Socium Media Shortlisted for 3x US Search Awards
How to Maintain a Website’s SEO
When it comes to your website’s search engine optimization or SEO, you might be wondering what an SEO engagement entails. Is SEO a one-time project? Do you need to commit to SEO on a monthly basis? Can you just turn on the Organic? Is it optimized forever? What do you do for SEO long-term?
We often find that we must educate potential clients on the value of SEO and what an SEO engagement might look like on a long-term basis. We get it, SEO seems a bit black and white, and many times our clients fear that one wrong move can be catastrophic, but the reality is, SEO is just a collection of best practices that we apply to a website.
Let’s discuss some of the best practices for SEO and how we maintain a website on a monthly basis.
Step 1: On-Site SEO
At Socium, we start with on-site SEO when beginning to optimize a website. On-site SEO refers to the website’s meta tags and copy.
On-site SEO begins with keyword research, probably the most familiar piece to anyone new to SEO. Keyword research allows you to find potential keywords and analyze the keyword’s search volume and competition.
Once you find the keywords you would like to target, this is when we begin to add them to the SEO tags. SEO tags consist of the title tags, the meta descriptions, h1 headings, and alt tags. Essentially, the SEO tags tell Google which keywords to index your website for, and what to display in the SERP.
To optimize a websites SEO tags, we must follow these best practices:
Title Tags
- Should be 60-70 characters in length.
- Utilize the keywords that a particular page should target.
- Must be 100% unique.
- Do not overuse the same keywords.
Meta Descriptions
- Should be 150-160 characters in length.
- Should describe the content on that particular page.
- Must be 100% unique.
- Do not necessarily need to include keywords.
H1 Tags
- This will be the name of the page or product.
ALT Tags
- Describe the image.
- Use a keyword if possible.
The last piece of the on-site SEO optimizations is to optimize the website’s copy. We do this in two ways. The first way is to optimize the website’s existing copy. To do this, we add the same keywords we used in that particular page’s SEO tags, into the copy. The second piece is to write new copy for any pages which do not currently have copy on them.
Step 2: On-Going SEO Maintenance
At this point, our SEO tags and copy are optimized with our target keywords. So now what do we do? Well, to be honest, we are far from finished. On-going SEO can consist of a variety of tasks.
Here is a list of some common on-going SEO tasks:
- Writing 301 redirects for 404 errors.
- Writing SEO tags for new pages or products.
- Building out SEO landing pages to target new keywords.
- Writing new copy for existing pages.
- Writing blog posts to target new keywords.
- Link building to improve the domain authority.
On-going SEO is all about increasing the visibility of websites by increasing the total number of keywords and the position of the keywords by supporting on-site SEO with copy, expanding the number of pages on a website, and building the reputation of the site by increasing the number of backlinks.
To Sum It All Up
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is meant to be a long-term commitment. Although you might be able to optimize your existing website pages in a one-time project, we recommend committing to SEO long-term. Building your website’s reputation and keyword ranking takes time, but if you commit to it, you will see exponential growth in your organic traffic as you increase your website’s visibility.
Do you have an SEO question that was not answered above? Or would you like to reach out to an SEO Strategist? Feel free to fill out a free consultation form to get in touch!