1. On-Page SEO is the act of you optimizing different parts of your web site that affect your search engine rankings. It’s stuff that you have control over and can change on your own website, such as page text, various HTML tags, and internal links.
2. Off-Page SEO increases the relevancy of your website by getting links on other websites to your website. Essentially, it increases relevancy because if demonstrates how the “world” views your website.

While on-page and off-page SEO work together to improve your search engine rankings, On-page SEO is the one that you should initially spend time on. It’s the one where you have the full control to make updates and improvements.

Get Social
It’s not enough to produce great content on your website and hope that people find it. You must be proactive. One of the best ways to increase traffic to your website is to use social media channels to promote your content and drive traffic to your website. Twitter is ideal for short, snappy attention getters called “tweets”. LinkedIn is the number 1 social media platform for B2B* (business-to-business). Also, YouTube is tops for promoting video content. If you are a B2C (business-to-consumer) organization, you will get the most traction with Facebook*. Also use YouTube and Instagram if your content is largely images. Don’t forget to include your website link in your social media channels and activity.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing

The most common way to do this is via a responsive design. A responsive design website is built using flexibly sized elements which are controlled by the website code. No matter what size screen the user is using to view your website, the text, images, navigation and graphics will resize fluidly. It’s not device-specific or browser-specific. It’s designed to look good and function well at any size.

No Contact Information
If you’re selling a product or service, you need to offer visitors several ways to contact you. The best option is to have a link to a “Contact Us” page that provides an email form as well as complete contact information: mailing address, phone number and email address. That link should be on every page of your website, or within the common header or footer of your website. The very presence of this information adds legitimacy to your site and terrific geographical information for search engines.

Stranding Users on Other Websites
When you have a link on your website that will direct your visitor to another website, make sure you open a new window or tab on your browser to display the other website. Not doing so, and using the same window for the new website, will take your website visitors away from your website in their browser. In that case for the visitor to return to your website, they either need to press the browser’s “back” button many times, or they will need to reenter your website address in the browser address bar.

Instead, have your website open another window for any link that will direct a visitor to another website. Your visitor will then be able to easily go back to the point where they left you website simply by closing the new window or tab.

Choosing the Wrong Keywords
When you type a keyword or phrase into the search box, the search engine returns a list of websites that it tries to match the entered search phrase. Search engines have algorithms that they use to determine the relevancy of the returned matches websites to the search terms. There are several free tools to help you determine the right search terms. Among those are Google Ads.

In your website content and code, you need to place those keywords or phrases. That helps the search engine understand the meaning of your website when the search terms are used. However, be sure to identify and use for your website the words and phrases that your visitors will use to search for a website like yours.

If your intended audience will be from within your industry, industry terms may be used. However, if your intended audience will be lay people from outside your industry, then use terms that lay people will use. It’s not likely that the search engine algorithms will be able to effectively match lay person terms to websites with mostly industry terms.

Broken Links
Broken links are links that don’t work. Some of the reasons why links don’t work include, the website is no longer available, the web page was moved without a redirect being added (server 404 error) or the website URL was changed. Displaying a default server 404 error page, or another default error page, is the same as asking the visitor to leave your website. Instead, redirect users having links to old page to the new related page. Or, default all 404 errors to your website’s Home page.

Cleaning up broken links can improve user experience and make content within your website easier for visitors and search engines to discover. However, websites with too many broken links signal a low-quality website to search engines, and especially to your visitors.

Bad Font Selection
Script or Serif (having small features on the ends of strokes) fonts may be harder for your visitors to read clearly, especially when rendering your website on a small tablet display or smartphone. Popular serif  fonts are Times and Georgia. Popular sans serif (without serif) fonts are Arial and Verdana. Stick with sans serif fonts for greater text clarity.

Unrelated Content
Your website is an ambassador of your brand online. Consistency across pages in your website plays an important role in establishing a solid and effective understanding or your brand to both your website visitors (and for SEO). To give your website visitors a clear understanding of your brand, you must deliver a consistent message across all pages on your website. If you have both professional and personal interests, but they are not related (e.g. you offer business marketing consulting services and you enjoy breeding beagles), don’t put the content of both unrelated interests on one website. Half of your audience will be turned off by the content not of interest to them. In addition, the mixing of unrelated content makes it difficult for the search engines to determine website relevancy to search engine queries, resulting in a lower positioning in the results. If you do want to promote unrelated content online, do so with separate websites.

Remember that you need to target your website to your audience. It’s necessary that you understand the attributes and characteristics that can make or break the effectiveness of your website to your brand. A poorly built or operating website will do more to hurt your brand than to help it.

Promote Your Expertise and Brand
Since a blog gives you a platform for sharing important industry-related information and insights, it is one of the best ways to establish yourself or your brand as an expert in your field. As you write more posts and share more of your expertise, your website will become a powerful demonstration of your knowledge in your profession. When somebody visits your website and sees the insights you’ve shared on a subject,  it will be clear that you are an expert in your field.

Become a Better Writer
Good writing means more search-engine traffic, more social shares, and ultimately more customers. Bad writing means being ignored. The more you blog, the more you write. And the more you write, the better writer you become. As for the type of content to write, use your blog to share your views on what others write, comment on industry trends, or simply use your blog posts like a periodic newsletter.

Differentiate Yourself From Your Competition
Blogging on your website is one of the best ways to differentiate yourself from your competition. By providing your own unique thoughts and insights, you grow your search traffic, customer trust and conversions. Blogging may also level the playing field between a small business and the big competitors. It can give you an opportunity to compete with bigger businesses with bigger budgets.

Take Control of Your Online Identity
Whether you’re a person or business, there’s probably lots of information about you online. When somebody searches for you online, you want to make sure that you make a good first impression, and that they get an accurate and complete picture of what you’re all about. Trust is a valuable commodity online. You can’t buy trust. It must be earned by consistently demonstrating your commitment to your website visitors. A blog is a great way to build trust and take control your online identity.

If you were car shopping today, would you consider models from Honda or Toyota? There was a lot of negative press about these 2 brands in the recent past. However, most car shoppers will still consider Honda or Toyota products in their automobile search. The reason why is that through the content these companies posted via their website as well as other channels, they demonstrated that they seriously investigated the issues identified in the press, they were being addressed attentively, and they continue their dedication to delivering a quality product.

Grow Your Professional Network
Blogging is a community-based activity, and networking is one reason people engage in it. Whether you are a solo practitioner, job seeker or blogging to promote your business, blogging can help to build relationships that will facilitate your growth.

My Final Thoughts
As you can see, I am a big advocate for blogging, as well as engaging with your audience online. Blogging requires only a little investment of your time. However, it has the potential for a big ROI from your time investment. The platform you chose (WordPress, Blogger, etc.) is irrelevant. Your content is what is most relevant. From a practical standpoint, blogging just makes good sense.

Do a keyword analysis and add those keywords to your content. Update meta tags, alt tags and page titles, as well as update web page URLs (web page address) and your website’s site map. Also, submit all web pages to the search engine directories (specifically Google and Bing). Good SEO is more than just these few points, but these are the initial key points to address.

It’s clear that many businesses rely on social media to promote their brand, products and services. However, social media marketing is not about volume selling and posting random content. Using social media effectively for business can be a quick, easy and user-friendly way to interact with your target audience. With a little investment in time, your business can be well on its way to developing a strong online presence and following.