People frequently use search engines and social media to discover products and make buying decisions. So, it is important that your website is on the first page of Google.

How do you get your business to rank in search results? Businesses usually end up spending money on hiring an expensive SEO service without seeing any visible difference.

Search engine optimization is a crucial marketing channel for a small business. If you are not investing sensibly in it, you will nowhere be able to achieve customers online.

It is always a good option to start with SEO when you have the idea of building a website for your business. A reliable web design and development company will give importance to SEO throughout the design and development stage and build an SEO-ready website so that it is easy for you to continue your efforts in getting the website ranked high in the search engine results.

We have put together a few SEO strategies that you can use on your website.

1. Keyword Strategy

Keywords are what your customers type on the search engine to find your business-related products or services or any information related to them. Your keyword strategy should focus on two customer groups. One is those who are ready to make a buying decision. These are at the end of the sales channel. The other is those who are at the top of the sales channel and are searching for just a little information regarding products or services.

Short-tail keywords:

Short-tail keywords directly address your business. For example, you offer SEO service online and someone types “website SEO services”, this is a short-tail keyword for which you would like to rank higher because there are more chances of the customer clicking on your website link in the search page results.

Long-tail keywords:

Long-tail keywords aren’t necessarily those that contain more words. These keywords have lesser search volume because they are more specific to the user’s search intent. For the same example above, a long-tail keyword would be “which is the best SEO services for my website?” or “where can I get the best SEO service for my website?” or “search engine optimization services”. Since Google auto-suggests when we are typing, the short-tail keywords have a higher search volume.

Keyword research:

The first step in keyword research is to understand how customers search for your business. There are many keyword finder tools available online, but it would be best to hire professional SEO services. The search engine results are becoming more competitive. With more and more companies performing keyword bidding and content marketing, it’s worth investing in SEO services from a professional web design and development company. They find out relevant keywords and use them on your website in content, meta title, description, alt text, and more to help your website improve its search engine visibility. The search volume of the keywords and their competition are taken into consideration. If you are just starting out, target those keywords with considerable volume but medium or low competition. Ranking for high-volume keywords is not impossible, but it takes time and effort to reach there.

2. Optimize your website

Once you have collected a set of keywords in which you intend to rank, the next step is to insert these keywords tactfully into your website and optimize it for ranking. In search engine optimization, your emphasis has to be on these key areas-

Title tags:

This is your page description that appears within the tab of your webpage in the search results. The focus keywords should be absolutely used in the title tag as it carries a lot of weight.

Header tags:

This refers to the header tags that we use on-site with the H1-H6 text formatting. H1 and H2 are most important so make sure they appear on every page of your site

Page copy:

Use short-tail keywords throughout the website but use them in such a way that the copy flows fluidly while incorporating the keywords.

URL structure:

Highlight the focus keyword in the page URL. Make sure the words of the URL are separated by hyphens and written in lowercase.

Images:

Include an ‘alt text’ tag and image ‘title’ tag for every picture on your website. Make sure you name it with relevant keywords. Write a short description of the image in the title tag.

Meta descriptions:

The meta description is the lines of text that appear below the clickable link in the search engine results. It is necessary that you fill in the meta description information otherwise, Google will select the copy directly from the web page.

Each of these parameters necessary to optimize your website for ranking can be managed by a professional SEO service provider.

3. Content creation

There is no SEO without content. They go together and help in getting a good ranking for your website.

Professional blogs:

A business blog is the best way to create new content for your short-tail and long-tail keywords. The more content you create with relevant keywords, the greater your chances of getting ranked in the search engine results. It is a proven formula to get more traffic by sharing regular posts.

Landing pages:

Other than the homepage, make sure that your website has at least 5-10 landing pages. This can be the product collection page or services page. Think beyond the About Us and Contact Us page and create pages utilizing the keywords thoroughly.

Testimonials & case studies:

Gather reviews from your clients. They usually feature keywords in them and it is a great way to boost website traffic. Similarly, write case studies showing visitors how you solved customer challenges. It also helps them showcase your services and helps them to understand why they should use your business.

Why hire professional SEO services?

Although a lot of information on SEO is available online today, there is no one-solution-fits-all strategy. You have to constantly work on it and find which works best for your business. Here, is where SEO services come in handy. They are experts in search engine optimization and with their robust experience, they will help increase the visibility of your website.

They come in when you hire the services of a web development company to build strategies and incorporate them in the design and development stage of your website. They use advanced tools and techniques to boost searches locally and across the globe.

Houston IT Developers are experts in SEO and its team focuses on website optimization to ensure high ranking of the site on the search engine results page and also, get a huge amount of traffic.