If you are a business owner, it is necessary to own a website to keep up with competitors, and hiring a Singapore SEO agency is a prudent move. In this day and age where Hummingbird, Penguin, and Panda algorithms dictate the game flow, obtaining a good ranking for your target keywords requires a systematic approach and strategic search engine optimization (SEO). To be blunt, SEO remains as formidable as ever despite some claims that it is already dead.
Here are the seven important steps that you must follow to gain better keyword ranking.
Step #1: Research the Right Keywords to Use
Having the right keywords to use is important in optimizing your site, and you need to search for the most suitable ones to use. You need to do the following:
– You can start with a keyword list to create a keyword portfolio. Present your list of keywords in a spreadsheet (Google drive sheet or Excel) that also includes the keywords that your competitors are using.
– From your site’s Google Webmaster Tools or GWT, extract the keywords that leave deep impressions and add them to your spreadsheet.
– You can use BrightEdge Data Cube to do a search on your website for keywords that rank and add them to your spreadsheet. Do the same to the website of your competitors.
– Use Google’s Keyword Planner Tool to search and discover more keywords you can use and add them to your list.
– Arrange the keywords according to categories, such as news, services, and products.
Step #2: Create Your Optimized Site Structure
An optimized site structure can help search engines understand your site’s intention. Organizing the structure of your site based on targeted keywords and categories can help the search engines match your site to the user’s query. You need to:
– Make the overarching theme of your website clear by including your more general keywords.
– Define the main categories and subcategories according to specific keywords.
– Include long-tail and more refined keywords to optimize each web page.
Step #3: Conduct SEO Content Audit
This is actually an optional step, but it helps a lot in assessing the content that does not contribute anything to your ranking and the ones that perform well. It can help you create better content using the keywords that rank.
From your content audit, you need to move the data you’ve culled to a spreadsheet and organize them. You must analyze the page speed, conversions, bounce rates, organic visits, and page views.
You need to concentrate on the performance of the web pages that are vital to your business. You also need to monitor your blog posts and measure their Facebook shares, Google +1s and shares, amount and quality of backlinks, and tweets and retweets. The search engines also refer to these things to determine the credibility of your content and your authority to give relevant timely content.
Step #4: Create an Optimized Content
To create optimized content, you need to:
– Try to write more than 250 words to give your target, relevant keywords the optimization they need. However, you need to avoid fluffy content and keyword stuffing.
– Make sure to produce unique content, and you should not replicate your Meta description even though the content is the continuation of your previous one.
– The video and images that you will use must have written titles, tags, and descriptions that provide correct information for search engines to understand their contents.
– When structuring the heading and subheading, use the hierarchy of H1, H2, and H3 tags.
– Take advantage of using internal links to connect your web pages when applicable.
– Create and present an XML sitemap that informs the search engines about the content of each page of your website.
Step #5: Create Link Earning
You can do link earning when you create content that others want to express a vote of confidence or associate themselves via linking out to it. The inbound links may be to your blog post, services page, products page, or home page. You also need to manage your backlinks and make sure that you can get a substantial amount of quality backlinks.
Step #6: Manage Your Social Media
Having good exposure and building a good reputation on numerous social media platforms can help you create an image that you are the right authority to consult regarding a particular niche. The number of shares and site visitors after your audience read your posts in your social media accounts can make you look good in the eyes of the search engines, like Google.
Step #7: Track Your Performance
It is not enough to just do the first six steps and just sit idly while waiting. It is imperative to track your performance. You can seek some help from an SEO agency that uses an array of analytics and reporting tools to do the job. You need to know which web page needs further optimization, keywords that truly rank and those that don’t do much, and other things that can help you improve your website.
To maintain or gain a good ranking, you need to re-visit each step at a certain period of time to keep the best SEO content performance.