10 Basic SEO Tips to Get You Started

If you have a website, you would have definitely come across the term search engine optimization. It is a necessary tool if you want to see your website at the top of search engines. It is like a fuel that makes sure that your website stands out amongst others and receives maximum traffic. This the reason why several companies have been offering SEO services in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, etc. However, if you are a start-up company, you may not be able to hire a professional SEO company in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, etc. But this does not mean you cannot help your website grow by yourself. With some simple steps, you can optimize your website on your own. Here are 10 basic SEO tips to get you started.

10 Do-It-Yourself Basic SEO Tips

Search engine optimization is a mix of on-page optimization and off-page optimization. The former involves optimizing the pages of your website while the latter involves doing things outside the website. Both aim to bring traffic and increase ranking. The ten tips that we have provided here are a combination of on-page and off-page optimization.

Title Tags: Title tags come under on-page optimization. Title tags appear on the top of the page and are extremely important for the sake of search engines. They tell the search engine crawlers as to what the page is about. Hence, it is important that the title tag is descriptive and relevant too. Make sure that the length of the title tag is not more than 70 characters and try to include the main keywords as well as the name of your business.

Meta Description: While the meta tags give the search engines an idea about the content of your website, the meta description provides a detailed meaning. Although the meta description is mainly used by search engine crawlers, you must always write it with a human audience in mind. This is because the meta description can be seen on the search engine results page and most people read it before they decide to click on the link. So, make it descriptive!

Keywords: Keywords are extremely important as they are the first things that the search engines look for to know what your website is all about. Hence, it is important to have relevant keywords in each page of your website. Take your time and look for keywords using Google's keyword tool. While the presence of keywords is necessary, do not overload your website. This is considered to be spamming, and you would be penalized for over optimization. Make sure that the keywords are present in the right quantity and they are included in the content naturally. Apart from the main content, the keywords should be included in the title tag, meta description, images, meta tags, etc.

SEO-friendly URL: The URL is the address to your website. The URL is automatically generated when you create a web page. But this URL is usually a combination of letters and numbers. While this is enough to reach a page, it does not make any sense to the search engine. This can affect your position on the search engine result page. Hence, you have to make sure that all the URLs on your website are search engine friendly. The URLs should be descriptive and should also contain the main keywords. For instance, instead of www.brainmine/1234a.htm, it should be www.brainmine/services.htm.

Good Quality Content: The importance of good content has increased with the Google Panda update a few years ago. Hence, you have to invest time and money to make sure that each page of your website is filled with good quality and relevant content. An important criterion for the content to be called the best is that it should be plagiarism free. Avoid copied content, and it is also important to make sure that no one copies yours. Apart from this, Google and such other search engines are attracted to new content. So, it is your duty to ensure that the content is constantly updated and new content is added regularly. Content is not limited to written material. You can also add videos, podcasts, tutorials, blog posts, infographics, industry articles, etc.

Link Building: Link building is a major off-page optimization process. This is a process in which you get quality links from other websites to yours. However, the presence of your website URL on many websites may not be beneficial. It is important to have quality links from websites that have a positive review online. While getting organic links from high authority websites would be really beneficial for your website, these are not available readily. Hence, you have to take some efforts in link building. Always use white-hat SEO techniques to build links to ensure that the popularity of your websites on search engines is long-lasting. You can do this by posting on guest blogs, contacting related business to post your link on their websites, submitting your URL on local directories, creating social media pages, etc.

Internal Links: Apart from getting links from other websites, make sure your website is internally linked too. Having internal links ensures that the user stays in your website for a longer time. For instance, if the user is reading a blog and finds a link that gives information about a related topic, they are more likely to click that link and go to the said page. To give an example, if you have posted a recipe for baking a cake on your food blog, you can provide the link to the recipe to make the icing, thus directing the user to another page of your blog. Internal linking can do wonders to your traffic. However, avoid irrelevant links.

Images: Images surely add more value to your content and hence should be added to your website wherever required. However, merely adding images does not have any value to the search engines. Hence, it is crucial to provide a proper title and description to every image. In the same way, good alt tags are also important for optimizing the images. While the title of the images should be relevant to the content and what the image is about, the alt tag should include the keywords.

Avoid Flash: There was a time when Flash was quite popular among website owners. Surely, it makes the website look attractive and dynamic. However, it decreases its loading speed considerably. You must understand the internet audience has extremely low patience, and they would not wait too long for your website to load. On the other hand, they would not think twice before switching to your competitor's website. Hence, avoid flash and go for a simple, user-friendly website that has high loading speed.

Site Map: This is a thing many website owners ignore as they think that it is not relevant. However, having a site map is really important for the growth and development of your website and business. The site map gives the user and the search engine a listing of all the major and minor pages of your website. It also links all the pages together. But make sure that your website does not have too many internal pages. It should not take more than two clicks to reach a page.

These are some simple steps that you can take to optimize your website. Other than these, it is extremely important to constantly monitor the traffic and ranking of your website. This would tell you where you stand amongst your competitors and what steps you would have to take. If you do not get the desired results or want to grow further, you would have to hire SEO services in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, etc.