It can sometimes be challenging to know how exactly to go about SEO for your website. This is especially true, if you are new to search engine optimization and are just starting out and want to put out some content. That’s why we wanted to chart down some absolute basic guidelines for SEO best practices that are super simple and you can’t go wrong by following them. In case you want to take SEO to a new level though, best way to go is to hire an SEO expert.
Do your keyword research first
Before any writing, it is important to do at least basic keyword research and be mindful of search volumes and difficulty of potential keywords to target. That way you can pick the keywords that have enough volume and are not too difficult to rank for. It’s best to pick 1-3 keywords for each article or blog post. It is also important to look at competitors that rank well on targeted keywords. The goal is to make your content for the same keyword more comprehensive and with higher added value for the visitor.
What can you use to do your research? You can use a professional tool like SemRUSH or Ahrefs, but they all come with a decent price tag. A very simple and free alternative for a beginner is simply using Google Ads Keyword planner. Generally it’s meant for paid search advertising, but it will get the job done for SEO as well.
Basic and simple SEO writing guidelines
Once you have the target keyword, use it, but don’t overdo it. Using your keyword too often can actually lead to negative effects. Using it once every 300-400 words is more than enough. The only reason for using it more often than that is if it would make the content more user friendly. So basically, if it feels natural to use it more often, then you can do it.
In any case, you should include your primary keyword in these places:
- Page title (the first <h1> element as well as the <title> element).
- In sub headlines (<h2> and below), if it makes sense, but not in absolutely all of them.
- In the first paragraph (<p> element), preferably in the first sentence.
- In the last paragraph (<p> element), preferably in the last sentence.
- In anchor text for one to two links on the page (<a> element).
You should use it more often in the beginning, less in the middle and more often again towards the end (hourglass shape).
You can also use variations of your keyword, but again, don’t overdo it. One variation every 600 words is plenty. If you use it more often, make sure you use your primary keyword that much less often.
Secondary keyword can be used in the same way and along the same guidelines as the primary, just a little more seldom. The more it’s similar it is to the primary keyword, the less you should use it or appropriately lessen the use of the primary keyword.
It’s recommended to also include other words in the title (the first <h1> element as well as the <title> element). These word, together with the primary keyword, should form a headline that intrigues potential readers and encourages clicks in the search results. This drives up CTR which is a key factor in ranking as well as increases the chance for ranking on additional long-tail keywords.
Example:
Primary keyword is »Office tables«. Potential headlines would be:
Where to buy office tables in bulk?
Office tables – Best discount on the web
It’s also important to include links to other parts of your website. Be careful that the link placement actually makes sense and it’s also an added bonus if the anchor text includes the keyword that that page is targeting. That way you basically tell Search Engines what the linked-to page is about.
It’s also good to include an external link to a high authority website for the topic you are writing about. Don’t include more than one of these external links (unless it truly adds value to the reader) and you also don’t necessarily have to include them in all your content. Be extra careful not to link to a competitor by accident, since it is very likely that a lot of them also do content marketing and have useful written resources on the website.
If an external link is a necessity and not part of your SEO strategy (credit, tribute etc.) always add a “nofollow” attribute to the link element.
Example: <a href=’https://www.facebook.com/’ rel=”nofollow”></a>
For paid links you can also use the “sponsored” attribute instead of “nofollow”. Both is acceptable.
The length of content is also important. The absolute minimum should be 600 words, but it’s better to extend it to at least 1000 or more. If you have pillar and support articles (pillar articles are the main content and support articles link to them to boost their authority), then pillar articles should have 1800+ words and support articles between 600 and 1000. A good guideline for length is also your competition. Always try to have more in-depth and longer content than your top ranking competitors for the same keyword.
Basic technical SEO guidelines
A little beyond the scope of this blog post, but for the sake of this being an all-inclusive simple SEO guide, here’s also some more technical things that you have to watch out for when posting a new piece of content on your website or blog.
The “Slug” should also include the primary keyword.
The <title> should also include the primary keyword (as already stated before, but it is really important).
Structure of the page should be correct. First headline has to be within the <h1> element and any subheading in <h2> elements and below. The content itself should be divided between paragraph elements (<p>).
Each article should have all the applicable, including OG (Open Graph), meta tags and, optionally, Twitter meta tags. Also include the primary keyword in all descriptive meta content.
Meta tags that you must have:
- <title>Main keyword + extra</title>
- <link rel=”canonical” href=”main URL for this content” />
- <meta name=”robots” content=”index, follow”>
- <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0″>
- <meta charset=”UTF-8″>
- <meta name=”description” content=”Description of content up to 160 characters and should include the primary keyword”>
- <meta property=”og:title” content=”same as Title tag” />
- <meta property=”og:type” content=”Type of content you are posting” />
- <meta property=”og:url” content=”page URL” />
- <meta property=”og:image” content=”Link to the main image for this content. Recommended sizes 1200×628 or 1200×1200 with the main part of the image in the middle.” />
Most of this tags are already added by default by most CMSs or can be easily added with the use of extra plugins.
You shouldn’t add the “Keyword” meta tag anymore. SEs don’t use it as an indicator anymore and some actually use it as indication of spam.
Conclusion
This should give you a very good starting point on your journey to rank your content on Google and other SEs, but is by no means a complete guide how to excel your SEO efforts. For that you’ll need to cover quite a few other aspects, do some A/B testing and most of all have great monitoring set up, so you’ll get a good idea on what’s working and what’s not. If you want to take your SEO to the next level, feel free to contact us for a concrete SEO battle plan.