31 Actionable SEO Techniques That Really Work
As a business owner, you know SEO is an important key in the ongoing success of your company.
You’ve practiced some SEO online marketing techniques, but you want to boost your SEO knowledge and increase your rankings even more.
SEO tactics are numerous, and there are many that you can put into practice that will give you sure-fire results.
You’ve come to the right place to:
- Understand the basics of SEO
- Discover how SEO benefits your business
- Learn the best SEO techniques you can put into practice today
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Contents
What Exactly Is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the most popular marketing strategies used by businesses today.
SEO involves modifying aspects of your website structure and content to boost your rankings in search engines like Google.
Why Is SEO Essential?
According to Internet Live Stats, more than 83,000 Google searches are performed every second.
People are searching for your services and products, and SEO helps those searchers find you over your competition.
Why is SEO essential?
- Your website gains more visibility in organic searches.
- SEO drives more traffic to your website.
- More traffic to your website means more customers for you.
If you do SEO right, the rewards can be long-lasting. With the right content that ranks high for keywords, your traffic can increase over time, making the most of your SEO effort.
How Can SEO Help My Business?
In addition to providing a valuable service or product to your consumers, some of your other goals as a business owner probably include:
- More customers
- Continued sale
- Increasing profit
SEO can be the biggest first step to accomplishing all of those goals and more.
Practicing an effective SEO optimization technique can help your business stand out above the competition, gain authority, and drive more traffic to your website.
Different Types Of SEO Techniques - 31 Actionable Steps
You understand the importance of SEO for the success of your business, but now you want to know how to do SEO.
Keep reading to discover some of the best SEO techniques for:
- Local SEO
- Content Creation
- Content Optimization
- E-Commerce websites
- Image Optimization
SEO Techniques For Local SEO
Local SEO is geared toward helping searchers find products and services in a particular locality.
Though many SEO techniques are the same whether you are dealing with organic searches or local searches, there are a few SEO tactics that you can employ specifically for local SEO success.
Tip 1: Optimize Your Google My Business Listing
Listing your local business with Google My Business is one of the most important steps to take in obtaining more foot traffic into your business.
To optimize your GMB listing, incorporate the following:
- Verify your listing with Google so they know you are a legitimate business.
- Include a logo with your listing because, according to Forbes, “The right logo says everything without saying a word.”
- Include a description that accurately outlines what your business is about.
- Make sure to list days and hours of operation and update them if they change.
- Include photos and update them regularly.
Tip 2: Ensure A Great NAP
People are making local searches because they want your services and must be able to find you.
Make sure the address listed is correct, descriptive, and identical across all listings.
Pay attention to detail and be consistent.
For example, if you use an abbreviation such as “St.” in your listing, use that same abbreviation in every listing.
Remember to include a local phone number rather than an 800 number so that Google knows you are a legit local business.
Tip 3: Secure Your Maps Listing
Securing your Google Maps listing guarantees your potential customers know exactly where you are located and can easily find you.
Adding images that are geotagged to your business location gives your potential customers a way to see exactly what your location looks like, again making it easier to find.
Tip 4: Encourage Customer Reviews
Customer reviews can boost your visibility and sales, so encourage your customers to leave reviews.
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Start by asking friends to leave reviews if you have a new business.
- If a customer lets you know how pleased they were with your service or product, thank them first, and then ask them to leave a review.
Automate the process by sending emails to customers after they make a purchase requesting a review.
Tip 5: Create Locally Relevant Content
Of course, you are going to include content on your website, and much of your content will be about your product or services.
But since you are especially concerned about local SEO, spark some of your content creation around local:
- Events
- Activities
- News stories
Tip 6: Utilize Online Directories
Take advantage of online directories to further increase website traffic and build credibility and trust.
List your site on every online directory you can find.
A few you should consider include:
- Yelp
- Foursquare
- MapQuest
- YellowPages
- AboutUs
- Yahoo
Since there are so many to choose from, let Portland SEO Growth do the hard work for you.
Local SEO is one of our specialties. Get started with a free SEO audit.
SEO Techniques For Content Creation
Many aspects contribute to your ranking potential, but one of the most important SEO writing techniques to consider is solid, relevant, and valuable content.
Tip 7: Post Relevant, Valuable Content
Keyword stuffing can be blatantly obvious, so in addition to considering keywords, make sure your content is valuable to your reader.
This starts with knowing your reader and their problem.
Once you know those two things, you can gear your content around their needs and desires.
Create content that:
- Relates to your audience
- Provides a solution to their problem
- Produce plenty of information that will add value to the reader
Tip 8: Update Or Repurpose Existing Content
Don’t think that all of your content needs to be new.
Revitalizing old or poorly performing content adds value to your site without expending vast amounts of energy and can also improve your “freshness” score.
Tip 9: Complete Keyword Research
Keyword research is vital to creating content that potential customers are looking for.
You could have excellent content with loads of value, but if people aren’t searching for that particular topic, it won’t be read.
You should be aware that keyword research can be time-consuming, but the effort pays off.
Don’t have time to do this research yourself? Let us help.
Portland SEO Growth can do the labor-intensive work for you to get the results you are looking for.
Tip 10: Check Competitor Content
To compete well, you need to know what your competitors are producing, so you should discover what’s ranking well for your competitors and do it better.
Ways you can upstage the competition include:
- Add additional tips
- Make your content more valuable
- Tell interesting stories
- Use competitor analysis tools to your advantage
Tip 11: Include Strong External Links
Using external links and backlinks are effective off page SEO techniques that you should employ.
Google likes backlinks and using some SEO backlink techniques well can increase your rankings and authority.
Linking to highly authoritative sites that corroborate what you are communicating increases your authority as well.
Other off page SEO techniques to consider include:
- Write guest posts on another blog
- Leave comments on other blogs
- Post videos
- Use social media to your advantage
Tip 12: Sprinkle Keywords Throughout The Content
You did your keyword research, so you feel like you need to use them in your content — a lot.
Beware of keyword stuffing. It makes your content seem contrived and bogus.
Instead, naturally insert relevant keywords here and there throughout your writing. This will make your content believable and genuine.
Using external links and backlinks are effective off page SEO techniques that you should employ.
Google likes backlinks and using some SEO backlink techniques well can increase your rankings and authority.
Linking to highly authoritative sites that corroborate what you are communicating increases your authority as well.
Other off page SEO techniques to consider include:
- Write guest posts on another blog
- Leave comments on other blogs
- Post videos
- Use social media to your advantage
SEO Techniques For Content Optimization
Producing relevant and engaging content is one of the most important SEO techniques at your disposal.
Optimize this important strategy by paying attention to things like titles, headers, spacing, and images.
Tip 13: Optimize Your Title And Headers
Improve your title and headers by making them:
- Relevant
- Attention-grabbing
- Rich with keywords
Tip 14: Optimize Your Content For Readability
People lose interest quickly and tend to avoid overly wordy posts and articles.
Optimize your content by using the italics and bold features to make content stand out.
Bullet points and lists catch the reader’s attention and make content more readable.
Tip 15: Utilize The White Spaces
Large paragraphs with little spacing are content killers.
Space your content out.
Adding white space to your content further increases enjoyment and readability.
Tip 16: Incorporate Images
Images make a huge difference and add interest.
Google’s algorithm pays attention to how long readers stay on a page, and images may be just the thing to make your readers linger a little longer on your site.
Tip 17: Optimize Your Site For Mobile Devices
We’ve all experienced it — looking for a website on our mobile device and finding that it’s not readable or easy to navigate.
If your site is not user-friendly on mobile devices, users will quickly move on to other sites leaving you with less traffic and few real customers.
Make sure your site:
- Loads quickly
- Uses larger fonts
- Utilizes white space
- Is formatted to display correctly on a mobile device
Tip 18: Optimize For Voice Search
With nearly 50% of consumers using voice for web searches, Alexa and Siri are becoming some of the most popular ways to find information on the web.
Voice searches can be optimized by:
- Including a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section to your site
- Creating great content in varying lengths
- Using social media
Not sure where to begin with so many different types of SEO techniques at your disposal?
Portland SEO Growth can help.
PSG services Portland-based businesses and businesses across the United States. Click here to learn more.
SEO Techniques For E-Commerce Websites
Tip 19: Ensure Quick Load Time
A slow load speed will drastically increase your bounce rate.
A majority of people will leave your site if the page doesn’t open in less than 5 seconds.
Ensuring quick load time is vital.
Tip 20: Utilize Strong Internal Links
Not only should you add internal links to your content, but you should make sure product pages all link back to relevant category pages.
URL structure matters.
Add breadcrumbs throughout your website with internal links to help your customers move around easily on your site.
Here is an example of a breadcrumb:
Tip 21: Suggest Related Products
Including internal links can be a powerful way to drive add-on sales.
Just like the candy begs you to buy it as you are checking out at the grocery store, you can use internal links to suggest products to your customer that other customers have purchased.
Tip 22: Don’t Neglect Your Meta Descriptions
The purpose of a meta description is to give a snippet of information that will inform your reader about the content of a particular page on your site.
Make your meta descriptions interesting, relevant, and compelling to increase your click-through rate (CTR). Higher CTRs are just one more tool that can help boost your rankings.
Tip 23: Frequently Update Your CTA
CTA stands for “call to action” and is the part of your webpage that encourages your reader to do something.
Some examples of CTAs include:
- “Buy Now”
- “Subscribe to our Newsletter”
- “Click Here for a Free Consultation”
For more success with e-commerce SEO, consider editing your CTAs according to sales, promotions, freebies, and holidays.
Tip 24: Don’t Overlook The Importance of an SSL Certificate
Those searching online (and especially those buying online) want to know they are buying from a secure website.
There are two primary benefits gained from obtaining an SSL Certificate:
- Higher levels of security make the buyer feel more comfortable.
- Google tends to give higher authority to sites with higher security measures.
SEO Techniques For Image Optimization
No doubt you’ve heard the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
In SEO, a picture can also result in great benefits that boost your traffic and sales.
Tip 25: Choose the Proper Format
Images are not only important because they give visual interest to your content, but those making online queries are also searching images to find content on the web.
To optimize your images, be sure to use the best format. JPEG files are usually better for SEO purposes.
Tip 26: Compress Your Image
To reduce bounce rates, do everything you can to ensure quicker load time.
Uncompressed images take up a lot of space and take a longer time to load, which can result in searchers leaving your page before they see the actual content.
Compressing images reduces file size and load time without compromising image quality.
Tip 27: Use Keywords In Your Image Names
Have you gotten frustrated trying to use grammatically incorrect long-tail keywords in your writing content?
Using those and other relevant keywords as image file names is a creative way to fit them in since Google bots read the titles along with all the other content.
Make sure to include hyphens to separate words in your image title.
Tip 28: Include ALT Tags
ALT text is what appears on the screen when an image doesn’t load correctly and is able to be scanned by Google bots.
Not only does this help improve SEO, but it is also a help to the visually impaired since the text describes the image to them.
Tip 29: Include Original Images When Possible
There are a plethora of stock photos available online for free or to purchase, and some of those may suit your needs just fine.
But choosing custom photos and original images will make a statement that makes your website stand out.
Tip 30: Don’t Overlook Copyright
Copyright infringement is a big deal, so it’s vital to ensure that there aren’t any copyright conflicts with the images you use.
Many websites offer free images for individual and business use — or it might be worthwhile to invest in a subscription to a site like Canva for ease and peace of mind.
Tip 31 - The Importance Of An SEO Audit
At this point, you may be thinking, “Whew! So many helpful tips, but where do I begin? I need some help.”
We can provide the help you desire and would love to work with you.
First of all, you should know that we don’t work with all businesses.
We only work with businesses who:
- Are ambitious about growing their business
- Have enough bandwidth for expected growth
- Treat their employees and customers well
If this describes your business, we can help you get started with our free SEO audit.
After completing some basic information in the online form, three things will happen.
- One of our SEO specialists will take about an hour to audit your entire digital presence.
- They will send you a customized video with data and actionable tips on how to boost your SEO.
- You can sit back and watch your SEO skyrocket.
