Having an effective SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy in place is paramount to the success of your website or online business. Good SEO leads to free, organic traffic from the search engines, and it’s this traffic that you really want to be targeting. In this post we’ll be taking a look at some ways to develop an SEO strategy so you can vastly increase the number of organic visitors to your site.
What Is an SEO Strategy?
It’s about having a plan to increase the rankings of your website and its content in search engine results. Different strategies can be more effective for different niches, so it’s important to discover what generally works best for the niche or business you’re in. Spending time doing your research on this will be time well spent, as you’ll discover loads of handy tips.
Developing an SEO strategy will work as a guideline of what to do and when, with the overall aim of elevating your website and brand, improving your rankings over a period of time and keeping your content high in the search results.
You’ll develop a series of steps to take to make your site is more search engine-friendly.
The cool thing about anything to do with the online world, is there is bound to be some form of training you can do to learn the basics, at the very least.
If you know very little about SEO but want to learn, then a course is a good place to start.
Google and the other search engines still place emphasis on keywords that are relevant to your niche, so you’ll want to make a list of keyword phrases to target with your content in a bid to get on the first page of search results for that keyword.
Google Suggest will offer up some keyword ideas, as will any free or paid keyword research tools. Long tail keywords are better as they are less competitive. Try keyword phrases with 4 or more words in them.
Google Analytics helps you determine which pages of your site are getting the most traffic. Study these pages and see if you can determine what’s been done right as compared to pages that are getting little to no traffic.
Maybe you targeted keywords on the pages that are doing well, or they might have grown quite a few natural backlinks. Learning why one page works while another doesn’t can help you improve those pages that are under performing.
Consult With a SEO Specialist To Develop a Winning Strategy
If you have no idea about SEO or simply don’t have the time to develop and implement strategies, then get in touch with a SEO professional. A specialist SEO consultant will have the tools to analyse your website and determine where it can be improved and how, so it’s worth the investment.
How do you use link building to grow your website’s brand authority? Find out in the video below or read the transcript:
Video Transcript
Good day there, Ashley from WebsiteStrategies and AshleyBryan.com.au. Let’s have a quick chat about link building, page authority, building your brand and how that all sort of works in very simple terms. Okay. I’ve done a crude diagram here. So, let’s have a look. Here’s our website. You’ve got your home page. You’ve got some of your important pages hanging off it, your products or your services page. Key pages are important in your website. This page here may be particularly important to you, it’s your primary product or your services. It’s the one that you want to be ranking higher on Google. It’s your money page, it’s your main money page. You’ve also got a blog on your website and you’re posting blog posts up onto there quite regularly.
So, how do we use all this to grow our authority and how do we get these links that we know we need to improve our rankings? Okay. For start, we can do some internal linking. Okay? Google likes links. If we link to something from our own website or within our own website from one page to another, we obviously, want people to follow that link, but we are also telling Google that if we are linking to a certain page, then we think it’s important. We want to send people to that page. Therefore, we think it’s important. Therefore, Google goes, okay, that’s an important page.
So, if we have a blog post talking about something relevant to this important page or this post here, then it makes sense that we would link from this post here to our important page. Any person reading that post, one of our website visitors, they go, “Yeah, that’s great.” They read all about it. They click the link in there and they’d be taken to this important page and Google, when it crawls through our website and finds this post, Google will also see the link and see that the link points to this page and effectively what we are saying to Google is that this is a vote from ourselves within our website to this page and this page is important because we’re linking to it.
Now, if we have a number of posts linking to these important pages and we’ve got other pages that link to this page, then Google sees this pattern of links within our website pointing to an important page. And it, as in Google, then sees that page as being important and we’re more likely to rank for it. Now, we can help all this as well because if we create this post here and it’s an important post, we’re linking to our important page and we go off to our Facebook page and we link to that post, then, once again, it’s a vote for the post. So, we can see that we start to see some authority flowing around here.
Facebook itself, this post we added on has a little bit of authority, a little bit of that authority sort of flows down into this post and builds up that authority there. That authority as it’s building up also goes down this link to this page here, and this page then builds up authority. It becomes more important with Google. Obviously, social media is such that if you have a really good post on Facebook here then another Facebook page from someone else might link to yours and follow it or re-post it. And that means that we’ve got some authority flowing through here. We get this chain of authority working like that. And then someone on Twitter may also think that’s a great post and they link to that or maybe it’s our own Twitter page and someone else in someone else’s Twitter page, they link to that Twitter page.
So, we get this flowing of links going through there, a flowing of authority, and if we’re talking about our business in the social media channels and on these posts, it’s our brand being built as well. So, this is all using what we have, our own properties, our own social media channels, and our own blog to start to make pages on our website that we think are important, make Google see them as important as well through internal links and using social signals.
Now, what we also want to add into the mix in terms of links to our website are links from other websites. So, these are called back links from other websites. Now, the higher the importance or authority of the other websites that link to us, then the more powerful that link is and that makes our page more powerful and it’s more likely to rank. So, we want to acquire links from other websites that are relevant and local, ideally in the same country and get links on those websites through to our page. And that grows the authority of that app.
And potentially, this website will have the same thing happening as we do. They’ll have social … If this website here is actually a blog post on their website, then they may have social media links to their posts or they may have other websites linking to their website and to their posts and that links through to ours. And so, you see you get this network of links coming through of authority and importance or page rank, whatever you want to call. It starts to flow around. Google sees it and this all flows to our target page and pushes it up.
Now, if we do that to all of our important pages on our website then soon we’ve got lots of pages that are very important and lots of blog posts that are important and then Google starts to give our whole website importance. Lots of important content means that ultimately our website becomes important, it gets higher domain authority and the whole website starts to rank. Now, if you keep going with that and you’re building that authority up in a natural and powerful manner, then ultimately, your website can get such authority that you can add content to your website and it ranks for phrases that aren’t even on your website because Google understands what your website’s all about.
So, this is what your strategy is in terms of link building, in terms of building your authority and building up your brand strength on Google. And use your Google My Business and put the posts on there, use your social media to link to your website, mention your name, hashtags with your name in it, linking back to your website, interlinking between pages, between your blog, back to your pages, your money pages, and getting links from other websites through to that. And over a period of time, this will push up your authority and you’ll start to rank better. That is where it is at.
Let me know if you need help with anything at all or if you have any questions or if you want me to do a quick explanatory video to help you understand any aspect of SEO you like. Thanks very much. Bye.
How do you use link building to grow your website’s brand authority? Find out in the video below or read the transcript:
Video Transcript
Good day there, Ashley from WebsiteStrategies and AshleyBryan.com.au. Let’s have a quick chat about link building, page authority, building your brand and how that all sort of works in very simple terms. Okay. I’ve done a crude diagram here. So, let’s have a look. Here’s our website. You’ve got your home page. You’ve got some of your important pages hanging off it, your products or your services page. Key pages are important in your website. This page here may be particularly important to you, it’s your primary product or your services. It’s the one that you want to be ranking higher on Google. It’s your money page, it’s your main money page. You’ve also got a blog on your website and you’re posting blog posts up onto there quite regularly.
So, how do we use all this to grow our authority and how do we get these links that we know we need to improve our rankings? Okay. For start, we can do some internal linking. Okay? Google likes links. If we link to something from our own website or within our own website from one page to another, we obviously, want people to follow that link, but we are also telling Google that if we are linking to a certain page, then we think it’s important. We want to send people to that page. Therefore, we think it’s important. Therefore, Google goes, okay, that’s an important page.
So, if we have a blog post talking about something relevant to this important page or this post here, then it makes sense that we would link from this post here to our important page. Any person reading that post, one of our website visitors, they go, “Yeah, that’s great.” They read all about it. They click the link in there and they’d be taken to this important page and Google, when it crawls through our website and finds this post, Google will also see the link and see that the link points to this page and effectively what we are saying to Google is that this is a vote from ourselves within our website to this page and this page is important because we’re linking to it.
Now, if we have a number of posts linking to these important pages and we’ve got other pages that link to this page, then Google sees this pattern of links within our website pointing to an important page. And it, as in Google, then sees that page as being important and we’re more likely to rank for it. Now, we can help all this as well because if we create this post here and it’s an important post, we’re linking to our important page and we go off to our Facebook page and we link to that post, then, once again, it’s a vote for the post. So, we can see that we start to see some authority flowing around here.
Facebook itself, this post we added on has a little bit of authority, a little bit of that authority sort of flows down into this post and builds up that authority there. That authority as it’s building up also goes down this link to this page here, and this page then builds up authority. It becomes more important with Google. Obviously, social media is such that if you have a really good post on Facebook here then another Facebook page from someone else might link to yours and follow it or re-post it. And that means that we’ve got some authority flowing through here. We get this chain of authority working like that. And then someone on Twitter may also think that’s a great post and they link to that or maybe it’s our own Twitter page and someone else in someone else’s Twitter page, they link to that Twitter page.
So, we get this flowing of links going through there, a flowing of authority, and if we’re talking about our business in the social media channels and on these posts, it’s our brand being built as well. So, this is all using what we have, our own properties, our own social media channels, and our own blog to start to make pages on our website that we think are important, make Google see them as important as well through internal links and using social signals.
Now, what we also want to add into the mix in terms of links to our website are links from other websites. So, these are called back links from other websites. Now, the higher the importance or authority of the other websites that link to us, then the more powerful that link is and that makes our page more powerful and it’s more likely to rank. So, we want to acquire links from other websites that are relevant and local, ideally in the same country and get links on those websites through to our page. And that grows the authority of that app.
And potentially, this website will have the same thing happening as we do. They’ll have social … If this website here is actually a blog post on their website, then they may have social media links to their posts or they may have other websites linking to their website and to their posts and that links through to ours. And so, you see you get this network of links coming through of authority and importance or page rank, whatever you want to call. It starts to flow around. Google sees it and this all flows to our target page and pushes it up.
Now, if we do that to all of our important pages on our website then soon we’ve got lots of pages that are very important and lots of blog posts that are important and then Google starts to give our whole website importance. Lots of important content means that ultimately our website becomes important, it gets higher domain authority and the whole website starts to rank. Now, if you keep going with that and you’re building that authority up in a natural and powerful manner, then ultimately, your website can get such authority that you can add content to your website and it ranks for phrases that aren’t even on your website because Google understands what your website’s all about.
So, this is what your strategy is in terms of link building, in terms of building your authority and building up your brand strength on Google. And use your Google My Business and put the posts on there, use your social media to link to your website, mention your name, hashtags with your name in it, linking back to your website, interlinking between pages, between your blog, back to your pages, your money pages, and getting links from other websites through to that. And over a period of time, this will push up your authority and you’ll start to rank better. That is where it is at.
Let me know if you need help with anything at all or if you have any questions or if you want me to do a quick explanatory video to help you understand any aspect of SEO you like. Thanks very much. Bye.
Just about anyone who has a website and has looked into good SEO practices will have heard things about duplicate content. When it comes to duplicate content, the reports are rarely positive. It’s true, you can find duplicate content when searching Google or other search engines, but generally this content is in the news category, rather than on business or personal websites.
Let’s look more closely at duplicate content to determine whether it’s an issue or not.
Is Duplicate Content An SEO Myth?
Duplicate content is not a myth. It’s a real thing and something that can affect the performance of your site in search engines. The reason you keep hearing about original content and duplicate content when it comes to SEO is because it does have an impact on how well your content and your website rank overall when people input relevant search terms.
Okay, so the duplicate content problem is not a myth, but why is it a problem for search engines and what happens if your website contains duplicate or copied content?
Why Google Doesn’t Like Duplicate Content
To begin with, if you simply copy and paste content from another website, you are in breach of copyright. The person who owns the content/site owns the copyright, unless they’ve expressively given permission for people to freely copy it and redistribute the content.
This can be one reason why search engine giant Google frowns upon duplicate content.
Also, Google is always trying to supply the best content for the search queries typed into its search engine algorithm. Google filters search results and generally tends to remove duplicate content from the results, favouring the content that was uploaded the earliest, considering this to be the original content.
Google doesn’t want to serve up the exact same content multiple times, as the search engine views this as contrary to providing the very best results for end users.
Will Duplicate Content Result In a Penalty Against Your Site?
So, we know that duplicate content is a thing and search engines don’t favour it, but will having duplicate content on your website (either your own content duplicated or someone else’s content) result in you getting a Google penalty?
In a way, yes, but not a harsh penalty like having your website deindexed or something as extreme as that. Generally, the “penalty” will be that you duplicate content doesn’t feature in the search results. Instead, it’s likely to be filtered out.
Having said that, if your entire website is full of duplicate content and content copied and scraped from other sources, Google may view this type of website as being of little or no value, and therefore not index the site at all.
The Takeaway
While there might be the odd occasion to feature duplicate content on your website, it’s a much safer practice to always feature only original content to give your site every chance of performing well in search engine results.
If your content is original, at least you can rest easy and not have to give a second thought to duplicate content and any ramifications as a result.
There are many factors that can make up positive SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for a website. Quality content and posting regular content is definitely a major player. Developing a good linking structure – internally, externally (in the form of backlinks) – is another very powerful way of achieving good rankings in the search engines.
In fact, there are numerous things website owners, employees and SEO specialists can do to improve a website’s SEO overall, but in this article, we’re going to devote some space to the importance of page loading speed.
Is page speed a key component to good SEO? Does it really matter if your website is slow to load?
Speed Is Vital In An Impatient World
As society becomes more high-tech and the population gets more and more used to instant gratification and results, people have become way less patient; particularly when it comes to anything related to technology. We expect speed and we want rapid results all the time.
Even if Google and co didn’t care less about how fast the pages of your website load, the people visiting your site do. If they search for certain information and content from your site shows up, when they click the link, if the page takes a long time to load, the visitor will become impatient, click off your site and visit a faster site with similar information.
What this means for you, the website owner of a slow site, is that you’re going to lose traffic and lose potential customers and business. This is the exact opposite of what you want to achieve. You want your website to attract visitors and keep them coming back.
So, regardless of what the search engines do or don’t care about, page speed is vital from a visitor perspective and from the viewpoint of website owners.
Does Google Rank Sites Based On Page Loading Speed?
Yes, Google does use page speed as a ranking factor. It’s built into the Google algorithms to monitor page loading speeds when the bots crawl websites. In fact, page speed ranks highly on the list of requirements for SEO and how it ranks websites.
If your website is suffering from poor loading speeds, this is something that needs to be addressed. Perhaps it’s just a couple of pages that are slow to load. If that’s the case, it’s not necessarily a major issue, but if many pages on your site take forever to open, or your entire website is slow, you’ve got major problems.
Slow websites are not going to rank highly, so you’ll be missing out on loads of traffic due to both poor rankings, as well as impatient visitors.
Reasons for slow loading speeds vary, but often it will have something to do with a feature-heavy website theme, or images that are large in size.
Speed Up Your Website With Expert SEO Services
If you don’t know how to improve your website’s speed, consult with a SEO expert. They’ll be able to pinpoint the problem and put in motion a plan to resolve the issue.
