Let’s assume you are a small business owner, and you want to have your own website as an online representation of your services. Even though finding someone to design a website for you is relatively easy nowadays, it doesn’t mean the people will start to pour in just because you have one. Having a well-optimized site can result in an outstanding ROI and investing in SEO is always a good move from a business perspective.

So, if you need some ideas or some tips on how to organize your SEO strategy, the following article might just help you out. Here, we will explore some of the tactics you should implement in your web design, during the content creation process, and we’ll go over some of the key points you should focus on during the SEO campaign.

Web design guide

The most generic advice that anyone gives you when you are starting your own line of work, is to create a website. Although there is nothing bad with this suggestion, it is still extremely vague; it doesn’t tell you anything concrete and you don’t know how to focus your efforts. So, here are some of the important things related to web design.

Using an adequate theme – It would be good to kick things off with a WordPress site, and with a corresponding WordPress theme. All you need to do is google “(type of your business) WordPress Theme” and you’ll get tons of options to choose from. WordPress has themes for magazine websites, blogging websites, picture sharing platforms, etc. Just make sure you pick a theme with good speed, since users are repulsed by websites that take more than 5 seconds to load.

Web hosting service – Again, loading speed is definitely one of the priorities here, and good web hosting should make sure that your loading speed is at its maximum. It would also be wise to distribute that content on more than one server. You see, server proximity is another factor that influences loading speed and if your content is uploaded on more servers, more users will have a better experience.

Domain Name – Since it’s in your interest to be displayed in search results after a particular query, you should pick a domain name that is related to the type of service you are offering. In other words, whatever you are selling should be in the name of your site.

Mobile Friendly design – A great number of users browse the web via smartphones, so if you incentivize scrolling on your pages. Simply add more relevant content to your home page, so that users can reach it by scrolling down, instead of tapping on buttons and going through categories.

Of course, these are just some things that you should consider a priority. There are more thorough guides related to web design. The point is to focus on creating a site where visitors will have a good experience, in order to minimize the bounce rate.

Content-based strategy

Another thing that will help you get noticed is good content. This means that you need to have pages that offer some valuable insight into the topic that is related to your line of work. Basically, you need to discover what your audience intends to see. This way, you’ll know how to organize your content. This is really easy to discover; just put yourself in the shoes of your customers and try to search for your kind of service, just like they would. You’ll see the top ranked content, whether it’s list type or round up type articles, how to tutorials, more formal and complex types of texts, etc. Once you know how your content should be organized, you are ready to move on to the next step.

The content that you discovered can be helpful during this step, as well. If those articles rank good and offer good insight, then you can read them, and see what important aspects of the topic they have covered. Basically, you’ll find other relevant words to use during content creation, to make your articles more rank worthy. Furthermore, you should use those sites from which you got the information as references because Google loves it when you use relevant links in your text.

Lastly, when you are writing something, you should make sure it is in the form of the so-called 10x content. This basically means that you should try and explore the niche from a perspective that was not covered so far. For example, if there are a lot of slideshows, infographics or top 10 articles that answer a particular question, you shouldn’t go with a “me too” approach. You will either say something that is already well known.

A good way would be to create a ranking list of the websites that readers should trust for this sort of information. You do some research of your own, and see whether the information on those sites is trustworthy; it’s what people did with movie review sites, and with various other services.

Keywords and topic relevance

If you have done your homework, you have probably noticed how there are some discrepancies on the issue of keywords and topic relevance. Namely, it’s still unclear whether keywords are more important than providing topic relevant information. The answer is both since you can create an incredibly useful content, but without the use of corresponding keywords, you are not going to rank well. Additionally, if you use good keywords, but have weak and useless content, chances are you’ll be regarded as a spammer.

There are numerous tools you can use to help find what kind of topics you should cover when you are ranking for a particular keyword or keyword phrase. Basically, you can see other relevant word phrases that are used on sites that rank for the desired keyword and phrases and words that are usually found in quality content on the web in general, that is, on sites that are not ranking for that particular word.

Once you have the list of words and phrases, you basically have a skeleton of how your content should look like and what it should include. Moreover, you should use tools that help you ascertain the difficulty of ranking for a particular keyword. It takes a little research, but in the end, you’ll have a better user experience and your content will have much more value.

Lastly, it is worth mentioning that, when you use keywords, you should be vigilant. Do not use it too many times and make sure that it is mentioned naturally throughout the text. Otherwise, you can be penalized. It would also be wise to use both the singular and plural form of the keyword and some of its synonyms.

Local SEO

Since you are starting small, you should be thinking more locally than globally. In other words, you should optimize for local searches. It would be wise to add the name of your town to the selected keyword (ex. Milwaukee dentist). Moreover, this means that you should look up local SEO companies to find who would do the best job in this field. They have the tools needed to discover which sites your consumers visit, and therefore, your site and your links will be adequately marketed. Bear in mind that the approximate minimal period for you to start seeing results is around 90 days or three months, so do not expect miracles after the first couple of weeks.

As long as you stick to the above mentioned guidelines that are related to content creation, the whole SEO process will be much smoother, and users who visit your site will probably stick around. Considering how user experience plays a crucial role, it would be wise to do this thoroughly. Otherwise, you won’t achieve what you have expected.

Important elements for boosting link value

Finally, it’s time to mention some of the important attributes that have an impact on the value of your links.

Domain Authority – If the site from which your link comes from has a high domain authority, your link will have more value. Therefore, it is imperative that you make a trustworthy site if you want your links to be accepted.

Follow and Nofollow links – Obviously, sites that offer follow links will give you positive points in terms of authority, but do not shy away from using no-follow links as well. If a website with a high domain authority offers no-follow links, but a lot of your customers visit those sites, then you should obviously go for it since any new visitor will be welcome.

Internal and external – External links generate way more authority, but with good internal linking, you can also score a few good points here and there. Also, if a lot of external links that lead to your page appear all of a sudden, you might appear suspicious, and receive a penalty from Google. So, tread lightly.

To sum up, SEO is not something that can be rushed and devoting time and effort to work out every detail will play in your favor. Just make sure that you create a site and content that users can enjoy and find useful, and use the right words and the right links to boost your value and rank worthiness.

Contributed byhttps://www.crowdreviews.com