If you’re updating your website or building a new site, keywords, search engine optimization, and blogs are a must.
Yes, a website update offers an invaluable opportunity to refresh the visual story your site tells to its visitors. As a website designer, I love helping my clients develop a compelling online presence that captures and converts users.
But I know firsthand that only updating the layout and graphics of your site is not enough. Even the most beautifully designed and user-friendly sites will get missed if it doesn’t include a content strategy that engages both the audience and the algorithm.
Put simply; it’s critical to strategically leverage keywords, SEO, and blogs to ensure your new site gets the attention it deserves from the search engines.
Here’s how:
Keywords Best Describe Your Page Content
Keywords are important because they help describe the content on your pages. Start by doing some keyword research to find what terms are being used to find the products and services you provide. Google’s keyword planner offers an intuitive tool to perform this research and provides suggestions for other keywords you may find useful.
When researching keywords, put yourself in the mind of your customers. What might they be searching for — and how might they be searching for it? Some prospects may start their search with the problem, while others will start by searching for the solution (aka your product or service itself).
It’s important to think about different terms that might be used for the same thing. For example, some people may search for self-storage, others might call it mini-storage, and still others may use just storage units.
You’ll want to use these keywords throughout your site, but for the best keywords, you’ll want to use them in page titles (H1 tags), URLs, and meta descriptions.
SEO Increases Organic Discovery & High-Quality Website Traffic
Search engine optimization’s extensive practices and data deep dives can make it feel complex and overwhelming for business owners — but it doesn’t have to be. There are a few easy steps to take to ensure your website update hits the key elements of SEO, starting with your designated keywords. Once you know your focus words, it’s essential to create a strategy on how and where you’ll use them on your site to maximize impact.
First, always use the H tags appropriately (H1-6). Search engines see the H tags as an indication of importance in the content. You can think about these as a hierarchy of information or as levels of an outline. The H1 tag is the most important content, followed by H2, H3, and so on.
Pro Tip
Every page should only include a single H1 tag — typically, this is the page title.
Additionally, meta descriptions are another important part of SEO. These are short descriptions (approximately 150 characters) of the content on the page. The search engines display these descriptions to the user under the page title in the search results. If the description includes keywords that match the user’s search, it is likely to get a higher ranking.
Blogs Offer Fresh Content to Further Drive Visitors to Your Website
Fun fact about blogs: Most users don’t regularly check a company’s blog page looking for a new post — but that’s not really what blogs are used for anyway. Or, at least it shouldn’t be how you use your website’s blog page. Instead, your business site should use blogs as an opportunity to continually post fresh content that:
- Drives SEO ranking
- Expands on existing website information
- Answers customer questions
- Offers advice
- Establishes industry authority/expertise
Write blogs with a specific keyword or group of keywords as your guide to give users more information about a topic. These can be how-to articles, advice and tips, A vs B — the possibilities are truly endless.
Finally, make sure every blog on your site includes some kind of call-to-action. These blogs will be driving traffic to your site and you want to capitalize on that traffic. Get specific and tell your visitors exactly what the next steps are in the sales process to keep them moving forward towards a conversion.
Green Tulip Design Can Simplify The SEO Process
Green Tulip Design designs and updates websites using the very latest SEO strategies to maximize impact with both readers and search engines. Schedule a call today to learn more.
