There are many responsibilities that come along with starting your own business. One of the most important tasks is to make sure your website is highly visible online, so customers can easily find it. This forms part of your SEO strategy. Ask any marketer, and they will tell you that an SEO strategy is crucial for getting your website noticed online. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving and organising your website, so that it appears favourably in search engine rankings. SEO can be highly technical, but don’t let that scare you. One of the key goals of a sound SEO strategy is to increase organic traffic to your site by offering solutions to common questions your customers have, and providing the information they need. In other words, you want your website to be the go-to source of information for your customers, potential customers, and anyone who operates in your industry.
Fortunately, there are simple SEO techniques you can use to promote your site on search engines like Google. Applying a few key tactics when creating content can go a long way.
In this post, we’ll introduce you to SEO and explain why it’s important for entrepreneurs. Then we’ll share a few tactics you can use for your website SEO strategy. Let’s go!
What is SEO and why it matters
SEO is the practice of making your website and its content appealing to search engine algorithms. This usually involves incorporating keywords into your written content, maintaining your site’s performance, and other related techniques.
Optimising your content is necessary if you hope to get your website in the top results on search engines like Google. This can drive new traffic to your business. The top organic Google search result gets over 39% of traffic, the second result gets only about 18%, and the rest of the results fall below 10%.
Effective SEO requires a careful balance. It’s important to use the right terms that allow search engines to know what your content is about, while not overloading your site content with keywords and making it unreadable.
What’s more, 53% of web traffic is organic, meaning visitors who find your site through online searches. Organic traffic, unlike paid advertising, is completely free. This makes SEO a cost-effective marketing method.
3 essential SEO strategy tips for every entrepreneur
If you want to spread the word about your business and attract more visitors, you’ll need to incorporate SEO best practices into your site management process. Let’s look at three ways to do that.
1. Incorporate on-site and technical SEO to improve your content
On-site or on-page SEO refers to techniques used to optimise your content. This primarily means using keywords in your posts, titles, headings, and URLs.
However, you should also pay attention to technical aspects of your website that impact your search engine rankings, such as loading speed and mobile responsiveness.
Making sure your website stays fast by regularly testing it with Google PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom Tools is wise. It’s also important that your site is viewable on smartphones as well as desktops, so make sure to implement responsive design.
In general terms, about 20% of your SEO efforts should be focused in this direction. There are many tools that can help, including Google’s Keyword Planner and several WordPress plugins (which we’ll discuss below).
2. Use content marketing to rank higher and attract visitors
Content marketing is the process of creating authoritative, relevant, and unique content to attract visitors. This should make up the bulk of your SEO efforts.
You can distribute content via multiple channels, such as a blog, social media accounts, or even email. Thoughtful, informative content that provides value to your target market has a strong chance to rank well with search engines and draw customers to your site.
3. Implement off-site SEO to make connections across the web
Finally, off-site SEO consists of practices that affect content outside your website. Key off-site strategies include:
- Link building: Encouraging links across the web that lead back to your site.
- Guest posts: Writing posts for other websites’ blogs.
- Social media: Promoting your business and website on various social networks.
These practices point users from around the web towards your site, to generate more traffic. Links to your content from other high-quality sites can go a long way towards boosting your visibility, and even improving your search engine rankings.
WordPress: An SEO-friendly platform
If you’re looking to build a website and need an SEO-friendly platform, WordPress is a smart choice – especially if you choose your hosting provider carefully. Out of the box, WordPress includes:
- Search engine-friendly URLs
- Default themes that incorporate on-site SEO, including heading and title tags
- Proper HTML markup
- Optimised loading times for fast websites
In addition to these features, you can add more advanced SEO functions using plugins. For example, Yoast SEO and the All in One SEO Pack help with on-page SEO.
Caching plugins – including WP Super Cache – can improve page loading times. There are also plugins to fix broken links, such as WP Broken Link Status Checker, and others that assess site health, like WP Health.
Read more about the benefits of WordPress Hosting.
Getting started with SEO
As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into optimising your website for search engines. With an SEO-friendly platform like WordPress, you’re off to a great start and you probably won’t need the help of an SEO specialist. Plus, you can use plugins to optimise your site even further.
As we’ve seen, three key SEO tactics for entrepreneurs are:
- Incorporate on-site and technical SEO to improve your content.
- Use content marketing to rank higher and attract visitors.
- Implement off-site SEO to make connections across the web.
These SEO tips can help you get more eyes on your site, and attract new leads for your business!
Need help with your website content? Learn the golden rules for content marketing.
