When figuring out the best strategies for SEO Orange County, it makes sense to build from the ground up. In other words, if you have a website for your business and you’re trying to get it to rank with Google, then you should make sure that you’ve gone through a checklist of “SEO basics” before you move onto more advanced techniques. This becomes even more important if you don’t know very much about SEO, and you’re just starting to learn the ropes. Regardless of whether you’re a beginner or an expert, here are some absolute musts when laying out your website design and beginning to develop content for it.

 

Make Sure You’ve Picked The Right Keyword

 

When writing a post about easy chocolate cake recipes, it doesn’t necessarily follow that “easy chocolate cake recipes” is the best long tail keyword. You need to know the exact term for which people are searching, or there’s little chance you’ll be ranked highly. To that end, use a free tool like the Google Keyword Planner. Keep in mind that although it’s free, you might need an AdWords account to gain access to it. Figuring out your keyword is only the first step, however.

 

What Is The Competition Doing?

 

The next thing to do is to use that keyword and look at the top ten search results, discounting ads. Go to those websites and look around. Take note of the site layouts, the ease (or difficulty) of use, and the blogs and articles. This is where you need to be creative, and it helps to take mental notes. Ask yourself questions like what these websites are doing well, and where they could improve. Are you finding exactly what you’re looking for here? As someone who’s coming here to peruse the content, what else might be missing that you can provide instead?

 

Write Better Content Than Them

 

This is the real challenge. If you’ve got several websites that have the same focus as one another, then what can you do to set yours apart? Maybe you can have the best visuals, high-quality pictures of your product design process. You can have video tutorials or links to contests where the site visitors can win prizes if they sign up for your email newsletter. Your blogs and articles should be written in a dynamic voice, one that is designed to engage and matches the particular tone that your company is trying to convey. This part is all about branding, making sure that your company and its products and services stand out in a good way.

 

Above all, you want to be memorable to someone who finds your site. You want to promote brand loyalty, and that means getting the site user engaged. It can be a painstaking process, but the results are worth it. Remember that smart SEO will get people to your website, but it is your content that will make them remain there and will keep them coming back.