Our team at SEO Services KC gets asked this question “When Should SEO Be Used?” on occasion and often our knee-jerk response, in our minds at least, is ALL THE TIME! That is if you already have an existing website of course, the detailed answer that actually benefits the person asking it is a little more in-depth however. We see that most of the time this question is being asked during the development or pre-planning state of making a website, so in that case we like to “optimize” after all of the website content is within the website, but before it goes live.
Another option is to also have an “SEO Checklist” that you or the person writing and creating your website content can go through as they build out and write for your website so that it does not have to be done later. Both on-site optimization strategies have the same result and both work depending on the website creation process.
Want to utilize another online marketing approach to get on Google? Check out our Kansas City PPC Services.
On-Site SEO Should Be Implemented For Each and Every Page on Your Website
We have broken down some things to consider for the perfect onsite optimization of your website and this should be looked at for pretty much each and every page:
- Have A Unique Title Tag (H1) with Keyword and/or City You Want To Rank Page For
- Include Page’s Keyword Phrase Within the 1st 100 Words of Content
- Use Multimedia and Add Unique Alt Tags on All Images (Use Keyword If Appropriate)
- Try To Make the Page’s Content As Long As Possible Without Being Repetitive
- Use Unique H2 Headings as “Subheaders” to Break Up Your Websites Content
- Add A Couple Relevant Outbound Links (Wikipedia, References, Industry Resources)
- Include 1-2 Relevant Inbound Links (Blog Post, Service Page or Contact Page On Site)
- Use LSI Keywords Within Content (More info at https://niksto.com/lsi-keywords/)
- Add a Contact Form or Call-To-Action on the Majority of Your Website Pages
Off-Site SEO and Gaining Authoritative Backlinks Should Be An Ongoing Process
While on-site search engine optimization, or SEO tactics within the content of your website, can realistically be a one time event, and then just making sure any new pages or blog posts you add are optimized as time goes on, off-site SEO is a different approach. Off-site SEO for local businesses means publishing authoritative business listings on online directories such as Yelp, BBB, Manta, Merchant Circle, Angieslist, Foursquare, Superpages, etc, as well as gaining authoritative backlinks to your website and specific pages on your website based on relevancy from social bookmarking, blog posts, social media profiles, relevant links in forum participation, content sharing, and many other off-site strategies.
These off-site strategies definitely do not have a shortcut and can take time to see results with, being the bulk of work for the ongoing process of SEO, and it is important that you are also constantly being aware of Google’s best practices when implementing. For someone who is already pretty savvy with on-site SEO, but they really want to get creative, strategic, and effective with off-site strategies that work, as well as follow Google’s best practices for link building, we encourage you to check out Brian Dean’s “SEO That Works” class online. This class does require a financial investment and, as we write this, there is currently a waiting list to enroll in it, but after personally enrolling in, taking notes on, implementing, and completing the class earlier this year, we found it extremely beneficial.