Last Updated on February 28, 2019 by Jessica Adams
SEO or search engine optimization is, in a nutshell, the practice of positioning a website for greater visibility in order to increase that website’s ranking on a search engine results page, such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, or Pinterest (yes, you read that right!).
But SEO isn’t just about building search engine-friendly websites. It is a marketing method that focuses on optimizing your website’s visibility in organic (non-paid) search results. SEO includes the creative (artistic) and technical (scientific) elements of literally driving targeted traffic to your website.
If you were to work with an SEO company, you’d benefit from greater recognition and brand awareness. Your brand would become stronger as more people visited your website. This, in turn, would help people gain trust in your company and as a result, purchase your goods & services.
But what are some of the most important SEO techniques? When making a list myself, I came up with 11 techniques in all! But three of them really stood out for me as being super important and necessary to have on my SEO checklist. Let’s take a look at the three most important SEO techniques that I feel will reign supreme in the year ahead.
3 Most Important SEO
Techniques In The Year Ahead
Content Is (Still) King – SEO Copywriting
This simple yet most effective strategy of writing original and detailed content is the most important SEO technique (in my humble opinion). Copywriting describes any form of writing which relates to business, ranging from a PR article to content for a web page.
SEO copywriting describes writing with search engine optimization in mind. This specific niche of copywriting exists to help a webpage rank higher on a search engine results page.
One way in which copywriters do this is through the utilization of carefully selected keywords. You will then use a keyword research tool to analyze and discover which keyword or phrase relevant to your business, is likely to be searched the most on search engines.
Then you’ll incorporate this keyword or phrase into your article a certain number of times. The key is to do so naturally so that it doesn’t disrupt the flow of the article or its professionalism.
Image Optimization & the Correct Use of “Alt Txt”
Many of my fellow “Pinterest SEO Aficionados” have probably heard the buzz about blog post images not being optimized correctly for Google.
This is because of incorrect information floating around out there about how to optimize images for Pinterest (which I’ll go into detail about in a separate post).
Allow me to explain… Does this screenshot look familiar? As you can see, the wording has changed a bit and the image in the screenshot has now been replaced with the screenshot itself. So please bear with me as we use our imaginations a little bit here.
I took this picture of my screen so that I could show you exactly where/how to add a description for Google the correct way, thereby optimizing your image for SEO. The example below is from inside the WordPress classic editor, where you’ll click on any image and the bar above it will appear (as seen below). Click on “edit”. See you inside…
Once inside the editing area of your image, look for Alternative Text – I have typed GOOGLE in that box, below. For Google, you should be entering a brief description (anything longer than 125 characters will be cut off) of the image itself. This is necessary in case the image cannot be displayed on a browser due to an error, or if a visually impaired person uses a screen reader.
As for Google SEO, this Alt Text description is also needed to display the image on a Google Image Search. Have you ever searched Google by typing female sitting in front of her laptop at her desk? Me neither! But when we just type “female” we get tons of pictures of women in various poses.
Imagine if each of those images displayed had a detailed description in their Alt Text. It would be a lot easier to find what we’re specifically looking for! Like a picture of a “female sitting in front of her laptop, at her desk”. We could find that just by typing “female laptop desk”!
Link Building Hasn’t Gone Anywhere
A lot of people still consider link building to be the most important optimization technique. Link building involves building links to your website to increase recognition and drive more traffic to your web page. In recent years, SEO experts have realized that it’s not just about creating as many links as possible – the quality of the links needs to be the main focal point.
Fast forward to 2019. Gone are the days where you just linked to a dozen or so articles from ‘authorities’ in your niche. Then after emailing a ton of people (including the authorities you linked to), you’d ask them to link back to your page.
At that point, you’d have a bunch of ‘authority’ backlinks to show Google how popular and important your website is! As of 2018, all that ‘hard work’ and the bulk of those practices has been nixed.
After all, too many links can deter trust and be viewed as spam. There is a wealth of different ways in which link building can still be used while following SEO best practices.
The following is a mere handful of examples of link building (to and from):
- link to resource articles related to your topic
- ask customers to link back to you from their website
- get colleagues or personal/business contacts that you have to link back to you
- DO internal linking for excellent SEO (bonus: this will also help lower your bounce rate!)
- post links of every post your site has on every social media platform you’re active on
- link both your posts AND pages
- get your customers to link back to you via their social media channels
- make sure that your internal links are “DO FOLLOW”, otherwise search bots can’t follow them
- post articles in online directories
- BONUS: Google loves when you focus on your user experience and seeing your outbound links going to solid resources is doing just that! You might be sending away a reader who follows a link you insert but it’s all about giving your reader the best and most complete knowledge experience on your topic, is it not?
Now can see why SEO is at the heart of any successful online business? You have two choices, optimize your own website for search engines or hire an SEO service for your company.
Either way, definitely make sure that copywriting, image optimization and link building are the top three techniques used for your SEO.
Jessica Rose Adams
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