How to SEO a Page

Ok, you've got your content written and edited. Now what do we do? Here are the steps for how to SEO a page.

How to SEO a Page

  1. What is your long tail keyword for the content? What is the short group of keywords that people would search in order to find this page? We're going to focus all our efforts around this long-tail keyword.
  2. Firstly, we are going to edit your Title and Description so that it contains your long-tail keyword exactly. The title of your page has this keyword, the description has this keyword.
  3. Now re-write or add-to the first paragraph of the article to contain your long tail keyword.
  4. Make sure you have a heading on the page (heading level 1 or 2) that also contains your long tail keyword
  5. As you go through the article, see if there are any other places where it can make sense for you to mention your long tail keyword exactly.
  6. Now go through the article again and see if anything you talk about is actually another topic that you've already written about or is directly related to another main page on your website. Link those words to the other pages within your site. This tells Google how your pages are related.
  7. If it makes sense, add a few links to outside websites if you mention them in your article. Do this sparingly...we don't want to make it easy for people to click away from your site and not come back.
  8. Have at least one picture on your page, but it's encouraged to have as many as are necessary in order to get your point across. We are creating content that is supposed to be useful or informative...so just having text all the time is not nearly as good as having text with images that illustrate your point.
  9. For all images in your article, add Alt Text to them and make sure that any of them that related to your long-tail keyword actually have the long tail keyword in the Alt Text.
  10. If, for some reason, your article is less than 300 words, try to expand on it more in order to get the word count higher. You may be able to get your entire point across in 150 words, but Googles rules are that they give a better ranking for pages that are 300+ words...and even more points if they are 500+ words. If you really have explained it correctly in those first 150 words, put in a new paragraph that says "that should be all you need to know to accomplish 'this'. If you'd like more detail about the process and how we do things around here, continue reading."

Promotion

That's the basics, now you can promote it:

  1. Post a link to your published page on Google+
  2. Post a link to your page on your Google My Business listing (in the posts section)
  3. Pin every image that's in your article to a board on Pinterest and add appropriate description and title that contains your long-tail keyword
  4. Post a link to your article on LinkedIn
  5. Post a link on other social media platforms as needed
  6. If you have GOOD content in what you just wrote, and it applies to a certain group of people, pay to boost that post on Facebook to the people who might find it interesting.
  7. If you have AdWords setup and running for your keywords, consider taking some of the keywords that relate to your topic and having just those keywords use your new article as a landing page.

So, there you have it. You've done some basic SEO of a page and you've done the extra work to do some basic promotion as well. You're not going to hit a home-run right away...but you will be making continual progress that will build up your site and your authority.

What's next?

REMARKETING!

Start showing your logo and/or additional content to anyone who visits specific pages of your website. Remarketing is probably the most affordable and consistent way of gaining brand recognition online. It's not hard to do, it's often done ineffectively, and it's a great opportunity to gain some touch points with a potential customer or client.