SEO optimization — a step-by-step guide

So, now you have a perfect website and it’s time to get customers.

You are sure that all the texts are 100% original, the design is flawless and your product is really, really useful. It seems like the customers will find you organically and you’ll just have to sit and wait? Well, I have bad and good news for you. Bad news: nothing online happens on its own. Good news: SEO — is not about magic, but about strategy.

Proper techniques help a web page rank higher and people find relevant information effortlessly.

Step 1. Location, location, it’s all about location

Local search is everything for most businesses today. Local optimization means that one business focuses on a specific city, region or even country. If it sounds familiar to you — your brand message must be viable on a local level.

Add information about your business area on your website so Google could pick this info for Google maps searching. That makes people find you quicker and make a purchase one step closer.

Step 2. It’s time to be mobile!

2018 was the year when Google finally rolled out their mobile-first index. What does it mean to you and your website? You need to put your mobile SEO first. You must have a mobile-friendly version of your site, or else Google will index something you can’t show to mobile users. And a large chunk of traffic will go right past you.

Step 3. Welcome its majesty — keyword

Here is one and only advice “if you want to attract customers — think like a customer, become a customer, search like a customer”.

Find keywords, not like the owner of a taxi company, think like a person who needs a taxi and wants to save money. If you try it once, you’ll see how the results can change.

Basically, there are three main types of keywords:

• Generic (for example: “taxi company” or “growth hacking”),
• broad match (like: “taxi company in Sudan” or “growth hacking best practices”),
• long tail (“How to create a taxi company in Sudan” or “how to use growth hacking techniques to expand a business”).

Each of them attracts bit different types and amount of traffic. The safest and most effective strategy is to mix those types of keywords in order to get a different variety of traffic.

There are several places where keywords are so important:

• Content
• Headlines and anchor texts
• Images

Content

Now that you’ve chosen the right keywords, it’s time to use them right.

• Start all your articles with keyword research. The best tool to choose the keywords is the Google Keyword Tool. Here you can search for new ideas and get a list of keywords suggestions based on what users are searching in Google.
• Make sure your keywords fit into your content. Less is more seems like a perfect plan at this step. Don’t try to place all the keywords in one text. If your texts look too spammy — users and (extremely important) engine crawlers will notice it. It can lead to negative user experience and harm your site rankings.
• And again — remember locations! The most popular areas offer the most customers, but this doesn’t mean you should ignore your long-tail options. People search for services in their area, so don’t miss out on lower-ranking queries.
• Become special. Think of special services you can offer instead of being like all your competitors — and get keywords related to this. Do you offer longer journeys or even party taxi services? Try to think about other options, such as airport pick-up and drop-off. These are all services people need. They also may be long-tail keywords and represent customers that are ready to buy, rather than just browse through.

Meta description — is a hidden superhero

It is good to optimize a web page with one keyword phrase rather than several ones at a time. By focusing on one keyword, you’ll be sure that it gains all the SEO power it can get. Optimize title and meta tags of a website along with its content (headline, keywords, description).

Optimize all images with proper keywords

Don’t forget to use keyword phrases not only throughout the website’s content but also in the image description. It is good practice to use words such as: “image”, “photo”, “picture” along with your picked keyword.

Step 4. Website optimization

So, what about your website itself? A key part of your website optimization should focus on narrowing your entire website structure down.

Speaking of which, one last piece of advice: don’t limit yourself to a one ‘download’ button in the footer of the page. It should be on every page and, ideally, clearly visible on the home page. After all, this is the point of your business!

The way how well-structured your website is and how intuitive the navigation is very important for your SEO and your users. If you spend the time to make your website easy-to-use — visitors will come to your website, easily go through all the information and convert into riders, and search engine crawlers will find all the pages and index it properly.

Bonus!

Links that reach your site and mention your company is almost as important as your website content and has a tremendous impact on rankings. And not only website rankings — your backlinks have an impact on your ASO on Google Play.

From day 1 of implementing SEO, you should create a plan of link-building strategies.

In conclusion

Nowadays a well-structured website is not a privilege, but a must-have for all businesses. If potential clients can’t find you online - how would they purchase your service?

SEO optimization is not as difficult as it seems. It is more like collecting a puzzle. More steps you take - more clear the final result is.

The most complicated step - is the first one. Don’t try to do everything at one time. Building an SEO strategy is more than just finding right keywords, or becoming good at content creation. It is a strategy and day-by-day work on improving your website and attracting new customers through organic traffic.

Now when we all agree that optimizing a website is so important, we have more good news: Onde team provide SEO-optimization services. Don’t wait😉