5 SEO Tips to Try Today

I was thrown into the deep end when I started working in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) at my first corporate job out of college. The brand, which owned multiple other companies, had six different blogs that were begging for SEO support, but only got the bare minimum from the SEO team that already had their hands full with the ecommerce pages. So, I had to learn fast. Thankfully, that’s one of the things I’m best at, but I’m going to save you time and share a few tips so you can dip your toes in the SEO waters before diving in.

Let’s go over 5 SEO tips that you can implement today!

1. Keywords – SEO is all about search intent. What words or phrases are people searching for when they open Google or Bing? When you search for something, it usually looks something like “best waffle restaurant near me” or “can cats eat cucumbers”. Keyword research is simply finding the key phrases people are using and including those words/phrases on your website to encourage search engines to bring your relevant content up further on the search results page.
   
   Let’s take the waffle restaurant for example, you implement “best waffle restaurant in Toronto” in the meta description (more on that later) and the next time someone is in Toronto and searches “best waffle restaurant near me” your place pops up on the top of the page. Hooray! Another happy customer!
   
   
2. Optimize on-page SEO – now that you have your keywords, it’s time to implement them on the page you want to boost. Remember when I mentioned the meta description in the last paragraph? I told you we’d come back to it, so buckle in.
   
   When a search engine looks at your website, they perform what’s called a “crawl”. Basically, it means that the search engine bots are reading everything on your website, but not just the content that you can see. There is behind the scenes (aka backend) content that bots read to understand what the page is, why it’s important, and how it’s relevant to the rest of your site. We can help these bots by putting in information that uses our keyword research and a little bit of copywriting.
   
   Let’s go back to that waffle place. On the backend of the site there is a spot to put in SEO information (this looks different for every web host).
   
   The basic information they’re asking for is title, meta description, keyword and URL. All these elements are what we call “on-page SEO” because it’s what the bots read to quickly understand the purpose of every page on your site. Let’s break down each element.
   
   Title – (50-60 characters) pretty self-explanatory. What’s the title of your page? Remember the keyword research you did earlier? Best practices encourage us to include the keyword or key phrase we’re targeting.
   
   Example: The Waffle House | Best Waffles in Toronto
   The vertical bar between the two phrases isn’t required. I like that it breaks up the copy and it’s easier to understand.
   
   Meta description – (155 characters) this is a short description of what the page is about. Again, remember to add in keywords that are relevant to that page.
   
   Example: The Waffle House offers the best waffles in Toronto as well as a gourmet breakfast buffet, bottomless mimosas, and drag brunch on the weekends.
   
   This meta description keeps the key phrase “best waffles in Toronto” near the beginning of the copy which makes it easy for the bots to read. It also includes several other keywords “breakfast buffet”, “bottomless mimosas”, which will bring the site up when people search those phrases. At the same time, it’s also telling users what else is offered.
   The meta descriptions are visible on Google search as the one-two sentences beneath the title on the results page.
   
   URL – Another thing to help bots understand your page is a simple, clear URL that uses a keyword you wish to target.
   
   Example: www.thewafflehouse-toronto.com could work, especially if it’s a chain and they have multiple locations outside of Toronto.
   
   The key with URLs is to make them shorter (when possible) and not add numbers or special characters. Things like adding a date to the URL is a big no-no because if you update that page the URL is still going to have the original date in it which will confuse users as well as search bots.
   
   Here’s what it looks like when it’s all put together:
   Title: The Waffle House | Best Waffles in Toronto
   Meta description: The Waffle House offers the best waffles in Toronto as well as a gourmet breakfast buffet, bottomless mimosas, and drag brunch on the weekends.
   URL: www.thewafflehouse-toronto.com
   
   
3. Create quality content
   While this may not be the easiest thing to do right after reading this post, it’s a really important step in creating a reputation as a trustworthy source. The fun part is that creating quality content can look like a lot of things! This blog post, for example, is quality content (if I do say so myself) and while it brings people, like your lovely self, to my page it also tells the search bots that the content on my site knows what it is talking about and is sharing correct information in a way that engages readers.
   
   Here’s the thing, you can’t write one blog post and then never touch it again, that’s not going to cut it. The quality of the content extends to how often it is updated. If you have a blog post or a pin on Pinterest that performed well in the past, you need to make sure to go into that post and update it at least once a year, if not more. Change out the photos, optimize the on-page SEO, add links to other posts you’ve shared, and make sure the content is still accurate.
   
   The content also ties in with your keyword research. Let’s use the “can cats eat cucumbers” example for this. Say you’re a veterinary office that wants to increase engagement on their website and, hopefully, bring in more patients. You create a blog and through your keyword research you find that a lot of people are asking, “can my cat eat____”. That’s your blog post! Or you could have multiple blog posts that cover meat, veggies, legumes, and bread products. Answer as many questions about what cats can and can’t eat and what to do if they eat something they’re not supposed to. Ideally, the author could be on the vets that works at the clinic, because search engines (and humans) like to see the name of an actual person, not a company. Once it’s published (and you’ve done all your on-page SEO) share about the post on your socials and monitor your engagement.
   
   A key thing to remember with quality content, is that means NO AI. While AI might help you come up with ideas of topics to write about and help you with keyword research, AI does not write good articles, and the quality of your work will be wanting when it comes to Google’s expectations. Therefore, your article likely won’t get on the first page of Google.
   
   
4. Build quality backlinks
   Backlinks are essentially when another brand links to your site through their content. It’s a great way to ensure you have a trustworthy reputation and to connect with other companies in the same field.
   My best friend SEMrush has a great explanation of multiple ways to build your backlink portfolio.  
   
   
5. Improve website speed
   We’ve made it to the final tip! Thanks for sticking around if you made it this far.
   The days of waiting for a site to load are a thing of the past. Now when a site takes longer than half a second to fully load users have closed the tab and are back to searching for a different site. This is why page speed is so important. A slow loading page will lose you customers/engagement, high ranking on search results, and even appearing in AI results.
   There are several ways to improve page speed. Checkout CloudFare’s post on page speed to find what’s best for your situation.

So, there you have it! Five SEO tips that you can start implementing today to improve your rankings on search engines.

If you have more questions or need an expert to look at your website, reach out to me and I’d be happy to help!