I currently lead emagine’s Website Maintenance and Support department, but I started my web career in Digital Marketing. So, over the years there have been a variety of tips I’ve shared with my clients because I knew it would help them improve their SEO.

Tips to improve SEO

I trained them to add ALT tags to their images, allowing them to be indexed in search engines and enabling visitors to read a description of the image if it doesn’t load. I showed them how to edit the title tags and meta descriptions on their pages so they could improve their click-through rates from search results. I’ve been a stickler about the fact that you should not add duplicate content to your site – whether you have permission or not, because no one wants to be blacklisted by Google.

And, most frequently, I told my clients that “Content is King.” It’s a phrase I’ve heard (and repeated) for years. I knew it was important to create fresh content regularly and to keep a regular blogging schedule.

The only problem is, I didn’t know exactly why I was encouraging it.

Process for website optimization before launch

Luckily, I got some tangible evidence to support my claims today during the first session of the emagine Lunch & Learn series.

Every other month, one of the teams at emagine will present a topic near and dear to them, which other emagine employees may not be familiar with or fully understand. This month was Digital Marketing’s turn, and Chad Gourd and Jen Camara, our Digital Marketing Associates, knocked it out of the park.

Chad and Jen discussed their process for optimizing websites before launch. A large piece of that process includes researching keywords that clients provide them with, as well as developing a list of supplemental, relevant keywords which have good search volume and rankings.

These are terms that clients often don’t even realize their potential customers are searching for or that their competition is using. Once a site’s keywords are selected, Chad and Jen strategically implement them within page content – in title tags and meta descriptions, and in ALT tags.

Content is king

You don’t want to overstuff a page with keywords to the point where it’s no longer informative and coherent, though. That’s where “Content is King” comes in. If you want your website to rank in search engines for all of the supplemental keywords Chad and Jen identified for you, you’re going to have to add more content.

So, next time you’re not ranking in a search and you’d like to be, consider how easy it would be to write a quick blog post about it.