How to easily improve your SEO ranking: Part 1

Keyword research

Before working on the actual optimization of the website, it is important to identify the key words on which you want to be found in these search engines. If you optimize your website for a 'bad' key word, the result will be bad as well. So make sure to spend a good amount of time on finding the most suitable keywords and make your efforts pay off. 

This series of articles will not go in depth on the actual keyword research but focusses more on the steps that come after. However, in general it's good to remember that, when selecting keywords, it does not suffice to just take words that reflect what you do and what is important to your business and audience. Make no mistake, listing those words is a great start but you need to take it one step further. Challenge yourself and think about questions such as "what keywords do people actually search on?" , "Which key words have little competition at this point in time?" & "Which keywords will lead to the best result?".

Keyword research tools such as Ubersuggest, Moz Pro, Semrush, Google Keyword Planner (part of Google Ad words), KeywordTool.io (free tool!) and Ahrefs can be very useful. Make sure to check the test version of Ahrefs. It is not expensive at all and gives you insights in the keywords used by your competitors.

LUMPS

Once the keywords have been determined, it's time to put them to good use. At Blastic we rely on the LUMPS principle which focusses on Links, URLs, Metatags, Paragraphs & Page speed en Sitemaps to improve SEO ranking. This principle was introduced by Dennis Goedegebuure, SEO manager at eBay. ­­

• Links: internal and external links influence your ranking

• Urls: good URLs require reflection beyond the choice between .be or .com

• Metatags: tags to determine what your page will look like in the search results

• Paragraph: the importance of a well-structured text

• Page speed: optimize the speed of the page because slow sites rank lower

• Sitemap: how to let Google know which pages to index

The LUMPS principle already exists for quite a while and is still relevant today to improve your SEO score and ranking in the search results. In the coming weeks, we'll be publishing detailed articles dedicated to the different LUMPS topics. So make sure to keep an eye on our blog!