Wondering how you can increase website traffic using SEO in Dubai? We get from a lot of questions from many of the business owners whom we meet every day.
Today we are answering one question that has been asked more frequently than any other in terms of SEO.
How do I rank my website on Google to get customers for my business if I do not have a budget but a lot of time to do SEO tasks myself or I can teach my staff?
The answer is much more complicated than the question as always but we understand that most businesses can’t afford to hire an SEO agency in Dubai, so we have put together this step by step guide to generate traffic your website even if you are new to SEO or digital marketing.
Tips And Tricks On SEO
In this guide, we will look into on-page and off-page optimization along with a few tips and tricks that you will benefit in the longer run regarding SEO in Dubai.
Before we go any further, we will look into explaining a few of the terms that we will be discussing frequently throughout this post.
Domain authority (DA)
DA is a score that is provided by MOZ( SEO tool) that calculates the authority of the website’s domain based on a lot of factors like quality of the backlinks, quantity, and relevancy.
Backlinks
Backlinks are any kind of links that are placed on another website that points back to your website. For example, if our website is google.com, and your website yahoo.com, places a link to Google.com. Then google.com has a backlink from yahoo.com. Hope that is not confusing.
On-page optimization
Any optimization activities you do on your website including changes in content structure and technical aspects to favor the rankings on search engines.
Off-page optimization
Any activity you would do outside your website to improve website ranking in search results
Now you know the difference between on-page and off-page optimization lets start with optimizing the website from the content perceptive.
In on-page optimization, we will look into factors like:
1) Meta Tags
2) WordPress plugins
3) Image optimization
4) Keyword Usage
5) Tracking SEO
In off-page optimization, we will look into factors like:
1) Web 2.0 elements
2) Local directories
3) High-quality backlinks
4) Forum participation
5) Social Media
Diving deeper into the topic, let’s start with On-page optimization:
Meta Tags
The meta title and meta description of the respective pages have to be unique and specific to the topic of the page. A majority of the websites use the same title and description all over the website and this a huge mistake.
This is the first step in on-page optimization and one of the most important ones you can implement today. Sure, it may be a little bit hard work if you aren’t familiar with doing similar work but it is still one of the factors in ranking that you have control in other than the content itself.
In recent times there have been a lot of opinions and discussions stating that Google no longer takes these meta tags into the ranking algorithms of Google and does not have any effect in optimization which results in better ranking.
From our own experience, these tags are still creating relevancy for page and it’s content. It is something that is still worth putting your effort into you are starting out.
For WordPress Users:
If you are using a WordPress for instance as your website’s content management system, you could use a plugin called Yoast SEO which is really free use and the basic version is all that you need to do the optimization tasks.
The plugin will guide you through the process optimizing the on-page factors. Once you have done the recommended changes the buttons turn green from red.
Yoast SEO will give you suggestions on keyword usage and the number of times. You can see the first 50–60 characters of a title tag in search results and the first 50–160 characters for the description.
For example, if my website is about auto spare parts and the particular page is about window cleaning spray, I would mention that in my description of that page.
Google Indexing
Google identifies what the page is about by analyzing the content of the page. You might have a well-designed website that looks great but you will have to get traffic from Google to make sales. If you are not able to specify what your page content is about to Google, you will have no traffic from Google. This because it will be difficult for Google to index your page to the keyword searched and link it to its relevancy.
Similarly, the page URL should be optimized to be related to the topic or keyword that you wish to relate the page to. It is ideal to keep the URL as short as possible while keeping the relevancy in mind.
When you insert images into your content, you need to add an alt tag that says what the image is about. Google bots and spiders that find and store websites bases on the content cannot identify what an image is or what it’s context is. This can be done only by specifying the keyword or topic with the help of an alt tag.
Off-page optimization
Web 2.0 websites are websites that enable you to create and share content. For example, Tumblr or wordpress.com are Web 2.0 websites on which you can create an account for free and write content.
Using these content systems, you can share relevant content on the topics of your website and link it back to your website. These Web 2.0 sites have been around for a few years with a lot of pages and content, thus have high authority domains.
Here is a list of top web 2.0 websites to start syndicating content for free back-links:
- https://wordpress.com
- https://www.blogger.com
- https://www.tumblr.com
- https://www.weebly.com
Local directories
These really important for the local business SEO. You need to submit the website URL to them with accurate data like address and phone. You can find location directories using your Google search page. For example, if you are in UAE, you can use Google. ae and search for ” business directory in Dubai”.
You need to find directories in your city or country and submit your website. Most of these directories are free but some of them charge a small fee for a monthly listing.
Online Communities
Forums and groups provide you access to communities that you can discuss topics related to your industry and also building good quality backlink. You could answer questions that prospects have about your business or the industry in general.
Once you have enough posts in your forum account, you could add a signature link to your profile.
However, make sure that you do not spam these groups and forums as they have strict rules related to spamming. Also, it damages and does more harm than good for your brand’s reputation.
You Could Join Communities Like:
- Smallbusinessforums.org
- Small-business-forum.net
- Homebusinessonline.com/forum
- Facebook groups
Social backlinks:
According to a study by Hootsuite, websites that have been promoted on social media saw a drastic boost in search rankings and traffic. https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-seo-experiment/
Social profiles add value to your SEO activities as they are more interactive platforms. As a result, creating content to share on these social networks will provide you with social signals that you can link back to your content on the website.
Top 5 Social Media Websites To Build Links From:
1. Facebook
2. YouTube
3. Twitter
4. LinkedIn
5. Pinterest
High Authority Backlinks:
High authority and high-quality backlink can give you a really good boost in the search rankings provided you have done the on-page optimization correctly.
It is advisable to find high authority sites related to your industry to get backlinks from.
For example, if you are into real estate, you wouldn’t want to acquire backlinks from a sports website, but one from an architect’s website which is more related to real estate.
SEO
Relevancy is the key here in Search engine optimization. A very good way to get a backlink from a high domain or website is to write guest posts. If you could create high-quality content solving a problem of your target audience and share it with a website that caters to the exact target audience, you have a high chance of getting a backlink form the website owner unless they are your direct competitors.
Reaching out to a lot of website owners is required to get at least a few backlinks using guest posting method, you need to make sure that these domains have a good authority. Otherwise, it will not only have any no effect on your search rankings but also you are losing the valuable content piece that you could have used on another high-quality website.
Some websites or blogs do have a comment section where you comment or take part in the discussion sharing your thoughts on the topic. Some SEO specialists build backlinks from these comments.
Most of these backlinks are considered spammy and website owners delete them. We do not recommend wasting your time on blog commenting. However, you can do this if you have a lot of time, find a high-quality website, and can truly contribute to the discussions. Doing this and adding comments just for the sake of a backlink is not worth it.
Search Rankings
There are 1000s of factors that influence the search rankings. However, we have ranked websites using different strategies in the past few years. This is a simple strategy to follow if you are a beginner to start seeing improvements in search rankings.
If you have integrated Google search console, ( which we highly recommend), it gives you insights into your website’s performance on the search engine. For example, technical errors for usability and crawlable for the search engines’ bots.
SEO is not simple but as said before if you have the basics set up properly, it will help you in the long run as the website expands with new content.
If you have any questions or comments regarding SEO in Dubai, do let us know and we will be happy to help u you.
You might also be interested in our related article:
1. How to Generate Leads in 24 hours with Google Ads
2. Why you need Google Analytics for your business website