Know your audience
Perhaps the most important factor in effective SEO is truly understanding your audience. Everything else that you do will come from this because all of your content, keywords, etc will be based upon the preferences of your target group.
So, in order to get started properly you should conduct thorough research on the characteristic features of your target audience. This includes demographic features such as age, gender, income bracket, etc. And it also includes things such as personal preferences in terms of product types and even such things as preferred social media.
Undergo a professional audit
It would be worth your while to employ a professional service to review your whole site and let you know where your strengths and weaknesses are. The Mellow Promo SEO agency can do this for you.
Having a professional audit conducted will serve as a baseline for you for all of your future site revisions. As you go through future updates, you can look back at all of the factors that went into your audit and review each of them systematically.
Review your keyword and keyword phrase choices
Once you’ve mapped out your target audience, you should review the keywords that you use on your site and think about whether they are the best choices. In doing so, take a look at your competitors’ websites and social media, and think about whether you might alter your usage accordingly.
This is not to suggest that you should directly copy what other people are doing. Certainly if you have specialized products or services as part of your lineup, you should use keywords that speak to their uniqueness. Nonetheless, it doesn’t hurt to examine what similar businesses are doing successfully and think about how you can use similar phrases to speak to your target audience.
Change your content as needed
These days, it’s not enough simply to create a website and expect it to attract traffic. Websites are like other forms of social media; they require constant attention and revision. If you think about the people who will potentially visit your site, you know that they have constantly-evolving needs and interests.
Optimizing your content means several things. First of all, your text should be of a language that is appropriate to whatever it is that you are selling. Each page should be optimized according to the subject matter of that particular page, not just your site as a whole. And you should pay attention to your non-text content, as well (photos, videos, etc). Make sure that your alt text that is attached to each photo, etc is clear and reflective of the subject in question.
Beyond this, the factors that go into creating a top-notch site are constantly in flux. Not only do the search engines change their algorithms on a regular basis, but new types of content are often being added, technology changes, etc.
Check your links and backlinks
A lot of people think that sticking in lots of links to other companies is a good idea. It can be, for sure, but you need to make sure it is done right. First of all, you want to be sure that all of the links that you include are in good working order. Be sure to check that the places they lead to are the ones you want, and do this on a regular basis as it happens frequently that sites go down, become corrupt, etc.
You also want to take into consideration the question of whether or not you want the links you include to benefit the sites on the other end. You can tag your links as either “DoFollow,” in which case people clicking on them will benefit their SEO ranking, or “NoFollow,” in which case they won’t.
You should also check your backlinks. You might need to use a professional audit service to do this, but they are equally as important as they contribute to your SEO, as well. You don’t want links directing to your site from suspicious places, so you should make a concerted effort to find anything undesirable and disavow it.