Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a competitive sport with lots of rewards, such as greater visibility in search results, more website traffic, more leads, more sales and greater revenue and profit. Gaining an edge on the competition means identifying opportunities that your competitors are not utilizing and capitalizing on it. Today, I’d like to share with you a few SEO secrets that your competitors are not taking advantage of.
Organize your website pages by themes
Search engines reward websites that establish expertise on a topic or keyword. One way to do so is by grouping related pages on the same topic together creating a silo and establishing expertise on that topic or keyword. For example: let’s say you are an event planner that specializes in Wedding Planning, Corporate Events and Non Profit Events. Rather than grouping all those pages under services, break them down and link only to the content that is specific to the type of event you offer. This will help you create a theme and demonstrate to search engines that you are an expert authority on each one of these areas. It is recommended that each theme has at least 5 supporting links to establish expertise on that topic.
Use structured data
Structured data or Schema Markup is an html markup used to help the search engines provide more informative search results. It helps the user know exactly what the content on your website means. For example if you have an upcoming event, you can use Schema Markup to highlight the event date, time, and location. It’s so useful that Google has created a free Structured Data Markup Helper to make it easy for you to take advantage of this tactic. This information is extremely helpful to a user and can set you apart in the search results. Remember, when doing SEO, what is good for the user, is good for search engines.
Add similar keywords to pages you already rank for
If you have a page that is already ranking high on search engines, conduct keyword research and see if there are opportunities for you to add additional synonyms and associated words on the page. For example: if you are ranking for the keyword “wedding planner NYC”, often times users will search for words such as “best wedding planner nyc” or “top wedding planner nyc”. Adding those words can help you gain greater visibility and help you capitalize on the strength of your existing ranking. In most cases, you will rank much faster than if you were to target those keywords on a separate page.
Use a variation of heading tags
Heading tags are a great way to break your page content into sections. Heading tags range from H1 to H6 with the H1 tag denoting the most importance. Heading tags are typically used for the headline and sub-headlines of a page. Heading tags also play an important role by giving the search engines insight into what the topic of your web page is all about. For best practices, use one H1 tag per page followed by sequential tags such as H2, H3. You want to ensure that your keyword is included in the heading tags, especially the H1 Tag. Your heading should also be a preview to what the paragraph is all about, enticing the user to read on. This is especially important, since research revealed that 79% of users scanned a web page, while only 16% actually read word-by-word.
Take these steps and you will be well on your way to showing up on the first page of Google and ranking higher than your competitors. Remember SEO takes time, but the results are worth it.
Know any other SEO Secrets? Share them in the comments below.