If your company has a website, you probably depend on it to bring you new clients and drive additional income. Search engine optimization is a reliable way to attract customers to your business. Whether you already use SEO or you’re completely new to it, there are several essential SEO practices you can use to improve your website.

1. Make your site user-friendly.

One thing you may want to consider is the user experience on your website. If your content is easy to read and understand, it will attract more visitors and keep returning clients coming back for more. Readable content will also increase your rankings on search engine websites.

Some ways you can make your content easier to read is by keeping your paragraphs short, alternating the length of your sentences, and using proper grammar as well as good writing. You can further improve your content by optimizing your page titles and subheaders, and including your relevant keyword wherever you can.

2. Optimize your images.

Optimizing the photos on your website is another technique that improves your SEO. When using images on your site, try to find the photos that are most relevant to the content you’re using them for. Similar to unique body content, if you use unique photos, your ranking will improve even further and you can utilize backlinks as well.

Make sure to give any images on your website a descriptive and relevant title as well as alternative text. Alternative text is a description of the image and is useful for SEO as well as accessibility for vision-impaired consumers. You can also include your keyword in photo descriptions for even better SEO.

3. Use internal links and backlinks.

Internal links direct traffic from one of your posts to a different post. For example, you may use an internal link on a new post about your current business projections that takes you to a post with last year’s numbers. Internal links improve Google rankings and also allow more people to reach your older content that they may not have read yet.

Backlinks are links on other websites that lead to your website. Like internal links, backlinks improve your Google ranking and drives traffic to your posts. An essential part of backlinking is making sure the links are strong and reliable. You don’t necessarily want to have backlinks on disreputable websites that have nothing to do with your content.

4. Watch your analytics.

Another essential part of SEO is data analytics. To make sure your content is improving and performing well, you should probably track things like page views and unique visitors.

If you aren’t sure how to track your website’s performance, you can use a software service like SearchAtlas. Search Atlas has free tools to help you improve your SEO as well as paid options for more in-depth help. Search Atlas tools can also help you find relevant keywords for your content and help improve your ranking in search results.

5. Consider other technologies.

With smart technology becoming more popular every year, it makes sense to consider your SEO in terms of voice searches. Many people use smart devices to ask questions, and the devices then read aloud the featured snippet. To ensure your website is accessible, optimize your content for smart devices. Your content should be able to be read as an answer to a question.

SEO is a critical component of running a successful website. To begin optimizing your content, consider how accessible your site is to readers and go from there. You can also compare your website to your competitors and see how your content differs. The most important things to consider when improving your SEO is how descriptive your titles and headings are, the quality of your content, and the number of links you use.