There is a very thin line between optimising your website so you appear for your chosen keywords and over-optimisation. When you get it right you will be rewarded with great page rankings and could see a rise in traffic to your site. Go too far though and you may slip backwards. This occurs because your efforts can come across as spam. This raises the question of how much is too much?
Before you do anything you need to know where you rank right now. Without a baseline you won’t know if improvement is being made, if you are doing too much, or have taken the wrong steps.
There are a number of ways you can determine your current rankings. You can try doing searches yourself and note where you appear. If you do that just make sure you clear your cache so the results aren’t affected. Alternatively you can use a rank tracking tool. A third alternative is to take advantage of our free keyword ranking report. As a leading provider of web design and SEO in Middlesbrough we can provide useful information and great services.
When you know where you are it will show you exactly how much work is needed. The lower you rank generally the more it will take to get up to where you want to be. You need to keep in mind that there are no easy fixes and the work will take time. You’ll need to create the right content and should look to keep your site fresh to push it onwards.
Another thing to do before you start optimising is to see who currently ranks above you for the specific terms you want to appear for. If the top ten is full of high authority domains (think established global companies and authorities like trade bodies) you will struggle to beat them. In these cases you will be better served looking at variants on your keywords, including long tail ones. It is easier to rank for these and it can help to push you on for the shorter key phrases.
Once you have a strategy you should begin with on page SEO, ensuring meta titles, descriptions, and the content itself is relevant to your main keyword. Don’t try to cram too many keywords in and repeat yourself over and over. This is definitely over-optimisation and you will be penalised.
After the pages you can look at off-page SEO such as creating relevant blogs and social media posts. Again don’t overdo it with these and start writing posts every day about the same keyword. Stick to variants and try to make everything you create is relevant and interesting.
If you would like some help you can choose our free keyword ranking report. It offers useful advice and we will be happy to go over it with you. In addition we can offer a wide array of services, standing out as a leading provider of web design and SEO in Middlesbrough. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.