First of all, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Although some claim that it is no longer necessary to care about SEO, it is still the best way to increase your visibility online and reach relevant target groups. The SEO rules have often changed, so how can you optimize nowadays?
How to handle SEO?
In the past, the impact of SEO was higher and easier to create. Keyword density, the extent to which a certain important keyword appears in your text, was a kind of holy grail that everyone adhered to. But those tricks do not work anymore. How to handle SEO nowadays?
Old-school tricks
1. Keyword analysis and semantic terms
These parts belong to the old school SEO, but it still works. A keyword search is still essential for your search engine optimization. Before you start writing texts, you want to know what your target group is looking for the most. Using the Keyword planner from AdWords you can fill in where you think your target group is looking for. You’ll get a potential list of keywords and how often people search for these terms. A good tip here is not only to focus on the terms with high search volumes. Besides that, focus on those terms with lower volumes, as the competition is less strong.
Keyword planner
Even though it has been the case for years, semantic terms are still hot and happening. This means that you not only focus on search terms, but also on words that are related to this. To clarify it, imagine you are selling women’s shoes. So you’ll include various related words such as pumps, sandals, sneakers, etc. in the text. This reinforces your text and ensures that the search engine judges it better.
2. Make up optimally
Layout is an essential part of the readability of your text. When visitors view a web page, they first scan the titles, subheadings, bold words and images. And quite coincidentally, these are the components that the search engine analyses. Therefore, add the following parts to your text: headers, informative intermediate heads, enumerations, link internally where relevant and possible, and pictures.
Tips nowadays
You have the basics in order after the previous section. So how do you ensure that you are up to date in SEO and you’re climbing in those search engines. The content on your website must offer a real added value to the visitor. To get a place in the top 10 you have to show that you know what you are talking about. The visitors of your website want to find as much relevant information as possible. Search engines analyse certain page parts and determine what the page is about and how relevant it is to visitors. Many of these page parts are still related to the old old SEO tips of a page, but there are also a number of important additions. Below, a number of important developments are presented.
1. Long tail search terms and voice search
In the past year, the use of Voice Search has doubled. Now about 20% of all searches go through Voice Search. Instead of entering 2 or 3 keywords, we ask whole questions on our phone. The latter has a huge influence on the search terms that you focus on. So it is important to focus on the so-called long tail terms. People do not search in google by means of a keyword, but in the form of a question.
2. Video
Video is even more important right now than it was in recent years. Google sees it at least as very valuable, especially YouTube videos, Google’s video platform. Adding relevant videos to your website improves your content and ensures that you’ll score better.
3. Use the right tools for a site audit
Technical SEO parts have become increasingly important. For example, site speed and the structure of your website affect you. But images, links and titles are also important. With a Site Audit you check these parts, you can check this throughout tools that are available. A site audit checks whether all your pages have a unique title and whether you use Meta titles for example.
One of the available tools is Search Console (the former Webmaster Tools). This tool gives you valuable information about 404 pages on your website. The fewer the pages, the better the structure of your website and the higher a search engine will value the website. On top of that, this tool presents how visitors enter your website and which websites link to your website. All in all, it is valuable information for your search engine optimization.
4. Content marketing
Content is even more important than it already was, the so-called icing on the cake. The visitors of your website want as much relevant information as possible and this means that you have to place more relevant content. SEO is now more about topics and not about keywords anymore. This ensures that relatively long articles appear, of more than 800 words, about a certain subject and do well in search engines. These long articles contain as much as possible good (relevant) information about a certain subject.
SEO is therefore not easy, but there are a number of points that you can take into account, so your raking approves.
Hi Linda, thank you for sharing your interesting post. Indeed, I believe as well that SEO is still crucial for a company’s website. After all, the first 3 pages that appear in your Google search results, are the ones that are clicked on by far most often. Therefore, I believe you share some high quality insights on how to improve a website’s ranking. Especially since searching behaviour is changing, it is important for companies and their websites to adapt. For example, I believe it is noteworthy that voice searching is increasing, entailing full sentences that are put in the search bar, as well as SEO becoming more about topics instead of keywords. It appears that length has become key as well: users are asking for full answers to their search queries, which are as relevant as possible. Nevertheless, I still believe one has to remain critical and not become too lengthy: this may annoy users and cause increased bounce rates. Therefore, a good balance has to be found.