Top 3 SEO Strategies

by Jeremiah Svaren | Last Updated: May 24, 2021 •  4 min read

Tutorials » SEO

MAKE YOUR WEBSITE RANK #1

Just having a beautiful website isn’t enough if you want to rank on Google. While many factors go into placing a site on the first page of Google, the following strategies go a long way. Think of this as the 80/20 rule for SEO.

1) Keyword Research

The very first step, before you develop any page on your website! Keyword research helps to identify what people are looking for on Google, along with spotting the competition. Think of keyword research as developing a route to your destination. So what exactly is keyword research? Well, you start with a list of keywords or phrases that are relevant to your business. Let’s say that you own a coffee shop; some keywords would include: coffee near me, latte near me, coffee shop. Come up with 10-15 keywords or phrases and jot them down. Now we’ll take that list and input them one at a time into a keyword research tool like KWFinder. Here we can see what the average search volume is, and what the difficulty is to rank at the top of Google. Now you can start to rank the importance of keywords for your site. The lower difficulty score with higher search volume rises to the top of your list.

2) Quality Content Related to Your Primary Keywords

Here comes the most critical aspect of your site: high-quality content that can become a resource for your potential customers. So what does high-quality content mean?

• Easy to read and understand
• Easy to scan
• Use your primary keywords or synonyms of keywords
• Photos or videos where appropriate
• Resources for customers that want more information
• Use headings and sub-headings
• Update content as needed
• More word can be better, as long as you don’t ramble

Think back to writing in school, remember when you would add some fluff to get to 5 pages? Let’s NOT do that here! You want every paragraph to add value to your potential customers. No fluff required.

3) Optimize On-Page Elements

So you have a great looking website with lots of high-quality content. Now we need to tune everything up under the hood. Each of these steps needs a page of information alone. So get ready because we’re about to get knee-deep.

1. Page Speed – Your site needs to be blazing fast for everyone that’s on their phone with less than stellar service.
2. Optimized Images – To follow up on the page speed, your images should be compressed and only as large as needed.
3. Alt Text – Every image should have some relevant text in the alt-text tag along with a proper image file name.
4. Use Headings Properly – You have 7 options for headings. H1-H7 and you should use at least H1-H3 on every page. H1 only once for the main heading.
5. Optimized Titles and Descriptions – This is what shows up on the Google search results. So make the contents click-worthy!
6. Optimized URL structure – Check out the URL on this page right now. Simple right? Can you guess the content of this page by the URL alone? That’s your goal for every page of your site.
7. Submit Sitemaps to Google – A sitemap is a URL map of your website, and Google loves to have them delivered. The Google Search Console allows you to do just that.
8. Keep Your Site Updated – Security patches and updates to software, plugins, and themes are vital to keeping your website on Google’s radar.

4) Bonus – Off-Site SEO

This bonus step should only be taken after you have taken full advantage of the first 3 strategies. Think of this step as icing on the cake.

• Share articles/pages on social media
• Find relevant websites and offer to guest post
  • Link back to pages on your website within the article
  • Have some class though and don’t make it all about you!
• Find relevant directories and add your website
• Find “round up” posts such as “Best (your product) in (your area)” and ask the author to give your product a shot.

Jeremiah Svaren wears just about all the hats at Svaren Web Studio. He started getting into web design and development back in 2013. First starting to learn on his own with books and tutorials, then in 2014 he attended The Tech Academy in Portland, Oregon. He learned all about software engineering and decided to start freelancing. Now when he isn't helping clients, he makes helpful content here and on his YouTube channel Svaren.