SEO principles

Did you know that only 44% of businesses use Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? If you haven’t already invested in this method, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to market to people who are already interested in your business and have the potential to convert. If you want to start with SEO, you need to know the basic principles of SEO that will help you run a successful campaign.

7 principles of SEO

In this article, we provide you with seven basic SEO principles to help you create a successful SEO campaign.

1. Keyword search and integration
2. Focus on user experience
3. Optimize title tags
4. Optimize meta description
5. Publish valuable content
6. Tag the images
7. Internal link

These are the seven basic principles of SEO that must be carefully considered in SEO so that we can optimize the site in the best way.

Keyword research and integration

Ask anyone to explain SEO, and they’ll cite keyword research and integration as the two most important components of SEO. When users search, they use keywords to find relevant information about the topic they are searching for. If you want these leads to find your business, you need to use the right keywords to help them find it.

Keyword research

Keyword research is a critical component to helping you rank in relevant search results.

You can use several tools for keyword research such as BuzzSumo or Keyword Tool. These keyword research tools enable you to find the most suitable phrases for your campaign. When you’re doing keyword research, you want to focus on long-tail keywords.

Long tail keywords consist of three or more words. An example of this keyword is “plumbers in Harrisburg, PA” or “electricians near Harrisburg, PA”.

These keywords are better for your campaign than short-tail keywords that only contain one or two words. For example, if someone searches for “electrical” or “plumber,” it is more difficult to determine what their search was intended for.

They may be looking for a definition of the word, and how to become a real plumber or electrician to hire on a project. Short-tail keywords do not have a specific search objective.

So driving valuable traffic is more challenging. It’s less likely that your site will be relevant to their search query because it’s so broad.

On the other hand, you know that someone searching for “electrical near Harrisburg, PA” is looking for an electrician in that area. Keyword research will help you find these long-tail keywords and reach more leads interested in your business.

Keyword integration

Once you’ve chosen your keywords, you’ll integrate them into your site. Keyword integration is an important part of SEO.

If you want to rank in relevant search results for specific keywords, you need to integrate them into your site’s content. When you integrate keywords, use them naturally in your copy. If you use too many keywords on your page, it will lead to keyword stuffing.

Google sees keyword stuffing as a negative signal, so if you stuff your page with too many keywords, you risk hurting your site’s ranking. By integrating keywords, you help your site appear in more relevant search results. This is one of the best SEO practices to have an effective campaign that will grow your business.

Focus on user experience

If you want to know how to improve SEO, start by improving user experience. User experience plays an essential role in SEO. Whenever someone visits your website, you want them to have a positive experience and interact with your content.

Google considers user experience when ranking your site. If people enjoy your website, they are more likely to stay on it for longer – this is called dwell time. When your dwell time is high, Google sees this as a positive signal that your page is relevant to the user’s search query.

Here are some ways you can improve the user experience on your site and find out how to improve your SEO.

Improve page speed

Page speed plays a fundamental role in your audience’s experience on your site. Your audience doesn’t want to wait for your page to load for information. If it takes too long to load, your audience will leave your site and visit a competitor’s site instead.

Eighty-three percent of people expect your website to load in three seconds or less. If your site doesn’t load fast enough, you risk losing valuable traffic to your business. So, how do you improve your site’s load time?

For starters, you can use Google PageSpeed Insights to see how long it takes your site to load. This tool provides benchmarks for your desktop and mobile load times. Google PageSpeed Insights also provides you with optimizations you can make to your site to improve your load time.

If you don’t have experience improving your load time, you can rely on the page speed services of a digital marketing company.

An experienced digital marketing company, such as WebFX, will help optimize your site to perform quickly.

Simple navigation

Your navigation is an essential part of your website. When users land on your site, they want to find relevant information quickly. If your navigation is cluttered, it can lead to a bad user experience.

When setting up your navigation, you should use broad category headings instead of super-specific headings. These broad headings help you keep your content organized by providing fewer tabs.

Under these broad headings, you can create smaller subsections that help direct your audience to more specific information.

For example, let’s say you are an HVAC company. You want to make your air conditioning repair service easy for people. To make things easier for your audience, you can start by creating a broad “services” category.

If people are looking for a service, they immediately go to that tab. In the services tab, you can break down the different types of services you offer. You may want to categorize all of your services by HVAC.

Under air conditioning, list your air conditioning repair services. The navigation path is as follows: Services à Air conditioning services à Air conditioning repair This path is simple and easy for your audience to reach air conditioning repair services.

Add visuals

Images are an important part of your site. If your audience visits your website and sees a wall of text, they will lose interest.

It is much more attractive to see a page that has custom graphics and images. You can put different types of images on your site. These images include photos, videos, and infographics.

These images create a point of interest for your audience that makes them engage with your website. Visuals can also help provide your audience with critical information they might miss while scrolling through your pages. Because of this, visual effects make it very easy for users to browse your content, which is a huge benefit for usability.

Optimize title tags

Title tags are one of the most important components of SEO. When users search through Google, they see your title tag in the search results, and in fact, it’s the first thing your audience sees when they find your listing. One of the most important principles of SEO is optimizing title tags.

Since this is the first thing your audience sees, you want to make a good impression and show them that your page is relevant to their search.

To optimize your title tags, you first integrate your most important keyword into your title. You want it to appear before your title to make sure your audience sees it and knows your page is relevant to search results. Let’s say you’re a florist and you’re creating a page for the keyword “best flower arrangements.” Here are some examples of good titles that prioritize your keyword:

• 10 best flower arrangements for your wedding
• The best flower arrangements: 10 arrangements to wow your wedding guests
• The best flower arrangements to impress your wedding guests

Each of these titles puts the vital keyword, “best flower arrangement” first. If someone searches for that keyword and sees any of these titles, they know it’s related to their search term.

By optimizing your title tag, you will help attract more relevant leads to your business page.

This is one of the most vital SEO principles for getting leads to click on your listing.

Optimize your meta description

One of the basic principles of SEO, along with title tag optimization, is meta description optimization. Your meta description is another important component of your SEO list that your audience will look at before clicking through to your website. Your meta description is a small string that appears below your title tag.

This small piece of text allows you to give your audience a quick preview of your page to help them determine if your page is relevant.

You only have about 150-160 characters for your description before you’re cut off. You’ll want to use these characters wisely to ensure that you’re giving your audience more information that’s valuable to them. Similar to your title, your meta description is a quick overview of your article.

If you have a special sentence or two in your article that helps provide more valuable information to your audience, you can use that in your meta description.

Publish valuable content to your audience

If you want to know how to improve SEO, start by creating a content marketing plan for your business. Content marketing is an important component of your SEO campaign. When you create content, you drive valuable traffic to your page.

This strategy also helps you keep leads on your page for longer, which increases retention time and sends a positive signal to Google. To start creating content, you need to choose your template. Content comes in a variety of forms, including:

• weblogs
• Films
• infographic
• Electronic books
• Guides

Use a variety of these templates to keep your content attractive to your audience. When creating content, focus on industry-relevant topics. You want to drive traffic to content that is of interest to your business.

If you are not writing about relevant issues, you will be driving traffic that is not interested in your business.

Let’s go back to the keyword “best flower arrangement”.

Imagine you are a plumbing company and you see a lot of people looking for flower arrangement ideas. If you write a blog post about this topic, because of its popularity, you will drive traffic to your site looking for flower arrangement ideas. However, this traffic is not relevant to your business.

People looking for information on flower arranging don’t hire a plumber. You need to choose the right keywords to attract relevant traffic to your content.

Content marketing is a great opportunity for your business to share your knowledge with your audience. When you share your experience, you establish your business as an authority in your field.

This is a great way to build trust with your audience. If you’re looking to improve SEO, content marketing is the answer. Content marketing is a great way for you to drive traffic to your site and keep leads on your page for a long time

Tag the images

When you’re setting up your pages, you want to make sure your images are always legible. Alt tags provide valuable details to your audience.

Alt tags are fundamental to SEO.

Google cannot understand images as just image files. Alt tags add context to your images and help Google understand the relevance of your images to your page. There may be cases where your images won’t load on the page.

It’s important to have alt tags on your images, so users and Google know what the image depicts. Tagging images is one of the best SEO principles to help Google read and index your site.

Internal link

Internal linking is one of the fundamentals of SEO that affects how long your audience stays on your page. When you link internally, you direct your audience to additional pages on topics related to your page. Internal links engage your audience on your page.

They help drive your audience to informative pages that expand their knowledge on a topic they’re already interested in learning about. Internal linking can even lead them to learn new things! They can continue to learn about different and relevant topics while getting to know your brand better.

When you link internally, you want to select the relevant anchor text. An anchor text is the text that holds the link. This helps users and search engines understand the context of your link.

As you look at SEO basics, don’t forget to include links inside.

These are the basic SEO principles that will enable you to achieve successful results with your SEO campaign.

Use SEO principles to help create an effective campaign for your business

When 89% of marketers say SEO is successful, you don’t want to miss out on a great strategy that will help your business grow. By applying SEO principles, you help your business create a successful program that allows you to increase your traffic and get more conversions. If you’re not sure how to implement a successful SEO project management campaign or need access to the best SEO tools around, WebFX can help.

With over 25 years of experience, we know how to create SEO campaigns that increase your website traffic and help you get more valuable leads. With a team of more than 500 experts, we help you create the right SEO plan for your business growth. To learn more about SEO, check out our SEO plans to see what all this strategy entails.