February 7, 2019 By Elisa Abbott, Guest Author

Today, almost every off-line and online business has a website. According to the Netcraft’s survey, there are 1,805,260,010 sites across 213,053,157 unique domain names in the world. So, it’s no wonder that you find it challenging to beat a fierce competition and get your website to appear at the top of the Google search results. If you want to optimize your website, you should learn what SEO is all about. Let’s start with some basic SEO tips, which will help you to achieve the first positive results.



Check uniqueness

First of all, you should make sure that all content is 100% unique. You should also write everything from scratch whether it’s a 50-words page description or 2,000-words blog post. If you ever decide to copy or rewrite content from the Internet to cut the expenses, Google will notice your fraud activity. Your website will be penalized and placed on the 20th page of the search results. It’s highly unlikely that you will get any organic traffic.

In other words, if you build your strategy on stolen content, you will be doomed to failure. To achieve success, you should invest all your time, money and efforts in original content production. And remember that if you don’t have an in-house content creator and you buy texts online, you should utilize the plagiarism checkers for the quality control.

grammarly Image via Grammarly


Choose keywords wisely

You can optimize your content if start using high volume keywords with low competition. To find the most profitable keywords, you should conduct deep research using Google Trends, SEMrush, or Ubersuggest. To make it clear, let’s consider the following example.

Imagine that you sell the resistance bands at your online store and want to write a new blog post, which will explain how to use your product. Which focus keyword will you choose? According to the Ubersuggest’s analysis, if you use the initial keyword “resistance band” there is a 24% chance that you can rank in the top 20.

But if you pick a keyword “resistance band legs workout” or “resistance band workout for legs” your chances will rise to 74% and 88% respectively. This example demonstrates that you can save money and achieve higher results simply choosing low competition keyword.


Neil Patel

Image via NeilPatel.com



Proofread twice

Keep in mind that textual content must be perfect in terms of grammar. Otherwise, Google will consider the quality of your content as poor and will penalize your website. If it happens, it will take you a lot of time to get your site back to the top of the search results page.

To protect your site from Google penalties, you should proofread texts more attentively. You can hire a freelance proofreader, utilize editing services, or double-check the quality of every piece of content by yourself. Also, you can use online grammar checkers to boost your efforts.



Localize content

According to the recent marketing report, 92.2% of all shoppers worldwide prefer to make purchases at the online stores, which set prices in local currencies. The report also states that 75% of users choose to shop in their native language. So, if you optimize content for local SEO, you will kill two birds with one stone: meet customers’ expectations and make Google love your site.

To perform the content localization process, you will need to get professional assistance. There are two options:

  • You can use one of the popular freelance platforms like Upwork and Fiverr to find experts in content localization from all over the world. Choosing this option, you will be able to review hundreds of profiles, and then hire the best candidates online.
Upwork

Image via Upwork

  • Also, you can visit PickWriters, a translation review website, and choose a localization company, which you can trust. This approach will allow you to look through real customer reviews and make the right choice.
Pickwriters

Image via Pickwriters



Use visuals

Users’ satisfaction is the most important Google ranking factor. So, if you want to optimize your content, you should think about the needs and preferences of your target audience. You should create fascinating visual content, which will engage, inform, educate, and entertain the users.

Depending on the niche, in which you operate, you may use photos, vector images, videos, infographics, charts, quizzes or any other type of visual and interactive content. Your task is to make visitors stay on your webpage for longer. Extending the session time, you increase chances of getting your website to the top of Google.



Compress media files

However, you should understand that adding various uncompressed media files, you make your website heavier. It results in the drop of the load speed and, consequently, in a rise of the bounce rate. The problem is obvious – when your site loads too slowly, impatient users leave a page before it’s fully loaded.

Fortunately, you can solve this issue with the help of free image compression tools fast and easily. It will allow you to make pictures lightweight while keeping the quality and resolution on a pretty high level.



Name images and videos

Uploading images and videos on your website make sure that they have adequate names. In case, if you leave the initial names like “IMG_1983” and “CAN_01254”, Google will not display your photos in the results of the image search.

Keep in mind that the name of the picture must be relevant and descriptive. For instance, the following photo should be titled as “acro_yoga_couple_poses” or “man_and_woman_doing yoga_outside”. If the focus keyword of the concrete page fits the description of the image, the name should start from this keyword.

Acro yoga



Wrapping up

There are more than 200 Google ranking factors, and it’s too challenging to build a content strategy, which will meet all the requirements. However, it’s pretty easy to complete basic content optimization simply following the most important SEO rules.

Whether you have a background in SEO and marketing or not you can get your website to appear at the top of the Google search results. Today, you have access to a bunch of helpful online tools and services, which will facilitate your working process.

Elisa_Abbott_About_Author

More from the
DO Blog