If you’d think about big cities in the United States where you can always see a thriving business landscape, continuing to provide rich opportunities for various career paths, New York City would be on the top rank. There’s no question to it—it’s the first thing that would come to mind. But with these diverse career and business opportunities comes the challenge on how you can standout in a bustling city that’s heavily congested with tough competition. Some of which have been around in their industry for, say, 20, 30 years or more. So, they’re really no-joke.
The answer for that is effective marketing which comes in various forms. One of which is online marketing which can be niched down in several categories. Apparently, the cheapest yet highly effective form on that kind is search engine optimization (SEO). For beginners, how can you make your website more SEO-friendly?
1. Create a visually-arresting website that best represents your brand, user-friendly, and consistent in what it’s all about
How many times have you cringed as you stumbled upon a website with eye-irking color combinations, plain wall of text, and boring photos? How many times have you been annoyed in a website that doesn’t provide the valuable information you’re looking for?
That’s not the kind of website you’d likely want to create for your brand. Those kinds obviously lack proper planning and execution of ideas. There’s no need to hurry in the initial planning stages of designing your website. In fact, it takes a lot of work and preparation before you can actually get your hands dirty with the website building process.
For example, what are your definite, detailed answers on the following questions: What is your brand all about? To whom was it designed for? Who are your direct competitors? What is unique about their brand? How does their website represent their brand name, values, and attitude? How would you create a mobile version of your site?
You need to give those questions and a lot more some careful thought on the pre-design stages to be able to create a website that effectively communicates about your brand, visually appealing to your target readers, consistent about your brand identity, and user-friendly across multiple types of devices. Read more ideas here.
2. Plan the creation of high-quality, error free content in various forms
Various types of content are the building blocks of a great website. Because, really, how can you call it a website without relevant content that communicates what the brand is all about to its readers?
These days, people surf the web for whatever information and they want to consume it in various forms that help them learn more about a certain subject in a way they could enjoy. The major types of content we enjoy are articles, photos, and videos. Nothing beats high-quality content in whatever form, in generating organic traffic for your website which in turn, improves your ranking on search engines.
Specifically, search engines put higher value on longform articles. Apparently though, we don’t want to publish 1000-word articles just for the sake of publishing. We aim for something that teaches, effectively communicates, inspires, and motivates to make the right actions. The technical aspects aren’t something to be overlooked, too. Articles should be written in proper format and layout for better readability.
And oh, pay attention to the proper usage of title tags, header tags, meta description tag, and image ALT tags.
3. Stick to white hat techniques
There are two major types of SEO practices: white hat and black hat techniques. White hat techniques are those that are legally and ethically accepted, while black hat techniques are the exact opposite. Black hat techniques will most likely earn you penalties from Google, which is why, you better steer clear from any of those. These include keyword stuffing, article spinning, link farming, and keyword spamming. Talk to a NYC SEO company-#1 firm to find out what SEO practices are ethically and legally accepted.
4. Earn inbound links from authoritative sites
When websites that search engines regard as authoritative puts in links to your site in their content, you’ll have better chances of increasing your site traffic and improving your search engine rankings.
How do you do that though? One of the ways we do that is to partner with those authoritative websites by guest posting.
Find out more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2018/02/14/the-7-best-ways-to-earn-links-for-your-content/#2335730d413e
5. Conduct thorough research on keywords and topics relevant to your target readers
This is where clearly defining your target readers becomes more useful. For you to be able to get insights on what topics you should work on as you create your content, you need to understand what your readers need. What questions do they frequently look up in the search engines? What information do they need to know? What are the exact keywords they type in the search field for the subjects they’re interested in?
As you gain clear, specific ideas on those subjects, you’ll be able to plan better content ideas in your editorial calendar.
Now is the time you start planning how you can execute good SEO practices as you create your website. Doing so can help your brand standout in a huge sea of competition in New York.
. For beginners, how can you make your website more SEO-friendly?){kind=link}