SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is a process of setting strategies, tactics, and techniques for your websites to rank better in search engines and increase traffic. In simple words, when you follow SEO practices it helps to list your page higher than others in search engines.

Some of the best SEO practices include optimizing content that is relevant and trustworthy. Also, it is about optimizing codes used for website development and network to establish a brand among the audiences.

There are a few popular practices when it comes to SEO that can improve your placement on the SEO ranking. Each element enhances the web page’s performance and drives traffic from the right people at the right time.

a. On-Site SEO practices

Content

On-site content is one of the basic SEO practices that optimize and enable searchers to identify what the page is about and how relevant they are to their search. It reflects the worthiness of the page rankings on search engines.

Rankings are not just about keywords but also the use of synonyms, the context in which the content appears, and the frequency of word combinations used. On-site or on-page content focuses more on who your audiences are and addresses what the audiences are searching or will search for in the future. However, the primary focus is to make your web page search engine-friendly. 

There are, however, other on-site SEO tricks that you can tweak for a better online presence: 

Insert title tags

Title tags are an HTML (HyperText Markup Language) element that denotes a web page title. You set a title tag to appear on the search engine as a clickable headline. They must be relevant, accurate, and concise to the page and provide details about the page. It is crucial to stay limited to 50-60 characters, in line with the ideal SEO practices, as the algorithm cuts off longer tags in search engine results.

A title tag is the first impression you will give to your audience, so it has to catch the viewers’ eyes. Also, for brands, good title tags prompt the audience’s trust in their services. You can generate a good lead if your brand can maintain the brand image through the title tags. 

Header tags and keyword phrases

Header tags are the HTML codes for headings and subheadings of your web page. H1 tags are for the main title, while H2, H3, tags, and so on for subheadings and multiple content sections. Use such tags to structure the content in a better way. 

Adding subheads to the content makes the readers scan the content efficiently. In SEO practice, this could quickly help with rankings due to the use of relevant keyword phrases. Even Google values text used in such HTML tags more than the rest of the text.

Include meta descriptions

Meta descriptions or meta tags are the snippets used to describe the content of your web page, in brief. It is a short description placed as a paragraph below title tags (seen in search engines or on-site SEO tabs). Meta tags appear on the search engines but not the web page as it is the page’s source code.

For meta description, Google allows about 160 characters in the snippets i.e Google results. So you must include the context of your web page within those character limitations.

As per popular SEO practices, the use of the right keywords is vital to present the page’s relevance to the audience. Include important keywords but don’t overuse them. They don’t impact the SEO rankings outright but are essential to convince the audience and improve the CTR (Click Through Rate).

Content that targets keyword phrases

The use of appropriate keywords or key phrases attracts the target audience to the desired page. Keywords (phrases) must be relevant to what your business is about and its target. Spelling matters a lot in such a situation. For instance, you might be using the keyword “color,” whereas people are searching for the word “colour”, giving them different search results. So you must do proper research on the keywords that people use the most and frame your pages accordingly.

When writing content, it’s better to select the keyword and then put the content around it. Focus on keeping your content natural and logical. Google emphasizes keeping the content flow naturally. Having a good keyword, or keyphrase density has a direct impact on the page’s visibility. Hence, writing must revolve around it.

Optimize image, alt text, and file names

Images are also an effective way to generate traffic. SEO rankings also rate content with images and improve its visibility on Google images. Optimizing images is essential as a part of optimizing your whole page. A few things to keep in mind while optimizing an image are to use relevant and high-quality images with a proper size ratio. Other than that selecting the file format, naming the file, inserting Alt tags, and setting the URL with folder structure are all some of the best SEO practices.

It may not seem important at first, but details such as customizing the filename with keyword phrases can be helpful before you upload it to your website. Also, avoid the use of photos that have copyrights on them. Alt tags are most useful when browsers can’t process images. Work on selecting the right image size for your website, and ensure they are of high quality. But do not forget to minimize the loading speed. Adding a URL of the image also makes it easier for crawlers to identify the page better and index it. 

Content length

There are no specific rules that point out the length of the content. Still, popular SEO practices suggest that longer content is better as it provides a higher possibility to include your keywords appropriately.

The natural length of your content depends on your content topic. Usually, subjects that require more descriptive information tend to reach about 2000-2500 words or more, whereas less descriptive ones are only about 500-800 words.

Search engines do favor longer content but require the right use of keywords, with accurate and relevant content. Also, SEO rankings will value the relevancy and utility of the content rather than its length.

However, creating long-form content is considered high quality sufficient to bring in organic traffic and boost conversations. Longer content is capable of providing long-term SEO values. 

Target LSI keywords

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) refers to the analysis of keywords that search engines use to understand and rank websites. Previously, Search Engines used to pick keywords, and index the websites based on their maximum repetition. But lately, Search Engines have developed way more, and now it is not just about finding target keywords. But, LSI now also looks for words closely related to your focus keyword.

For example, if the keyword is coffee, LSI could be hot, cold, water, beans, grind, filter, brands, etc. Include an LSI keyword along with the supporting keywords but try not to have more LSI keywords on the same webpage as it confuses the SEO.

b. Off-site SEO practices

Off-site SEO practices refer to the steps taken outside your website boundaries that indirectly impact your page rankings. It depends on the user’s perception, branding, trustworthiness, and reliability towards your page. Off-site SEO or off-page SEO helps provide excellent exposure to the web page through brand mentions in social media or links. This practice is effective in bringing both organic and inorganic customers to the page. 

Some applicable off-site SEO practices are:   

Link Building

Link building is the process of getting other websites to hyperlink your website. If your content is helpful, informative, and descriptive, you are more likely to get backlinks organically. For instance, if someone finds your articles useful and links them back to their websites, the search engines identify this as a relevant link. This in return helps to improve your ranking automatically.

Link building is a matter of both quantity and quality. It means that having links from multiple sources is as important as having links from an authorized and trustworthy source. 

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is the most effective off-site SEO practice when it comes to brand mentions and link building. This marketing approach helps you to establish a brand name and invite people to your websites. It also boosts the organic traffic of your website, providing better visibility.

However, this practice doesn’t impact SEO rankings directly, rather provides excellent exposure. It helps to identify and reach the targeted audiences. Thus, search engine rankings and social media promotions are co-related with one another. 

c. Technical SEO practices

Technical SEO practice is about server optimization that makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index them. It doesn’t have much to do with the on-site or off-site SEO but handles the technical part of SEO to optimize the website’s infrastructure. In simpler terms, it is related to both the SEO activities enabling a better optimization result. 

Technical SEO helps with technical features like loading time, higher ranking, easier crawling, etc. It also helps to make websites mobile-friendly, and have structured data, solve duplicate content issues, establish secure connections, and many more. Technical SEO is for easing the search engine’s work in displaying relevant and useful results. 

All the elements the article has talked about are essential to follow a strong SEO practice. If you are new, the terms might look lengthy or complex to you. But worry not they are simple and easy to use. You just have to get used to how each of these functions.

With the ever-changing algorithms of the search engines, however, most online marketers fail to catch up. But it can be solved simply by staying updated on the changes. SEO will always stay as the essential tool to improve rankings on search engines.