly User’s website
Doing keyword research, identifying keywords to use best, and using them on your website is not as simple as it may sound. Many of the best SEO guidelines you would find online will tell you that you have to fill your website with the keywords of the search query you intend to address. However, these SEO best practices lists don’t usually warn people like you about the danger of overdoing it. While it is one of the best SEO tips due to its great appeal to search engines, most forget that the focus should still be on the customers and their experience as the top priority.
5. Come Up with Unique Titles and Meta Descriptions
Titles and meta-descriptions refer to what users or potential clients see when your website appears on the search results. A list of the SEO best practices won’t be complete without mentioning how you want to be presented in the search results. We already know that competitors are also fighting for the attention of your potential customers or clients. The title and meta-description are essentially your introductions so you have to make sure that they are appropriately aligned with the search intent you are trying to address. They should also be compelling enough to pique the interest of your prospects. An SEO recommendation is to keep the titles limited to 60 characters and meta-descriptions only up to 150 characters.
6. Maximize Function of Alt Tags on Images
Many businesses and professionals love putting images on their websites. And who can blame them? It indeed does enhance the overall image and appeal of one’s website. Using images is also one of the SEO best practices because it is an excellent way to fill your website with relevant content while improving the experience of your website visitors.
However, the best SEO strategies for website images don’t just stop with the tips to pick relevant images and use them. You see, search engines, being the computers that they are, identify content using code. Images are not always correctly translated into code so you need an alt-image. Not only does it help improve your website content, but it also helps your website in appeasing the search engines - hopefully putting your website on top of search results.
7. Use Internal Linkages
Links, both internal and external, are very important in ranking high in search engines. Having a good number of links from other websites gives search engines the idea that your website is a good one. Using internal links (or links from your other pages to your blog) means that when an item or part of your content on one page is clicked by a user, it leads them to another content from your website’s pages. This strategy helps you not only to help guide your users around your website but also helps them to navigate the right pages from the search results themselves. This double purpose is what makes it one of the SEO best practices.
8. Create Compelling and User-friendly Content
All of the above SEO tips have been focused mainly on the technical side of your website. However, your website is not only its technical aspect. One of the SEO best practices remains to be on the creative and ingenious side - your content. Your website content remains to be the most important element that you need to focus on. Besides the fact that most of the SEO strategies we mentioned earlier are anchored on your content, they are also your way to connect and communicate with your website visitors and your potential customers. Compelling and user–friendly content is also a big consideration that search engines look into. Make sure that what you have is relevant and helpful while staying engaging and fun for your users.
9. Ensure Good Overall User Experience
In addition to the SEO recommendation in the previous items, we take it one step further by telling you that your content must lead up to an excellent overall user experience. Because while your content and its quality are extremely important, presenting that information to your viewers also plays a significant factor. If your content is not presented in a manner that’s easy to understand, your users might be discouraged and leave your site. It’s a wasted opportunity and search engines view your website as a place that does not satisfy users' needs. You have to make your website mobile-friendly, avoid pop-ups and advertisements flood, use subheadings, and have an overall appealing and strategic website design.
10. Don’t Ignore your SEM Data
One last note about technical SEO recommendation is to monitor and analyze your website’s performance regarding all these search engine marketing strategies. It is imperative to know how you are doing for you to understand which of these SEO best practices are working and which of them you have to work on improving. Information is power. Don’t make the mistake of ignoring this data because they are valuable and can help you to improve your website holistically.
You will find many SEO guidelines anywhere on the internet. Still, the best and only SEO recommendation that sums it up is probably this: Know your business and learn the art behind the technology. Your mind has already led you here. Now all you have to do is to share that with the world by using the tools handed to you. After all, the SEO best practices need not be complicated. At the end of the day, all that matters is that you did right by your business.
Strikingly is more than happy to assist you with that. It has all the necessary tools to execute all the SEO best practices we just mentioned. We would be delighted to be your partner in accomplishing bigger success for your business. Sign up with Strikingly now!
