SEO: It’s All About The Fundamentals

But then you forget about the other stuff. Things like: I need new running shoes. I should focus on good nutrition. How can I carve out the time for my running and training plan? How early is early for these morning runs? It’s a big commitment.

When you wake up one morning and say, “I’m going to be a runner today,” you might be lacking some of the fundamentals that make you successful.

We hear this a lot with SEO asks too:

• “We want to improve our rankings.”
• “We want to rank for these keywords.”
• “Are we viral yet?”

Brands and companies all crave strong outcomes. But sometimes, they overlook addressing the fundamentals, and that limits performance.

So, what do they miss? There are a lot of basics to consider in the fight for stronger SEO. First order of business? Abandon the outdated POV on SEO. Gone are the days of stuffing keywords five times in a paragraph. Forget the “set it and forget it” mentality, and shift to thinking about SEO as an ongoing practice. Think quality over quantity, and choose your keywords wisely.

Adopting best practices for website design on the back and front end are the first steps to having strong, optimized content.

The nuts and bolts of your page

When we audit a client’s site, we often find gaps on the back end, like missing image alt text. We find page titles that are way over 60 characters, or meta descriptions that don’t take advantage of the 160 characters available. It’s these mistakes that make it harder for Google to understand what you’re writing about.

So, even if you have great keywords in your copy, search engines might struggle to crawl your content. Cleaning up the back end of your site can greatly impact the performance of your site.

Bottom Line: If Google can’t crawl your site, it won’t rank it. If Google can’t rank it, your users won’t find it.

The hierarchy of information

Consider the hierarchy of your page, and your keywords—for both your page rankings and in service of having empathy for your users. When creating and structuring your content, make sure it’s organized, clear, and easy to skim. This not only benefits your users by aiding in comprehension, but it also scores you some points with search engines. Ensuring your content is clear and concise allows Google to crawl it accurately.

Make sure your keywords are in a good spot too. You want to make sure they appear in your:

• Page title
• Meta description
• H1s and H2s
• Body copy

Consider all these opportunities to include relevant, strong keywords. This takes the guesswork out for Google. It gives your users an easier time understanding the content, too!

Bottom Line: With a clear content hierarchy, Google and users know if this content is relevant and accurate.

Words on the page

A clear hierarchy is only as good as its body copy. Time and time again, we see clients writing long-winded copy that buries key messages under walls of text. Writing clearly, to the point, and at an accessible reading level helps makes content easier to understand and user friendly. Prioritizing well-written content also impacts SEO, in a good way.

At One North, we prioritize four principles when writing and editing:

• Keywords: We aim to include a few strong, relevant, high-quality keywords.
• Word count: Although there are many different schools of thought on the “right” word count, we simply aim to write clearly and succinctly. We keep it brief.
• Flesch-Kincaid grade level: We try to keep it to 8^th grade or lower. When our writing is clear, Google crawlers understand it. When Google crawlers understand the writing, so will users. And, most importantly, when both of these things are true, Google will help users find it on a search engine results page (SERP).
• Flesch reading ease: In addition to making sure the reading level is low, we also want to make sure the reading ease score is high. We like to use 60 as our benchmark. This means removing passive voice, writing in an active tone, and keeping sentences short, for example. We also avoid using jargon and complex sentences.

If you really want to get on Google’s good side, put yourself in your users’ shoes. Understand how they ask questions and search the web. For example, users might search in the form of a question or by asking for a definition. With Google’s Featured Snippets, top results pull the snippet of content that best answers your users’ questions.

Bottom Line: Writing good content is a business imperative, an inclusivity imperative, and an SEO imperative. Writing what you know, writing it well, and adding in a few strong keywords will help improve the performance of your piece—and your entire site.

At the end of the day, businesses want to outrank their competition on a Google results page. It’s as simple as that. They want their content at the top and for business to be booming. Great! However, while many businesses focus on what’s best for Google, we believe the businesses that focus on their users thrive. Prioritize your users’ needs and try to truly understand them. Maintain those fundamentals, and implement these basics in every piece of content published to your site. Keep it simple, and you’ll keep your users happy (and returning often).

Photo Credit: Eugene Golovesov | Unsplash