Believe it or not, SEO doesn’t just start and end with what keywords you stuff your content with. In fact, it’s something that happens much earlier than that. As far back as the title itself.

Title tags are the first things someone will see when type in a search term and end up with your link on their search results. They also happen to be one of the few things that improve your rankings.

We’ll be exploring just what it takes to get your title tags optimized right so you can enjoy the benefits of your new-found SEO knowledge and put it to good use.

Choose a Title That Accurately Reflects the Content

This should come across as a no brainer. But you will still find people who don’t understand the importance of having relevant titles, or any titles at all. As a result, they lose out on the ample opportunity to make some points on their SEO.

It’s no surprise that Google tends to rewrite the titles to websites if they don’t accurately reflect the content or exist. They do this so they can work their search engine to offer precise results. If you’ve just had your website’s title rewritten, you might end up losing your focus keywords.

That’s why you should always have titles that are relevant to the content. This makes sense even from a usability standpoint where your audience knows upfront what they’re clicking on. If you can have your title make sense, then that goes a long way to making your SEO rise.

Build It Around Your Keyword

There’s no one way to title tag something. You can do it in any number of different ways, depending on what you want to convey out of it. However, there’s one rule you should always follow if you’re aiming for SEO. And that’s to build the title around the keyword, not the other way around.

After all, when someone is searching for something, they want the result related to their query. If you search for baseball bats, you want the first words to be baseball bats. It fulfills the idea of searcher intent and puts the mind at ease that you have just found the right thing.

That’s why it’s always key to start with the keyword first and build the title on from there. When it’s the first thing that falls on someone’s eye, it will earn you a good number of clicks right away.

Know Your Page Type

Not all pages are made the same. You can have different titles depending on what kind of content is being served up on your page. Are you making a title for an article, product page, blog posts, local services, or reviews? Your answer will also have to reflect the title of the page.

Depending on your page type, you can have your titles serve vastly different priorities than the ones you might have intended with other pages. For example, if you target product pages, you will likely need to have information about the product itself.

While searching for something like Doritos, you should have a title that looks like ‘Doritos Nacho Cheese – 12 Pack’. That’s because someone searching for a product is likely already set on buying it; they just want to know where they’ll get it.

The same basic principle applies for other page types. Blog posts will have emotional, easy to understand, and clickable titles. Local services will have a lot of keywords added to make the page rank higher. Reviews will work with adding words like best, latest, or adding in the current year to communicate relevancy. Whatever the case, the title should always work with the content type.

Decide Who You Serve

Optimizing your title doesn’t always mean that you’re going to playing to improve your ranking numbers. Sometimes it also means working to make your link more appealing to the audience, deciding when to serve which approach is a key factor here.

There are situations in which it makes more sense to serve the search ranking. This is in situations where you offer a basic product or service. Being the highest on the results page means you will be the first to be clicked, which might lead to a sale. This gives you a likely lead over your competitors.

On the other token, in cases where you want to stand a bit more uniquely, is where you should serve the viewer. Let’s say you run a blog post that offers information about a specific subject. People will be more likely to sift through links until they find one that seems to fit their needs. In cases like these, SERPs aren’t as important, and the first few links might even be ignored.

Follow Basic Guidelines

There isn’t a single absolute way of writing titles. But there are basic guidelines that you can follow to get there. Whether you choose to follow them completely or use them to shape your title along, they can be really helpful.

First of all, make sure your title fits into the basic rulesets of titles. Ideally, you should have a short title that’s 60 words or less. Employ the use of short sentences to convey the idea rather than long ones. Take out any unnecessary elements like any uppercase letters, extra punctuation, repetitive or redundant words.

Do the same for all your pages, but make sure they all have different titles. You should also try to aim for a unique title that may be untapped or not used by other pages. Add in varying combinations of the focus keyword and experiment with them.

Lastly, seal the deal with a bit of emotional energy. Add elements like questions and statements in your title by starting with words like how, why, this, and so forth. You can extend the idea by adding in a number of open-loop that entices the viewer and piques their curiosity enough to click.

SEO practices, being the source of online traffic, can decide the fate of your website. No matter how good the content, it is all fruitless without  local Calgary SEO Search Engine Optimization. So, if you are struggling to boost your online visibility, the following tips can help you improve it. These practices will allow you to compete for the top positions in the search results. Let’s get started.

1)    Website Audit

Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of your website is essential to enhance your visibility. A website audit includes an in-depth analysis and comparison of everything on your platform — the content, the structure, current traffic, website health, functionality, and performance.

The end-report will help you fix the weaknesses and improve the performance by getting rid of data and structural discrepancies.

A complete audit would require professional tools that aren’t easy to access, thereby compelling small businesses to reach out to SEO agencies. These professionals do your work for you and offer effective strategies to fix everything that has been halting your online growth.

2)    Site navigation improvement

The search engine algorithm of Google is designed to provide the best possible results for the users. Having said that, it takes into account the ease of website navigation as well. Simply put, the easier to navigate through your website, the better will be the performance. For this, the experts recommend a three-click architecture, meaning every page should only be three clicks away from the visitors. Any more than that would cause harm to the site’s functionality.

3)    Content Relevancy

Publish only the content which is relevant to your website or business. It is essential because when your website stops being useful to your customers, they will move on to somewhere else.

To keep the content tuned and relevant, target keyword phrases for a single webpage. However, it is rare, but multiple keywords can be ranked for a single page if they are somewhat similar. For instance, it would be easier to rank a page having the keywords “Astronomy Jobs” and “Astronomy careers.” Whereas it would be nearly impossible to rank keywords “Biomedical jobs” and “Astronomy careers” for the same page.

4)    Get Rid of Duplicate Content

Your SERP rating can be negatively affected by the duplicate content on your website. Google’s algorithm prefers uniqueness, therefore, penalize the sites having matching content. Getting rid of it will help you increase your ranking and the quality of your site.

Finding identical phrases isn’t a huge deal because thousands of articles may have already writing on your targeted keyword. Plus, sometimes, there are not many ways you can address a particular fact, causing unwanted plagiarism. But you can always fix this problem yourself by using tools like Copyscape. So, every time you update your blog, make sure you let through this software.

5)    Metadata

It is the information that appears after a query or keyword search is carried out. For instance, the title is a type of metadata responsible for the first impression of your content. Generally speaking, it should be concise, catchy, meaningful, and not more than sixty characters.

Including the keyword in the title is a good tactic to let the search engine find your content easily. It generates relevancy and helps you rank better.

Another metadata that you must not forget is the description that appears below the title. It should be clear and able to convey the main idea of your whole content. Plus, it allows you to attract users to your site.

The AI algorithm of Google automatically detects whether the description is relevant to your topic or not, and changes it accordingly. Moreover, by including the keyword in the description, you can make the content more relevant and attractive to the search engine programs. But remember it should not be more than one hundred and sixty characters.

6)    Optimizing the Website Speed

Customer satisfaction relies hugely on how much time it takes to load a webpage. According to a study, if the site takes more than three seconds to load, you might lose half of your visitors. Google’s algorithm also considers site speed to set the preferences.

To boost speed, you might need to fix some things. Here are a few of them:

• Image size: Images having high resolution drags the speed down greatly. You should compress them before uploading and remove any unnecessary files.
• Script Handing: Some CSS and JS files reduces the overall speed of the website. Removing them might help fix the matter. In case you haven’t designed your site yourself, you should consult the person who did.
• Browser Caching: These are extra resources files, which, when deleted, make your site faster.

7)    Quality Content

No matter how much you invest in your website’s structure, there’s no substitute for good-quality and useful content. Therefore, by consistently uploading well-written content will help you increase the SEO results. It should also help solve users’ problems to keep them revisiting your site.

You can set up a quality blog yourself or hire a professional blog writing service to do the job for you. Either way, it will surely make your platform much more visible.

8)    Use Hyperlinks

External and internal linking is another way to boost SEO. These links help your customer stay on your site and get the most out of the content. Google analysis the interlinking structure and considers it while ranking results.

You can do it yourself or hire an SEO professional to create an interlinking strategy and establish an information hierarchy on your site.

9)    Content Readability

Quality content does not mean big and difficult words. It simply means how much information is conveyed to the user without losing his interest. Therefore, before uploading any blog post, make sure you have checked and fixed the readability through proper software.

Conclusion

By addressing all the factors that impact the search engine results, you can enhance visibility and attract more customers to your site. Every single element that we have discussed above contribute in ranking and competing for your site for higher positions.

So, you’ve just made some content for your site. Great. Your next likely step will be to make sure that it’s SEO optimized so you can maximize the number of eyeballs that it can come across, right?

But SEO isn’t just done and dusted when you insert the necessary SEO keywords or align your content with the right tags. It’s something that you can keep on improving with every aspect of your content.

And what’s the best way to do that on the webpage with lots of written content? The answer is images. That’s why we’re taking a deep dive into some image SEO tips that always come in handy.

Represent A Thousand Words

Virtually anyone can understand the importance of an image. It’s there to explain something that might not be easily said or understood with a lot of words. It also serves as a way to vary the flow of the content to keep the reader’s attention.

That’s all great from an editorial perspective. But you might find yourself asking how SEO plays into all this. The answer is relatively simple. See, search engines aren’t just about typing in queries anymore. They’re much more than that. These days, you can use image search to find content related to an image.

With the advancement of search engines like Google, it’s only a matter of time before image SEO becomes the new norm. That’s why it’s always helpful to get your foot in the door early.

Choose Wisely

Just as you can explain something using different words, you can represent something using different images. Just because two images fit your content’s text doesn’t mean they will deliver the same kind of message.

Whether it’s thumbnail image or one of the embedded images in your content, they will all play an important part. It’s the same for how someone might pick up magazines because the cover enticed them.

A good image will not only bring in more audience to your article; it might even get them to stay there. An enticing embedded image might just be the catalyst for someone to stop skimming through and actually pause to pay attention to the content itself.

Give It a Name

Giving your picture a name other than its default filename may not make sense on paper. But it really makes a big impact when your SEO results come back.

Google itself lays credence to it just by how their search engine works. While Google has the technology to scan images for a rough idea, it’s the file names that really clue in the algorithm to what the images are about.

The best part about this is you don’t have to go all out with stuffing in keywords. As long as you have a good enough description of what’s in the image, Google’s machine learning will take advantage of it. DSC00160.jpg might seem good enough to you, but it’ll really matter if you take the time to name it mona_lisa.jpg.

Optimize the Image

Sometimes, what’s more, important than whether or not you have an image is whether or not it can load properly. It seems like such a small issue, but it can matter so much in the grand scheme of things.

There are a few different file types you can go for when it comes to images for a web page. The most common ones are JPG, PNG, and GIF. Each of these has a different way of storing visual information. When choosing the format for yourself, you have to pit quality against file size.

In a perfect world, we would all want our images to be the highest possible level of quality they can be. But this can be counter-intuitive for webpages.

Higher quality images may not load as quickly or fail to load entirely. If your audience doesn’t have high-speed internet or use mobile data to view your content, they may get the raw end of the deal.

That’s why it’ll be crucial to make sure that you have the right file size to speed up your load times for your webpage and deliver a better experience overall.

Scale Appropriately

When you design a webpage, the goal is always to make it so that it all fits in nicely together. But if your image is too large and shoots off your borders or is too small to see, then that’s a problem. The key to managing your images is to scale them appropriately to fit the dimensions of your webpage.

Keep in mind that this will change depending on the kind of device used to access your webpage. Someone opening the webpage will have a much smaller screen resolution than someone opening it on a computer.

In cases like this, it’s helpful to have images in different resolutions and sizes that can be changed out on the fly. You can do this fairly easily with WordPress, where it’s done most of the time automatically.

Add in Final Touches

Once you have everything set up how you like it, you can go ahead to put in the finishing touches to your images.

The first thing to do is to reduce the file size of your images further. This can be attempted using Photoshop or any other editing program. You can compress the image using optimization algorithms that can drastically reduce the image’s file size without bringing in a big difference to the quality, where it will make a difference in your load time and audience retention.

Another important step is to add in title text and alt text for the image. Alt-text is the descriptive text the user will see if the image doesn’t load for some reason. Whereas Title text is the text that you get when you hover the cursor over an image. Both of these will be the final stepping stone to make sure your SEO sits where it needs to for your desired image.

All the different types and scopes of businesses need Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), but service-based businesses find it more difficult to survive in the digital competition. For such businesses, designing a functional SEO strategy is the key to establish strong online presence, credibility, and audience trust. SEO comprises of several functional and visual elements which are significant for a service-based business to gather more traffic and increase chances of conversions.

A few such elements include focused keywords, meta descriptions, great user experience, faster loading pages, and alike. All of such factors add to the strengthened position of a service-based business among the competitors.

Following are the detailed reasons for why a service-based business needs SEO:

1.    Content Marketing

Service-based businesses mostly focus on their brand awareness through content marketing. While it seems to be the easiest marketing strategy, it needs a lot of effort to be really effective. As a business, you need to pay great attention towards the keywords your competitors are emphasizing on. It becomes important to include your services, locations, and other such factors in your content.

It requires good content marketing and SEO skills to incorporate these keywords into basic content as well as meta description, titles, and headlines, etc. Also, SEO tells where you should place what type of content. As an emerging trend, service-based businesses are also creating visual content such as images and videos. It is important to maintain a balance between written and visual content on your web pages.

This way, SEO contributes greatly to content marketing. It helps shape your strategy and make improvements according to changing trends in service-based business industry and digital environment.

2.    Structuring your web pages

As a service-based business, you must know that it is not possible to incorporate all your information, services, contact, and reviews on a single page. Your website needs to be divided into several web pages. As each of those pages has something new to offer, it should be well-structured.

A well-structured website allows ease of navigation and greatly adds to user experience. SEO dictates how web pages should be structured, how much information should be delivered, how to describe your services, how should negative space be utilized, and how should your offer navigational pathway. All of these are simple and basic SEO requirements, which, when incorporated, deliver beneficial results for service-based businesses.

3.    Simpler URLs

Here’s another significant benefit that SEO renders for service-based businesses. It helps design simpler URLs. Such URLs are easy to search, locate, and understand. Simply by clicking on a URL, you know where it is going to lead you.

This is especially important when establishing marketing and ad campaigns. As internet users click on URLs you have provided, they are most likely going to convert into potential customers.

For example,

www.abcservices.com/services/kitchencountertops is a simple and easily understandable URL. As the user click, he knows what kind of services he is going to come across. As SEO asks businesses to follow such practices, all of these simple things add to the overall better usability and sales.

4.    Effective link building

Link building is a critical factor that SEO puts great emphasis on. However, most people think that link building is important for product-based businesses only. It is time to realize that service-based businesses can equally benefit from link building. This enhances the need for SEO for service-based businesses.

Through link building, you can introduce your business and the services you offer in a better way to your audience. A number of bloggers and content creators write and produce content on different types of services. Linking your web pages to such an informative and productive website can make your business reach a wider audience. While the content offers benefits of a particular service, your business can deliver the needs.

Moreover, link building helps you establish credibility among content creators that attract more traffic and have more followers. This way, it helps in brand awareness and credibility.

5.    Increased traffic

One of the major concerns of service-based businesses is that they do not attract high traffic. And so, it isn’t very easy to generate leads and get conversions. As traffic is the first step, SEO helps focus on the traffic you receive.

Through focused keywords, good layout, easy navigation, and effective marketing campaigns, SEO increases your ranking on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). As you rank high on a search engine, more visitors will be coming to your web pages. This increases the traffic by large, which in turn enhances your leads and conversions.

6.    Data collection and analysis

SEO offers effective and comprehensive data collection and analysis. It compels service-based businesses to gather and interpret data through Google Analytics and other data analysis tools and software.

As product-based businesses have a great focus on these tools to improve their sales, service-based businesses can also increase their profits by adopting such tools.

As you gather, interpret, and analyze data, it explains where your website needs improvements. Also, you can run several tests that SEO recommends, such as A/B Testing, that offer valuable insights into the final results of a campaign even before you launch the campaign.

7.    Better customer service

Last but not least, customer service is an important aspect of a service-based business. Visitors judge service-based businesses over the reviews and testimonials their customers have to offer. Better your customer service, the more the number of customers you attract.

Without excellent customer service, you might receive enough traffic, but you will never be able to get enough customers. Thus, SEO is important to manage your customer service and make it better every passing minute.

Final Thoughts

SEO has great importance for service-based businesses. From content marketing to customer service, it plays a crucial role in managing your web pages, content, traffic, conversions, profits, speed, reviews, and whatnot. If your business is service-based, it is time you start focusing on a sound SEO strategy. It delivers better profits and a higher ROI. This way, you can stand ahead of your competitors.

The digital environment follows a faster pace. Your business operating in this environment needs to be innovative, updated, and trending all the time. It is important to know the current market trends, learn about the preferences of your target audience, and stay keen regarding the position and performance of your competitors. At the top, you need to be aware of your internal performance to maintain high quality.

Traditionally, all of this has been not very easy, but today, Search Engine Optimization Calgary (SEO) is here to make things easier and productive for you. As a business owner, having a sound SEO strategy is all you need for enhanced business progress, larger profits, and higher ROI.

Even though SEO consulting  is only a process to decide your search engine ranking, it can act as an effective tool all along. Knowing how it works can help you greatly. Before that, you need to know when your business needs SEO. Following indicators determine if your business now needs SEO to progress further:

1.    You don’t know how much traffic you are getting and from where

While your business website has maintained a presence online, you must know how much traffic you are getting and from where. Businesses work every day to increase the traffic on their websites. It allows more visitors and, thus, more conversions. If you do not know the size and demographics of your traffic, it’s time you take help from SEO analytics.

Various SEO tools such as Google Analytics helps you know your traffic, audience, and their online behaviors, especially regarding your website. You get to understand and improve a lot of things such as bounce rate, click-through rate (CTR), and whatnot.

2.    Your search engine ranking is declining

If you observe your search engine ranking is declining and you have fallen to a lower page, your business is in dire need of SEO. It is important to learn about the requirements of SEO and fulfill them to maintain your search engine, and keep improving it.

Various SEO requirements such as great content, visual content, better user interface, faster loading speed, internal and external links, etc. are important to comply with.

3.    You are getting lesser leads and conversions than before

If your business experiences lesser leads and conversions all of a sudden, it is likely due to abandoning SEO requirements. As long as businesses focus on SEO, lead generation and conversions take place at a good rate. A decrease in the rate means you should focus on SEO more than ever before.

4.    Your content is outdated and unattractive

Search engines prefer updated and engaging content. In this fast-paced digital environment, great content is what attracts your audience. If your business content is not updated, images and videos are not added, and you are not getting enough traffic, your business performs poorly.

Keeping up to the SEO requirement of captivating and topnotch content is significant. If yours is not, hold up to SEO. Know what SEO demands and update your business website accordingly.

5.    You have not worked on link building until now

Link building is another important thing to do for online businesses. It is a means to interdepend and interconnect with other businesses, blogs, and significant online websites. There are two types of link building, internal and external. Both are equally important to attract and engage visitors.

If your business has not worked on link building until now, learn how important it is for SEO. As you expand the reach with link building and establish a strong online presence, SEO comes into play. It recognizes your efforts and improves your ranking. However, link building is a bit tricky. You need to be careful when implying and choosing web pages to link. SEO analyzes the linked pages carefully.

6.    You have not established reviews and testimonials on your website

A good way to know regarding the performance of your business is by establishing reviews and testimonials. It is critical to allow visitors and customers to leave feedback. While a positive review establishes your credibility, a negative review makes room for improvements. Either way, it is beneficial for your business.

Moreover, it is a crucial aspect of SEO as SEO believes in gathering customer feedback. It increases your accessibility and helps you hold onto an effective SEO strategy.

7.    You do not have a proper plan to follow

Establishing a business and running it in this online world are two different things. Running your business takes more effort and focus. From marketing to sales and customer service, you need to have a proper plan to follow. Without a guide, you cannot do well in this competitive business environment.

If your business does not acquire a plan, it is best to create a sound and practical SEO strategy. You can find the flaws and limitations of your business through any SEO tool, a software or a human expert. Without an SEO strategy, it is difficult for your business to have a reputable online presence.

8.    Your social media marketing campaigns do not bore fruits

If you allow your content to be shareable and have created several social media marketing campaigns, you must be expecting good results. However, if you do not end up with one, know that you lack somewhere at SEO. With increasing competitors and toughening business environment, it has become important to focus on SEO. A focused SEO strategy is the one that is linked to all the domains and aspects of your business. Having that created will end you up with sweet fruits.

Final Thoughts

It is easy to know when your business needs SEO. All you need to do is keep an eye on the performance of your website. With rapidly changing trends and online business needs, you never know when someone takes your position. Staying aware of everything that’s happening in the online world helps you shape your SEO strategy accordingly. This way, you comply with SEO needs and requirements really well, which, in turn, delivers higher profits and ROI for your business.