If you are a startup, SEO or Search Engine Optimization might be the last thing on your mind! Here are few things you could do to get started with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your Startup:
1. Identify Target Keywords
“Think about what a user is going to type” — Matt Cutts
The foundation to an SEO strategy is the keywords used within your website. Keywords are relevant words and phrases related to the topic of your website’s content. When strategically placed within website content, search engines index your site based on the keywords to generate search results when user types in a related search query.
Make a list of all products and services you offer. How do you refer to them? How do potential clients and customers refer to them? Come up with as many combinations of phrases as you can manage.
Use Google Keyword Planner tool to get additional keyword ideas. Conduct keyword research to find the most appropriate keywords that have the potential to raise the visibility of your website on search engines.
Once you have a hefty list, integrate these search terms into the content of your website, in the HTML tags as well as the links. This will help search engines understand what your website is about.
2. Create Page Title Tags
Next to content, page titles are the second most important onsite SEO element. Write a unique title tag for each page, using one or more target keywords you’ve assigned to that page. Be sure to include your business name. Keep the entire title tag under 60 characters.
3. Develop Meta Description
Many people forget to include meta descriptions for their pages. Meta descriptions provide a brief summary of the webpage’s content to tell search engines users what your page is about.
Write a unique meta description for each webpage, using one or more target keywords you’ve assigned to that page. Keep the entire meta description under 155 characters.
Heading tags used to highlight various headings, sub-headings and important points on web page. Most CMS’s (like WordPress) automatically add the H1 tag to your blog post title. If that’s the case, you’re all set. You don’t need to use any more H1 tags anywhere in the article. One is enough. For section breaks, stick to H2 and H3 tags. Also, don’t use too many H2 or H3 tags as Google’s algorithms won’t like that.
Make sure you write keyword rich headings in the order of priority in H1, H2 and H3 title tags. They are used by many crawlers to differentiate important content.
Listen what Google’s Matt Cutts has to say about repeating heading tags:
5. Optimize Images on Website
Image optimization does help a lot in driving traffic from image searches.
Keywords in the “image title” and the “alt text” help to make your blog post more focused and targeted.
But more important than that:
Images create engagement.
Content that contains images receive as much as 94 percent more views than those without; the more engaged a user is, the more likely they’ll stick around, thus increasing your overall rank.
One very important point to note. Large images will slow down your site, and slow loading site will decrease your Google rank. So, it is important to keep file size small to promote a fast load time as 40 percent of people will leave a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Here’s a nice infographic from Kissmetrics explaining how loading time affects your ranking.
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