Is your website not getting the amount of hits you’re looking for? Has your blog readership turned lackluster? You may be publishing great content and maintaining a visually beautiful site–but no one will be around to see it if you haven’t employed SEO best-practices. It may seem like a complicated, technical world, but DIY SEO is surprisingly easy to begin; with a few simple tweaks, you’ll be on your way to increased web visibility. We at Eustace Consulting use Hubspot to identify keywords, optimize blog posts, and more! Their SEO tools can’t be beat–and best of all, they’re integrated into every part of the site, so you’ll get real-time tips as you write new content for your pages or on your blog.
Before you hire that fancy SEO specialist, consider these strategies to kickoff your optimization efforts DIY-style:
- Find Your Keywords
The first step in any SEO campaign is to identify your target keywords–Which keywords often bring people to your site? In Hubspot, this is done with the
Keyword Grader Tool, which tests your site’s commonly-used words for ranking difficulty and the number of visitors they bring to your site. It even includes the ROI of each word! You want to choose long-tail keywords, or those that are not searched for as often, and thus easier to rank for.
- Name it!
Using the keywords you just found, update all of your page titles, including those keywords whenever possible. The page titles are the first things seen by search engines, so making sure they include all-star keywords will ensure you get the traffic you deserve. To do this in Hubspot, go to the Page Manager and click on the page you want to change–then select the “Page Properties” option in the drop-down menu, and find “Page Title” in the properties that appear on the right.
- Trail-Blaze
Although an intuitive approach, this step is often overlooked. Is your site easy for visitors to navigate? Try tasking a professional friend with going through your site’s pages, giving them little objectives to complete–such as filling out a form, or finding a certain blog post. If they have a difficult time, you may need to rework your pathways to be more user-friendly. A page that is hidden in a sitemap maze will not get the number of visitors that you’re looking for.
- Simplify
Does your site contain a lot of Flash media? If so, it may be killing your SEO–any “alternative media” hides all of that content you’ve worked hard to create behind pretty lights, which means most text in Flash or video is not seen by search engines. If your site is 80% (or more) Flash, consider down grading all of that design for some good old, written content. To optimize the Flash you do have, embed as much descriptive text as you can, using those keywords whenever possible–try updating page titles and meta descriptions, to start.
Note: When using keywords, remember to not overdo it. A paragraph that contains something like, “JOB SEARCHING is difficult, but not when you use ALABAMA’S TOP JOB SEARCH SITE…” is effective, but “JOB SEARCH ALABAMA JOB SEARCHING IN ALABAMA ALABAMA TOP JOB SEARCHING SITE”–is not. If you overuse keywords, or “stuff” them, you may have your page penalized by search engines.
Are you befuddled when it comes to SEO? Do you need guidance with SEO + Hubspot? Give us a call!
