SEO Best Practices

By Chris Stage

Ah, good ol’ SEO: if your tech team isn’t talking about it, your marketing team definitely is. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, it’s the process of organizing data on your website so that Search Engines can recognize your information, determine its relevance and rank you accordingly online. The goal of SEO is being able to get your website in front of more people, but more importantly—the right people. At Bullseye Media, we’ve developed our own custom system for SEO, and we’re going to share some of those secrets with you. 

1.Create an Active Keyword list. 

Start by creating an Active Keyword list using resources like SEM Rush. Make sure to update this monthly and do your research as keywords can change! Put the keywords in meta descriptions and title tags, ensuring they’re prominent throughout the copy is great too. Don’t overuse keywords and spread them between pages though as it has a negative effect on your SEO ranking! Update your meta descriptions, title tags, and headers every four to eight months. 

2.Blogging 

Blogs, especially ones that include keywords from your active keyword list, will help boost your SEO and organic followers. Consider hiring a contractor to write posts or switch off the responsibility to various teammates so the blog stays fresh and consistent.  Remember to link to other resources, cite sources, and encourage other sites with good reputations to share your posts to increase your website’s reputation. Create a blog schedule for the quarter with about 2-3 posts per month to stay on track, and seek feedback from your employees, clients, and readers.

3.Internal linking 

Internal links are links that go from one page on your website to another page on your website. These types of links are useful because: they help users to navigate a website, establish link hierarchy for your website, and they spread out your links (and the ranking SEO power) around your website. 

4.Backlinking 

Backlinking is a way to find content partners and grow your internet web search together. Backlinks, or inbound links, are links from your website to a page on another website. For example, if you write a blog titled “Best Places to Eat in Minneapolis” you could link the restaurants you write about in your blog. Google, and other search engines, take backlinks into account for specific pages which leads to higher organic search rankings. The best way to achieve prime backlinks is to find content partners that you can write content with and have both link to each other’s site–pure gold! Backlinking increases your domain authority, which is a direct ranking factor, here’s an article to help you get started. 

5.Video 

Google’s algorithms prioritize websites with video content, so you definitely want to include video in your website. Video will increase your organic traffic, lower bounce rates, improve probability of organic backlinks, and increase overall traffic. Video is magic, but when you have great SEO and quality video, that’s when the real magic happens. 

6.Link Social Media

Social media helps with reputation, which does have a direct impact on ranking. If you create popular and quality content you’ll get more shares on social media. The more shares you have, the more opportunities people have to see your content and link it. This helps SEO because click-through rates impact search engine rankings. By building your social media, it will build your awareness and audience, which increases your chances of people clicking on your content. 

7.Online Reviews 

Google places trust in your consumers, so it’s important to have positive reviews. Positive Google and Facebook reviews are great for SEO because search engines, like Google, value consumer trends and buying habits. If your products or services have a higher rating, they’re more likely to show up at the top of search results. Make sure to remind your customers to leave a review and verify your company information on Google Maps. 

Let’s Talk SEO

Our team is here to help you through navigating SEO best practices. If these three letters happen to have been on your mind recently, don’t hesitate to reach out! We’d love to share our opinion of what are best practices for your business, and we love talking with everyone these days while we’re working home!