Marcus Richards
Starting up a business is an exciting time, but it is also full of challenges. Whilst you’ve no doubt got plenty of those challenges on your mind at the moment, one of the really important ones that likely needs tackling is search engine optimization. Almost all businesses need an online presence nowadays and if you’re going to make yours work for you then you need to have a well-optimized site. It can seem a little daunting at first, but taking even the first step will help you to generate results. We’ve pulled together some of the most important SEO tips that even complete beginners will be able to implement on their site. So, pay attention if your startup’s website isn’t quite pulling in those clicks yet.
Boosting Those Backlinks
Making sure that your site is being linked to regularly is a great way to boost your SEO. There are multiple methods of going about this and using a combination of them all is the most effective. The first is getting your site reviewed. If you’re a business then this is a real win-win, as you can show off your site to prospective clients, as long as it’s well reviewed and you can get those all-important links in there too. A sector that does this really well is the online gaming sector, with whole sites dedicated to providing reviews on the best gaming websites to use. For example, VegasSlotsOnline has a whole section dedicated to real money online slots where they rate and review hundreds of different online casinos on a wide range of criteria, before giving them a star rating and most importantly, including a link to their website. While you might not be approaching a casino review company for a review of your business, finding one of the leading reviewers in your sector and asking to be reviewed will yield the same results.
If you feel you’ve exhausted the back-linking potential of reviews then it’s time to move on to the second option which is guest blogging. Finding sites that fit at least somewhat within your sector and asking if they offer guest blogging spots is the best place to start on this tip. Once you’ve found a site that will let you blog for them it’s time to craft some engaging content. You should give the same care and attention to this content as you would any that you’d place on your own site, but as well as this, be sure to link to your own website within the body of the text. The link itself should feature a keyword from the next step of your SEO plan. It should also be inserted in a way that’s genuinely valuable to the reader, which brings us on neatly to the next point in the plan, working on your own content.
Become the Authority
Search engine crawlers spend time poring over all of the content on every site there to try and find content that is cohesive, informative and unique. As the tech in these crawlers has improved, so too has their ability to spot genuinely interesting writing from content that is not a whole lot more than a jumble of keywords. This means that your job hasn’t become harder, it’s just changed somewhat. Now, the best way to get to the top of those search results is to carefully research your keywords (which we’ll get onto next) and use them in a way that flows naturally with the text and actually answers the queries of people using the search engine. Think of it as becoming the authority on a topic. If you’re going to write a blog post then make sure you either already know an awful lot about the subject, or you’re willing to become a specialist by researching it thoroughly.
Once you know everything there is to know, craft a piece with helpful subheadings, interesting and properly formatted pictures, and a smattering of words and search terms that people will be using. Not only will search engine crawlers rank your writing accordingly, but if your content is good enough then other sites will start linking to it naturally.
Keyword Research
Finally, a small mention for keywords. Unfortunately, there’s no substitute for keyword research, but doing it properly will yield results. There are all kinds of different tools that you can use to help you, but WordStream can be a good place to start. This tool is completely free and will allow you to search for different combinations of words, at the same time giving you information on how many people are searching for them, as well as the competition for your phrases.
