The internet is filled with tons of content on SEO tips and tricks. But, only a few experts actually know how to create an SEO-friendly website right from the start and get a steady flow of traffic.
As a PR agency, it is especially important for you to have a solid SEO strategy and online presence. You cannot rely only on your marketing skills to get clients. SEO can help you attract, engage, and convert right from your website.
If you are looking for guidance on how to create an SEO-friendly website, then you have reached the right place. In this post, you will learn six essential steps for creating an SEO-friendly website for your PR agency.
Ready to learn more? Let’s get started.
- Use a mobile-responsive design
- Create targeted content for relevant keywords
- Optimize meta titles, descriptions, and URLs
- Get backlinks from authoritative websites
- Use internal linking
- Optimize your website speed
1. Use a mobile-responsive design
The very first rule of creating an SEO-friendly website in 2021 is to make it mobile-friendly.
This is because a significant share of online traffic comes from mobile devices. And, if your website does not render well on different screen sizes, you might lose out on valuable traffic.
So, choose a mobile-responsive website design and make sure that your web pages render well on all devices. Also, don’t create a separate mobile website, as Google will only consider one site. Instead, use a mobile-first approach and pay special attention to mobile-responsiveness while creating your website.
If you are using any of the good platforms to build websites, you will automatically find mobile-responsive themes and website design. Still, make sure that the design you choose is mobile-friendly, right from the start.
Other than that, you also need to optimize your PR agency’s website content to make it mobile-friendly. For example, very long sentences or text-heavy paragraphs are not great for someone reading it on a mobile device. Structure your content in a way that is easy-to-read on mobile devices as well.
2. Create targeted content for relevant keywords
If you know anything about SEO, you would know how important keywords are for SEO. But, people often get confused about which keywords to use, how much, and how they really work.
In this section, you will learn everything that you need to know about keyword optimization and how it helps with SEO. Let’s start with why keyword optimization is required in the first place.
When a user searches for something on a search engine, they see a list of relevant pages in the search results. Search engines crawl all websites to look for the keywords that a search user types and then show the best results.
If your content has the right keywords, in the right density, then you can improve your chances of ranking high in the search engine results pages (SERP).
Now, coming to which keywords you should target. As a PR agency, your most important keywords will be related to the services that your PR agency offers. First, choose those keywords and create landing pages targeting specific keywords for each of your PR services. And, maintain a good keyword density of about 2% for landing pages.
Next, you can target other relevant keywords with your blog content. If you don’t have a blog yet, it is highly recommended that you start one. Blogs help in bringing more traffic to your PR agency website by targeting the right keywords with each post. Once you get that traffic you can then use conversion rate optimization strategies to convert them into customers for your agency.
For blog posts, don’t go overboard with keyword stuffing and keep your keyword density less than 1.5%. You can also target one primary keyword and some related keywords to make the most of each content piece and maximize your content’s performance. You can add CTA text to get more engagement.
Overall, all your website content should be optimized for specific keywords, preferably related to the services that your agency offers.
3. Optimize meta titles, descriptions, and URLs
If you want to create an SEO-friendly website for your PR agency, you can’t overlook the on-page SEO aspects.
These are the things that make it easier for search engines to understand and categorize your website content better. This, in turn, helps them show your web pages for the right search queries and also helps improve your SERP rankings.
There are three crucial aspects of on-page SEO that you should optimize for relevant keywords. To find relevant keywords for your PR agency website, you can use keyword research tools for SEO.
Want to know more about these on-page SEO aspects? Let’s discuss each of these in more detail.
Meta titles
When any page shows in the SERP results, the heading that a search user sees for that page is its meta title. These are very important for SEO because they help the search engines understand your content better and categorize it correctly.
Therefore, it is crucial to include your target keywords in your meta titles if you want your content to rank for those keywords. Adding a keyword to your titles will tell search engines that your content is about that particular keyword.
But, that’s not all!
Meta titles are also important to tell your potential audience what your content is about and why they should click on your page in the search results. So, try to make your meta titles informative, while still maintaining the character limit.
Meta descriptions
Just like meta titles, meta descriptions also inform both your readers and search engines about your content and what they can expect from it. Meta descriptions are also shown on SERP, just below the meta titles.
These are very important factors for readers to decide whether they want to click on a particular search result or not. So, use meta descriptions to provide more information about your content and what people can gain from it.
Also, always include your target keyword in your meta description as it helps search engines understand your content. Keep the length of your meta descriptions between 150 and 160 characters to further optimize it.
URLs
When a user visits your website, they see a different URL for each page, right at the top. These URLs should also include your primary keywords, to help both search engines and readers, as discussed above.
Also, try to keep your URLs short, simple, and easy to remember. For example, URLs for your service pages can be your home page URL plus the name of each service. Here’s an example: www.xyz.com/brandmanagement.
You can create similar URLs for all the service pages on your website. This will help improve the rankings of these pages and increase organic traffic to your website.
4. Get backlinks from authoritative websites
As a PR agency, the one thing that you should be good at is getting media mentions and being featured on different websites. Use your industry connections and find high-authority websites where you are mentioned. Then, try to get a link back to your website, from all these sites.
You can start by looking at your current media mentions and try to get backlinks for each by reaching out to the respective website’s editor. Use this strategy to turn your unlinked PR mentions into links and improve your backlink profile.
You can also start building new backlinks by posting guest articles on other websites and using relevant anchor texts to link to your PR agency website. For this, choose relevant industry topics and post on high authority websites in your niche. This will also improve your online reputation, which is very important for a PR agency.
Other ways of getting backlinks and media coverage include giving published interviews, answering questions HARO questions, and participating in expert roundups. All these are opportunities to gain backlinks from other websites.
The more good-quality backlinks you will have, the better it is for SEO. Search engines consider backlinks from authoritative websites as a signal that you have good content on your website. This, in turn, helps improve your PR website’s rankings.
5. Use internal linking
Internal linking is good for SEO for multiple reasons. First, it encourages your readers to stay on your business website longer and engage with more of your content. Second, it helps search engines discover more content on your PR website and helps them index your pages better.
So, use internal links within your content to link it to other relevant content on your website. Use relevant anchor text and direct readers to similar content that they might find useful.
The longer a user stays on your PR agency website, the better it is for SEO.
6. Optimize your website speed
Last, but not least, check and improve your PR agency website speed and make sure that pages do not take more than a few seconds to load.
If your web pages lag, chances are that most people will simply leave your PR agency website and move on to some other website. This can result in a substantial loss in traffic that could have been easily avoided.
But, how can you improve your website speed? Some of the things that can help with improving your website speed are:
- Make use of a content delivery network (CDN)
- Optimize your images and videos and reduce their file size
- Use caching to speed up your website
- Reduce the use of redirects, as much as possible
You should use a good hosting service, as that can also affect your website speed.
What next?
If you want to build an SEO-friendly website for your PR agency, then follow these steps to do so.
SEO is not something that you do once and then forget about it. It is a continuous effort, so keep conducting regular SEO audits to find improvement areas and maintain your SEO-friendly website.
Ready to take your agency to the next level? Prowly has all you need to support your PR agency goals – be it more clients, improved retention, or higher retainers.