When it comes to implementing SEO best practices within your business, it can be overwhelming when you don’t know how it works or, more importantly, how to use it to your advantage. At Tulip Media Group, this is a concern we often see with business owners, which is why we thought we’d dive into all things SEO to help you feel more confident in your SEO strategy and your business as a whole. So today, we’re discussing SEO unleashed and going over how to master on-page and off-page SEO techniques to improve your business’s online visibility.

What Is On-Page SEO?

The very first thing we need to start with is what is on-page SEO anyway? On-page SEO refers to the process of optimizing your website’s content, tags, and internal links to improve search visibility and increase traffic. By improving these elements, online search engines are able to better understand and categorize your content and, therefore, show it to the correct audience. In other words, the goal is to speak the search engines “language” and help search engine crawlers understand the meaning and context of your website’s content.

How Can I Optimize My On-Page SEO?

So, now you’re probably wondering, “How can I optimize my on-page SEO?” Don’t worry. We’ve compiled a list of simple, actionable items you can begin implementing to improve your on-page SEO today. The very first thing you’ll want to do (if you haven’t already) is ensure that you’ve integrated relevant keywords throughout the pages on your website. This makes sense because if you’re not utilizing the language or key search terms that people will be looking for, how can you expect them to find you?

Beyond keyword integration, you’ll want to make sure your on-page elements are optimized, including your title tag and meta descriptions, images, and URLs. There’s that word again: optimization, but what does it mean? Optimizing these data points means creating accurate, detailed, and concise descriptions, once again, in an effort to help online search engines crawl, understand, and rank your page better. When you optimize a URL, for example, you want to use meaningful keywords, use hyphens to separate the words, and mainly just ensure that the page URL is relevant and accurate.

A final thing that’s crucial to improving your on-page SEO, especially in today’s saturated marketplace, is being mindful of creating user-friendly content. Yes, it’s important to build content that can be easily understood and ranked by search engine crawlers, but it’s arguably more important to create content for the actual users that will be landing on your site. You can achieve this by limiting your use of jargon, adding visuals and proper spacing to break up the text on your page, or even integrating bulleted lists to help users find important information quickly. So, while it is critical to make some on-page adjustments so that you’ll rank better, don’t forget about the end user and the journey that your website takes them on.

What Is Off-Page SEO?

Now, it’s time to explore the other piece of the puzzle—off-page SEO. But what exactly is off-page SEO? Off-page SEO refers to all the activities that occur away from your website that help determine where you rank within the search engine results pages. In other words, you can basically think of off-page SEO as building your site’s reputation. The better a website’s reputation, the higher it tends to rank because search engines consider them to have more Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T). But don’t stress about getting caught up in the SEO jargon, because there are some simple ways to improve your E-A-T and help your website increase its online visibility.

How Can I Optimize My Off-Page SEO?

So now, the moment you’ve been waiting for—how can I optimize my off-page SEO? Well, there are a few different ways. For one, creating valuable backlinks. Backlinks are simply hyperlinks from one website (your website) to a page on another website through an anchor text. Think of it as an online citation or a “vote of confidence” that will ultimately help you improve your E-A-T and rank better on online search engine results.

Beyond backlinking, content marketing is an important off-page SEO tactic. There are many ways to approach content marketing, including PR, social media, influencer marketing, guest posting, and podcasts, to name a few. However, you can’t expect to be able to juggle every form of content marketing. Therefore, we suggest picking a few of these tactics that work best for your business and beginning to integrate them into your off-page SEO strategy. For example, your business may already have a social media presence, meaning you’re already engaging in off-page SEO (even if you didn’t realize it!). Although social media isn’t a direct Google ranking factor, it’s a great way to garner attention and direct traffic to your website in an effort to increase clicks and your online visibility.

Finally, if you don’t have a Google Business Profile, you need to get one—immediately! Opening a free Google Business Profile gives you the authority to influence how your business shows up on Google while ensuring the presented information is accurate and correct. You know when you search “pizza near me” and a bunch of options show up with their businesses pinned to the map? Those are called map pack results, and they are an invaluable way for your business to capture local, ready-to-buy customers. Not only that but having a Google Business Profile allows you to manage and respond to reviews, which is another integral part of a robust off-page SEO strategy.

Bringing It All Together

Although we’ve only been able to give you a brief glimpse into the world of SEO, we hope you feel better equipped to jump in and begin tackling your on-page and off-page SEO strategy. Remember that optimizing your SEO strategy won’t happen overnight. It takes time to hone and implement these tactics in a way that will influence your business’s rankings on search engine results pages. However, we’re confident that this overview can help you kickstart your SEO efforts so that you can begin to see more traffic, conversions, and, ultimately, sales.

If you’d like to speak with our experts further about improving your online SEO, contact us today at www.tulipmediagroup.com.