Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, plays a pivotal role in online business marketing. SEO aims to improve your website ranking in Google and other search engines. Achieving this goal can directly contribute to an increased awareness of your client’s brand, more traffic to their website, and more potential customers for them. So if your client wants more online customers, utilizing SEO is one of the best first steps they can take.
SEO requires a multi-pronged approach, so whether you’re a web developer or a content writer VA, you will likely be looped into your client’s SEO strategies at some point. This is why knowing at least the basics of SEO can really help you become a much better virtual assistant.
To help you understand the basics of good SEO, here are 5 SEO tips that will boost website traffic.
- There are no shortcuts and cheap tricks.
Anyone who says that they can guarantee the top spot on Google doesn’t know a thing about SEO. When it comes to optimizing for search engines, there are no guaranteed tactics or easy ways to reach the top spot. The algorithm that Google and other search engines use to determine what website should be the first result for a particular search phrase is very complicated. There’s no such thing as a single tactic that will ensure that a specific website gets the top spot in organic search results.
- High-quality content is always the way to go.
Keyword-enriched content plays a major role in any good SEO strategy, but the quality of the content matters as well. Stuffing keywords into a page won’t do any good. Google knows whether an article or any other type of web content is actually readable for humans or if it’s just written with tons of keywords to fool search engines into thinking it’s good content.
Shareability is a factor in SEO as well. If your content constantly gets shared and visited or linked to by other reputable websites, it’s more likely to show up high on search engine results pages or SERPs.
- Speed is super important.
A website that loads faster is deemed better by Google in terms of search results. If you’re a web developer VA, ensuring that your client’s website loads as fast as possible should be one of your priorities.
- Mobile-first is the trend.
Whether it’s design, UX, or content, everything is now done with the mobile experience in mind. With more and more people accessing the internet through their mobile phones, Google has also made the mobile internet their priority. Websites that are not mobile friendly get penalized while websites that offer optimum mobile experience get boosted on search results.
- Meta tags are underappreciated gems.
Meta tags include title tags, keyword tags, meta descriptions, etc. They don’t appear on the page itself, but they are in the page’s code and Google checks those tags and gives weight to their value. They are a good way to target certain keywords and signal to Google what the page is all about.
When it comes to SEO, different approaches produce various results for each type of business. What can work for one business might not be as effective for another. The habits mentioned above just offer the basic guidelines of what good SEO entails, but your client and their online marketing team might employ different tactics.
Author Bio:
Catherine vanVonno is the President and CEO of 20four7VA, a trusted remote staffing company. She oversees the overall growth and success of the company, leads the short and long-term strategies, and manages the company’s finances. She also directs the management team when it comes to daily operations, brand management and marketing, client relations, strategic planning, and business development areas.
