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Originally Posted On: https://grandwaymarketing.com/top-5-seo-tips-strategies-in-2022/

Want to rank higher in searches? Get your website on the first page of Google? These are the top 6 SEO Tips and Strategies that will get you there!

SEO can be the difference between success and failure online.

These top SEO tips will make the biggest difference in the least amount of time with the least amount of effort. I use these SEO tips for my own website as well as my client’s websites throughout 2021 and these are key going forward into 2022.

The first tip of the top 6 SEO tips is keyword research and making sure you are targeting the right keywords! You can use free tools like Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends and paid tools like SEMrush. Here’s 10+ Best Keyword Research Tools if you want to dig deeper into what tools to use.

Regardless of which keyword research tool you use – you need to pick the right keywords.

Make sure you’re targeting the right keywords regionally. If you’re a lawyer servicing clients in Halifax and aiming to rank for “lawyer in Halifax” you want to make sure you specify that instead of targeting “lawyer” alone, which would be a more difficult keyword and less relevant as you would be reaching people outside of Halifax, and could include a range of irrelevant topics.

Target long tail keywords. “Lawyer in Halifax” might not be the quickest and easiest way to generate traffic fast because it’s a highly competitive word. However, you can target “family lawyer Halifax”, “injury lawyer Halifax”, or “criminal lawyer Halifax”. These keywords will have less traffic, but also less competition, giving you a better chance to get on the first page.

Make sure your keywords get enough traffic to make it worth the effort. The more traffic a keyword gets the more difficult will be, but also avoid targetting keywords that don’t have enough traffic to make an impact in conversions.

Another one of the top SEO tips in 2022 are landing pages, page titles, and page descriptions. Each page of your website has a title and description. Make sure these include the right keywords. If you’re using WordPress you can install a plugin like YoastSEO that will make it easier to edit these page titles and descriptions. The page you’re optimizing the titles and descriptions needs to be the correct page. For example, say you have a construction company that does a bunch of services including roofing and flooring. You will want to create a page for each service and optimize the title and description for each. If someone is looking for “roofing in Toronto” and they land on your page that’s all about flooring, they’ll just leave. Chances are if you’re optimizing the wrong page it will not rank anyway since Google’s algorithm is efficient at filtering irrelevant content.

For example, let’s take a look at these 4 landing pages on my website: SEO Halifax, Web Design Halifax, Web Design Montreal, SEO Montreal

As you can see these 4 pages are targeting 2 services, web design and seo, in 2 locations, Halifax and Montreal. I made a landing page for each, containing the keywords in page titles and descriptions. That way when someone is looking for SEO in Montreal they will land on the SEO Montreal page; when someone is looking for web design in Halifax, they will land on the Halifax web design page.

Page content is another top SEO tip in 2022. Building on the previous point, you have to ensure that the page content is also relevant and well structured. Ensure your headings (H1, H2, H3, H4) contain relevant keywords. Have at least 1000-2000 words on the page, with a good amount of keywords throughout. Picture file names, alt text, and title text are all important for SEO – so implement keywords in these. People see pictures, Google sees the file name, alt tags, and title text.

Taking the same example from before, take another look at these 4 landing pages on my website: SEO Halifax, Web Design Halifax, Web Design Montreal, SEO Montreal

Each one of these pages contain 500 or more words, with lots of keywords throughout but not too much, headings containing keywords, picture alt tags and title text containing keywords, etc.

There must be a balance between writing for SEO and writing good content that addresses your ideal customer and gets them to engage with your call to action, whether it’s generating sales or leads.

This SEO tip is so important, but also often ignored. Make sure your website loads under 3 seconds, or worst case, under 5 seconds. The reasons why a website is loading slow are many – some extremely easy to fix, others very annoying and time consuming. Cheap hosting is probably the most common reason why websites load slow. If you have a ton of plugins, that are not updated, can cause your website to load slow. Uploading images without optimizing their size is another very common issue that contributes to a slow loading website. Using page builders like Divi and Elementor can cause websites to load slow if not optimized.

If your website currently loads in 8-10 or more seconds, and you get it down to under 3 seconds. I can guarantee you will see huge improvements fast – given that the other tips in this post have been addressed.

Another highly overlooked top SEO tip that is huge for local SEO is Google My Businesss. Probably the easiest tip to implement, that will make the biggest difference, and it’s free. Sign up for Google My Business and set up your listing. Verify the listing by requesting Google to send a postcard with a code. Include keywords in the listing title (Grandway Marketing vs. Grandway Marketing – Web Design, SEO & Digital Marketing). Include the services provided and the areas serviced. Upload relevant pictures. Request Google reviews from your clients. Post on Google My Business frequently.

Backlinks are key to improving search ranking and of the most important top SEO tips in 2022, but can become time consuming to implement. What are backlinks? Basically links to your website, on other websites. Free and easy backlinks are business directories such as Yellow Pages, Yelp, etc. Sign up on all these websites and make sure to have the same consistent information (NAP – Name Address Phone) on all of them, including your website link.

Media, press releases, business associations, industry publications, industry blogs, are all great places to get backlinks to your website. The more authority the websites that link to your website, the better. For example, I have backlinks on Saint Mary’s University website, Halifax Chamber of Commerce website, Atlantic Business Magazine website, some press releases, backlinks on industry websites like Clutch.co and DesignRush, on top of business directories like Yelp and YP. Some of these are easy to sign up for immediately online. Others require some contact and relationship building.

These top 6 SEO tips are key to improving your website ranking in search engines, driving more traffic to your website, and ultimately generating more sales and leads from your website. If you implement these strategies properly I can guarantee you will see results!