Effective search engine optimization (SEO) - how to succeed!

Search engine optimization (SEO) can increase your opportunities to drive more traffic and gain new potential customers. We explain the pillars of SEO and give you 5 practical tips to effectively succeed with your on-page optimization.

Most people who come to your website have most likely started with a Google search. Users scan the top results to see if they find what they're looking for. If you don't appear immediately, there's a high risk you won't be found. There is therefore significant business value in ranking high on Google.

SEO is a long-term strategic effort that is often associated with work on your own website. Many probably think of keywords and meta descriptions. But it can actually be divided into three fundamental pillars, both on and off your own website. On-page, off-page and technical SEO all play an important role in ranking and visibility. In this article we first give an overview of the three areas. After that we provide concrete tips on how to effectively succeed with On-page SEO.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO is about what you do on your website. Broadly speaking, it’s about getting Google and your visitors to find you and understand what each individual page on the site is about. Being clear and strategic. Optimizing keywords/search terms in your text content is part of it. Since a good user experience helps both the user and Google find the right thing, on-page SEO also involves UX and design. It also includes internal linking and metadata. When you link to relevant pages internally on the site, you tell Google that the page is important from an SEO perspective.

Off-page SEO

Everything you do outside your website is called off-page SEO. One of the most important tools here is inbound links. These are links from other websites that refer to your site. When other websites link to your site, Google interprets it as a signal that your content is good. It creates trust that the search engine likes. The stronger the domain linking to you, the more valuable the link is. If you write good content for your site, the chances increase that other websites will link here. Shares and likes on social media also affect the ranking

Technical SEO

Users have become more demanding. They expect web pages to be mobile-friendly and load quickly. Google takes this into account. In recent years, technical SEO has emerged as an increasingly important piece of the puzzle. This refers to the site’s technical aspects, such as load time and rendering, sitemaps, robots.txt and response codes, to name a few. To be good at technical SEO you need to be good at understanding Google and their crawler Googlebot

5 practical tips for more effective on-page optimization

Several aspects affect how well you rank. By now you hopefully have a better grasp of the different pillars and what the differences are. Here we give practical tips that are good to keep in mind for your on-page optimization:

1. Do a keyword analysis

Not everything is always relevant from a keyword perspective. The keywords and pages that are important for the business should be prioritized. Examples of such pages are category or product pages and editorial articles. However, there is content that is important from other perspectives. Even if they are not directly tied to the business itself, they can help build credibility.

To know what to optimize, you should do a keyword analysis. Many companies often base their keywords on pure guesses—either what they think users search for, or how they themselves view their products and services. If you use the wrong words (words that no one searches for) you will miss out on potential customers. The goal is therefore to find out what users are searching for and match those terms with the ones you use on your site

2. Focus on more than just keywords

It can be difficult to rank highly for popular words. A rule of thumb is to focus on more specific keywords that are relevant to your particular products or services. If you sell hiking boots, that's what you should focus on rather than the keyword “shoes”. For the latter the competition is high and the likelihood of ending up at the top of the search results is low. At the same time you want to attract the right kind of customers — those who are actually interested in hiking boots

Best practice is to focus on one keyword per page, a so-called primary keyword. How often the keyword occurs also matters. It’s important not to “over-optimize” and include the same word too many times. At the same time you want to avoid having multiple pages on your website competing with each other. In addition to a primary keyword you can have secondary ones (for example synonyms) that complement and support

Users often search using questions and longer phrases (so-called long tail) that include “What”, “How”, “When”, “Who” and “Why”. Not least via voice search. Good web content should therefore answer as many questions as possible. Being able to answer your customers’ questions builds trust. It signals that you know what you’re doing. You don’t necessarily need to write the questions out as headings, as long as you answer them in one way or another

3. Write relevant content that creates value

It’s difficult to say exactly how long or short a particular text should be to top the search results. In general, quality is better than quantity. A text should contain enough to give the customer what they want. Focus on the value for the customer and explain the benefit

Share your knowledge. Write articles or guides that help customers with specific problems or help them make decisions. What users consider important and interesting is also favored by Google. If you notice that existing content isn’t working — change it! It’s okay to remove, add, or rewrite content to make it more relevant. If you have a list of 5 tips, you might over time expand it so that it includes 7 tips

4. Develop a plan – a keyword strategy

Working with SEO is not a one-time event after which you're finished. You need to continuously optimize your content. A keyword strategy helps you identify your most profitable keywords and then leverage them. Plan what you will improve and how you will follow up on the results. Measure and analyze so you know what has actually delivered results and what hasn't. You may discover that you lack content that is important to users. Good — then you know what to focus on more

5. Keep track of digital behaviours

Millions of searches are made on Google every day just in Sweden. People search to watch, listen, read and learn. They try to solve problems or compare products and services to make a decision. When they visit your website they come with different prior knowledge. They are in different contexts and their digital behaviours change over time. What was interesting yesterday may not be as interesting in a year. Or even in a month.

It's important to keep track of changing digital behaviours and be able to meet new needs as they arise. In our mini-series on digital transformation we tell you more about harnessing new digital opportunities

Summary

Find out what users are searching for and make sure to match your content to it. Change rarely happens overnight. Analyze and optimize continuously and be patient. Make a plan for what and how you will improve. That makes it easier to track progress and reach your goals. Get help from experts if you need advice or help getting started. Read up and use the free tools available to analyze and optimize.

At Limetta we know that the technical aspects of SEO are at least as important as the content-driven ones. We therefore work actively with all aspects in our projects. Do you need help with your SEO? Contact us and tell us about your challenges and we’ll be happy to help you.

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