The Three Types of SEO and How to Fix Errors

    If your goal is to appear in more search engine results, here's what you'll need to check.

On-Page SEO: Fixing Basic Website Errors 

    On-page SEO is everything on your website. From header tags to meta descriptions, these are simple to fix and can boost your score in no time. 

    This first part is probably the easiest fix. All you need to do is go through your website and ensure that your header tags are all how they need to be. Once that's finished, it's time to go over your meta descriptions and alt text for images.

    -Meta descriptions tell Google's crawling robots what's on the page. So be thorough and accurate, and also try to fit a few relevant keywords into each description. Just don't go overboard or Google will punish you for keyword stuffing. As you can imagine, that's not a good thing.

    -Image alt text is where you describe what's in a specific picture. Again, make sure you're choosing images that are relevant to your website page. That way, you can have uniform keywords across the page and the pictures on the page. 

    

    Once you've finished these, download an app like Moz which includes a 30-day free trial, which is enough to fix your site's errors, or Ubersuggest, which is free. Check for any other errors that are showing up on your website. Some of these lead errors will be Technical SEO, which we'll cover next.

Technical SEO: Improving User Experience

    Technical SEO basically means fixing the more technical errors to offer a better user experience. Most of technical SEO requires coding knowledge, so if you're not trained in that area, save all those errors for last and hire a professional to do it for you. It's better to have those errors completed the right way than to break your entire site by entering the wrong code.

    One important aspect of Technical SEO is page speed. Which is basically how long it takes for your website/web pages to load on a user's device. This includes cell phones, personal computers, and tablets. You need the loading to be fast since 40% of users will leave your site if the loading takes more than 3 seconds. That's pretty fast!

    Another important area is the Robots TXT file and XML sitemap. You might see these two on the software apps listed up above. This is what tells the search engine crawlers what pages they're going to see and what they're going to be viewing on each page. Obviously, this is vital since the crawlers can't crawl your web pages without instructions from your website. It's critical these are fixed.

    The third and final area of technical SEO we'll be going into in this post is duplicate content. I chose this because I've seen it on multiple client websites. In short, make sure your content isn't all the same articles over and over. If you have two web pages that are close to the same thing, change, or even remove, one of them, and update the other. For blog posts, decide if one improved blog post can replace two posts that are almost identical, or update one to focus on a different area in the same topic group. Google will definitely dock you for duplicate content. Don't do it.

Off-Page SEO: Social Media and Other External Avenues of Expansion

    Off-page SEO is boosting your website through external means. This could be social media, email marketing or even guest blogging on other sites. Since those are all entire topics, I'll give brief descriptions to give you an understanding. 

    -In each social media post, provide links to relevant web pages or blog posts you've written. Not only will this bring in more traffic to that page or blog post, but it'll provide a way to market your other stuff to the same people. Imagine you click on a blog post someone's tagged on their social media account. You go to their site, read the post, then see another intriguing post in the recommendations. Now you're going down a rabbit hole. Social media can provide an amazing way to build a loyal audience.

    -Email marketing can actually act as a way to boost your website traffic. Since most website sign-ups are on landing pages or on their home page, you can use it as a way to send visitors to other pages, or products, on your site. Let's say you have an older product that isn't performing as well from organic search. With a sizeable email list, you can direct your audience to that product through your emails. That's a simple way to determine if a product has reached its expiration date or not.

    -Guest blogging is the best way to build links to your website. Well, unless high authority sites will give you links because they're just that generous. (They won't, so guest blogging it is.) To do this, reach out to sites that are bigger, and have more traffic, than your site does. Offer to write a guest blog post in exchange for a link from them. Just make sure your post is actually interesting or that you're providing value to their readers. Otherwise, you'll never get a link. And although this may sound tedious if you're not a writer, this is the best way of boosting yourself up on the organic search results. It's super powerful. 

In conclusion,

    -All errors lead to a lower SEO score. Some are manageable and others might require a professional. If you have the time and energy to do it yourself, fix the on-page errors at the very least. 

    -Tagging your web pages or blog posts on social media is a great way to bring in new visitors/readers. 

    -Guest blogging is the best way to build links, which in turn raises your authority score. This is super important for building trust with Google and something either you should do, or have someone else do for you. 

    If you'd rather not worry about your SEO but still get the results to have a higher SEO score, you can reach out to us and we can discuss it. Or, if you'd rather just hire someone to do it all for you, here's a package that can help with SEO. Either way, if you want to rank higher on Google, SEO is mandatory.