12 SEO Resources for IT Professionals Who Want to Rank Higher in Google

Are you struggling to rank your IT company’s website in the Google’s search results?

Does improving your SEO feel like an impossible task that takes too much time to learn or too much money to outsource to an expert?

The truth is, optimizing your website to improve your search ranking in Google can be very easy when you have the right SEO resources to get you started.

That’s why I’ve put together this list of useful articles that will help you rank your site in search.

Interested to boost your site’s rankings? Well let’s get started.

#1. Improving Your On-Page SEO

In a recent post on local SEO ranking factors, I cited a 2015 study conducted by Moz demonstrating on-page SEO as the #1 factor in search ranking.

 

And so, it goes without saying, that’s where you should start learning SEO.

But what exactly is on-page optimization?

In short, the term relates to the way you optimize a page and its content, to make it relevant for specific keywords you want it to rank for.

And below you’ll find some of the best advice to help you discover how to optimize your pages and content.

• On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page by Brian Dean at Backlinko. Run by SEO expert, Brian Dean, Backlinko prides itself on being a go-to source for “insanely actionable advice that works.” That certainly holds true for this guide. Brian breaks on-page SEO down with an infographic of 16 key factors loved by search engines and users alike, making it easy for you to take immediate action.
• 8 Easy Wins for On-Page SEO by Dr. Peter J. Meyers at Moz. A general rule of thumb: if an SEO blog repeatedly shows in the top 5 results for almost any SEO-related keyword search you run, trust their advice implicitly. So it goes with Moz. They know what they’re talking about and this guide to 8, quick and actionable on-page improvements should be one of your first stops on the road to improving your ranking.
• The On-Page SEO Cheat Sheet by Neil Patel. As the founder of 4 separate multi-million dollar businesses, digital marketing consultant to top brands like Google and NBC and recipient of an award from the President of the United States, Neil has an incredible reputation as a trusted source for SEO optimization. This cheat sheet touches on some of the same HTML-focused improvements as the previous two, but also dives a bit deeper into content optimization as well. A must-read with great accompanying visuals.

#2. Local SEO Optimization Guides

I’m sure you already know this – for most IT companies, competing in the local market can be the biggest challenge. The good news is, if you can get your local SEO right, competing for desirable keywords (like “MSP provider NYC” for a Manhattan-based IT company), becomes much easier.

 

We’ve already talked about improving local ranking in the past, both for those just getting started as well as IT companies with an established “Google My Business” profile. But I thought I’d share with you some additional resources to help you get the most of your local SEO:

• The Big Picture Guide to Local SEO by Marcus Miller at SearchEngineLand.com. Miller does a great job of taking this data-heavy report from Moz and converting it into actions you can easily take to make immediate improvements to the factors most heavily-weighted in your local rank. I also like that Miller points out negative factors that actually drag down your position in Google’s results.
• Local SEO: The Definitive Guide 2017 by The Site Edge. It doesn’t get much more comprehensive than this behemoth of a guide that not only walks you through each local ranking factor in-depth, but also provides a list of resources at the end of each “chapter” to help you optimize and test your SEO.
• The Ultimate Guide to Local SEO by Lisa Jacy at Linkdex. A higher-level guide worth bookmarking to refer back to later on. Jacy’s report is comprehensive and would be a great refresher for the future. Good SEO is a constantly iterative process, so keeping valuable documents like this on file will be a tremendous help.

#3. The Best Resources on Link Building

Fact: you need to build links to add credibility to your content and improve your rankings.

And at its core, link building is pretty simple. The more sites linking back to your page as a resource, the more visibility your page receives in keyword searches.

You can build up your links in a number of different ways, but according to a recent survey conducted by SearchEngineLand.com, 78% of marketers said quality content creation has the biggest impact for link building.

 

These resources provide all the insight you need into link building and the impact it can have on your ranking:

• Link Building: The Definitive Guide by Brian Dean at Backlinko. An incredible, comprehensive guide to every aspect of link building. Broken down into chapters and even downloadable as a PDF for future reference. Chapter 8 takes a unique approach by exploring less traditional, more creative link building exercises.
• The Noob Friendly Guide to Link Building by David McSweeney at Ahrefs. We’ve all been the “noob” at something before. McSweeney’s guide is comprehensive but not overwhelming with too much detail. His walk-throughs are simple enough that even the noobiest of noobs could extract some helpful, actionable tips.
• The Ultimate Guide to Link Building with Content by Eric Siu at SingleGrain. Eric’s post has everything you need to implement a quality link building strategy. Best of all is that the article is a continuous work in progress: the most recent update and expansion of content occurred in February of 2017.

#4. Optimizing Your Blog Posts for SEO

I’m sure you noticed there’s a common theme across each of the above categories: while each have their own nuanced ways of helping boost your ranking and bring traffic to your site, each also requires quality content as a driving force behind whatever other strategies may help.

According to Junto Digital, a digital marketing agency, 72% of marketers say quality content creation is their most effective SEO tactic.

With that in mind, you can’t afford not to check out these blog post SEO resources:

• SEO Copywriting: The Ultimate Guide by Marieke van de Rakt at Yoast. Yoast builds powerful platforms that evaluate the readability and SEO optimization of your content posts. They are an authoritative source on the subject and this is a quality read. Marieke focuses on 3 stages of the writing process: keyword research in pre-writing, content creation in the writing stage and trimming the fat in editing.
• The Complete Guide to Blog SEO by Ryan Stewart at Webris. Ryan’s post works because he uses his own company as a case study for quality blog SEO. Through sharing his successes and failures through trial and error, Ryan helps you skip over the mistakes he made and jumpstart your blog content today.
• The Ultimate Guide to Writing Blog Posts that Rank on Google’s Top 10 by Neil Patel. That’s a big promise to include in the title of an article, but if I were to trust anyone to help get your content in Google’s top 10 results, it would be Neil. While there’s plenty of actionable tidbits throughout the piece, this post really serves as almost a comprehensive blog strategy – not just a way to improve your SEO.

Conclusion

All of the content in these resources will be more than enough to elevate your SEO strategy and help boost your search rankings.

Be sure to bookmark this article for future reference and check back to the GMS Live Expert blog for more SEO resources in the future.