The Ultimate Guide to SEO in Uganda (Bloggers /Webmasters )

Do you want to do SEO for your website in Uganda?

This article is going to introduce you to the essentials of Search Engine Optimization with Uganda in focus ( SEO in Uganda ). How best you can rank your website/blog in the search engine SERPs for both international & local SEO in Uganda. This SEO guide can be used by anyone regardless (beginner or professional ).

I have realized that most digital marketers, bloggers, and influencers in Uganda have left a big gap in bridging SEO (Search Engine Optimization ) and SMM (Social Media Marketing) marketing needs.

What is SEO ?

SEO is Search Engine Optimization a term digital marketers use to refer to the ability of indexing websites/apps in the search engines SERPs. SERPs means Search Engine Results page.

I have been doing SEO for almost three years now and I must say SEO is not the quickest way to get huge traffic but it’s rewarding if successfully implemented. Some sites in Uganda are now ranking well for certain profitable keywords and the return is totally appealing.

Note this clearly.

SEO is a digital marketing tactic that you shouldn’t overlook if you’re a digital marketer or blogger. I have seen several online businesses that are doing poorly in the SERPs.

One true fact about most of these website businesses is they haven’t clearly focused on planning clearly their digital marketing strategy.

It’s estimated that every day 3.5 billion searches are made on Google alone. So if you have an online business or blog you need to ask yourself this question in mind.

Is you website indexed in the search SERPs and how is it ranking ?

In this article, I want to break down a few techniques that you can use on your website to enable it to appear in the Google SERPs and lastly how best you can achieve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in Uganda.

A digital marketing strategy for your business is very vital. If you haven’t considered submitting your business website for google search, then you’re surely missing out on potential customers.

Why you should consider doing SEO for your website business in Uganda today.

It’s only serious businesses who see the beauty in doing SEO for their websites in Uganda. Otherwise, if you haven’t considered this digital marketing tactic, then you’re missing out on something.

Search engine traffic is a source of potential customers, unlike Social Media. People who search on Google know what they want and if by all means, your site comes on top of the Google SERPs on a given keyword they are looking for, chances are that 20% traffic will convert.

Isn’t that nice? Imagine you have a website business about selling chicken in Uganda and you rank for that keyword in the google Serp every time people search for it. In Fact, the mathematics goes, if 1000 people in Uganda search for that keyword monthly and you’re ranking for it. Then chances are that 700 target audience will visit your site and perhaps 140 will call you to supply them chicken and at the end of the day, you’ll be benefiting from a business with customers that your competitors haven’t thought of.

Other benefits of investing in search engine Optimization include

• Ensure your website only appears for relevant search terms
• It’s a cheap form of advertising compared to print media among others
• Obtain targeted traffic to your website
• Boost your authority and become an industry leader
• Promote new products and services to untapped markets
• Obtain high rankings and boost sales
• Provide customers with information that is accessible and easy to reach

How can you get started with SEO marketing in Uganda ?

Here are some of the SEO essentials that many bloggers, webmasters, and digital marketers have been neglecting in Uganda

Submit your sitemap to Search Engines

If you need your website to appear on the search engine result page quickly, you need to consider two things;

• Submit your site & sitemap to all major search engines.
• A site that’s ranking in google serps should link out to you.

However the latter is a bit more complicated and less effective, I have tested it out on some of my websites and realized that it takes a bit longer to rank.

So how would you submit your sitemap to google, bing, Yandex, and other search engines?

I would recommend the Google sitemap plugin or Yoast for WordPress users and if you don’t use the latter platform, there are several online sitemap generators like xml-sitemap.com and freesitemapgenerator .

After your sitemap is generated you can always upload it on your site and view it from http://yoursitename.com/sitemap.xml (google sitemap plugin) and http://yoursitename.com/sitemap_index.xml (Yoast plugin) for WordPress. However, the purpose of the sitemap is not for you to view it but rather to allow search engines to navigate all pages of your website during indexing. So you’ll need to submit this sitemap to them.

Without submitting a sitemap to search engines then there is no way search engine bots and spiders will effectively index your website pages.

Fortunately, most of the search engines have a provision to allow webmasters to submit their sitemaps or “sites” to them . Google allows you to create an account in their webmasters portal and submit your site. Am going to show you a step-by-step guide towards achieving this, this guide is true if you’re submitting sitemaps for other search engines. In my case, am going to use a WordPress site for demonstration purposes, however, this is not different for webmasters using other development platforms.

Step One :

Install Yoast SEO or google sitemap plugin on your website. Note installing both will result in conflicting sitemaps which can hurt your website SEO.

Step Two :

Next, visit this link google webmasters portal and create an account using your Gmail account.

You’ll see a page after signing in.

Step Three :

Once an account is created, it’s time to submit your website to google. Select add property and add your website name and URL.

Step Four:

Verify that you’re the owner of the website using the four options availed to you. Personally, I prefer using option three. In option three you’re given a special code that you put in your website header section (between <head> and </head>) and then verify ownership in the webmaster’s google console. If you’re using WordPress, install the insert headers and footers plugin to add this code to the headers section.

Step Five :

After verifying ownership, it’s time now to submit a sitemap to allow Google to index your website quickly. Select your site property in dashboard > in the right-hand sidebar choose Crawl > then sitemaps. Choose to add sitemap and add sitemap.xml or sitemap_index.xml (Yoast SEO users) and submit. You can refresh the page and wait for some minutes for google to index your website. Congratulations, you’ve properly submitted your site for google indexing. Note: this is just the beginning, you have a lot to do including submitting sitemaps to other search engines.

Is there something else you need to know about SEO in Uganda?

Submitting a site to search engines is not enough to begin driving in huge targeted traffic from search. However, it’s a big starting point if you’re new to Search Engine Optimization marketing.

Other factors you should work on to rank your website efficiently in search engines Results Page include.

 On-Page SEO

If I had written this article without mentioning about On-Page SEO, then it wouldn’t have made sense at all. With the recent release of the rank brain google search algorithm, we see that Google is targeting to rank sites with good onPage SEO – says Brian Dean founder of backlinko.com & SEO expert.

So if you have been looking at growing your SEO then perhaps you’ll need to work on your on-page SEO quickly.

But what is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO refers to all SEO techniques you do on your site to boost its ability to perform better in search engines.

On-page SEO includes factors like content writing, keyword research, keyword stuffing, increasing site speed, reducing bounce rate, and many others. With on-page SEO you’ll need to work on some of the following.

• Keyword research – in other words, what are the words that your target audience is searching for online . You can use tools like google search to get LSI’s ( user related keywords in Google ), use ubersuggest tool, use semRush or aHref .
• Including focus keywords in title, meta description and headers of your articles . Best words to include in title tags include Best, News, Reviews, Top, Guide, Info, works Quickly, step-by-step , simple, Today, easy and many others .
• Including target keywords in the first 100 words of you site articles
• Adding alt tags to your images that contain focus keywords
• Using plenty of appropriate images -normally content with a lot of images rank better , check out my article how to change whatsapp chat bubble color you’ll see how i managed to rank it for long tail keyword “ change whatsapp chat bubble color”
• Article should be readable – just like you see my article, it should have enough space between sentences .
• Write long quality content – long content is a signal to Google that you’re providing detailed content that deserves to be put on top of Google SERPs. ( the average long content should be 1890 words, this article is over 2000 words )
• Use text anchors
• Add site tags and extension links .
• Increase your website speed with tools like google speed and Gtmetrix.com will help you check your site speed .
• If you have google analytics, check your bounce rate and reduce it
• Check SEO technical issues more especially Google webmaster console for current status

• Check console for articles that rank between 14-15 and improve them

• Content that goes viral is normally practical content .
• Anticipate to use long tail keywords like “how to make rolex “
• Use popular platforms like Youtube, Amazon, wikipedia and Bing if you want to get untapped keywords other than Google .
• Include outbound links to your page and others .
• Publish short url ( just like you see mine )
• Include keywords in url
• Always optimize your title for better Click Through Rate (CTR) by including numbers, adding brackets or braces
• While writing long content use the bucket brigade technique i.e use words like the best part to keep the reader interested in reading more .
• For easier readibility, content should be broken down into sub headings .
• If you have blank (Zombie ) pages, it’s always better to delete them .
• Lastly apply Sky Scrapper Technique – Sky scrapper technique includes Find content that already ranks for your keyword , create something even better and promote it .

How to promote your content for Search Engine Optimization in Uganda.

Google has got a list of 200 ranking factors that we SEO experts regard as our bible while carrying out Search Engine Optimization for client websites. Having a good on-page SEO doesn’t guarantee you rankings of that keyword. In fact, good on-page SEO is fundamental to Search Engine Optimization but requires an extra effort of marketing.

So how can you market your website content to allow better SEO ?

First of all, It’s true that Content is King but it takes marketing techniques to have people know about your quality content. Am going to share with you some marketing techniques you can use to promote your content for search ranking.

Linking building. This is one of the 200 ranking factors we use will ranking websites and in fact the most preferred signal by google according to the moz research. If you want to build links for your content in Uganda, I would recommend you try out the following;

• Guest blogging
• Guestographic outreach . This more of guest blogging but unlike the latter, here you publish a high quality infographic and reach out to follow bloggers and offer a mini Guest post including your infographic and contextual backlink .
• You can also do link building from bloggers & Journalists .

Advanced link building techniques that I have used and worked for me perfectly ;

• Used link Rounds outs
• Resource page link building
• Broken Link building technique and others .

Besides link building, there are other several ways of promoting your content for good SEO. Some of which include the following

• Reach out to influencers ( this was one of my turning points in blogging when i used to run a gossip blog that drove in 360k traffic monthly )
• Email bloggers – i still do this and it works out efficiently .
• Reach out to brands you’ve featured .
• Reach out to contributors .
• Lastly you can use Ahrefs, semRush to spy on your competitors .

Conclusion :

So you’ve learned about the other ways of doing Search Engine Optimization for your website in Uganda. In today’s article, I wanted to hint on this topic to allow Uganda’s webmasters & bloggers to consider working on their SEO marketing hand in hand with Social Media Marketing (SMM) for a better ROI.

I have been doing SEO for close to three years now, both white & black hat techniques, and I learned a lot during those days. I have also done several case studies on Social Media Marketing, precisely how Facebook algorithms work and how to boost Facebook ads efficiently in Uganda. Since this is just a blog post, I will be creating a more detailed step-by-step guide on how to boost your SEO in Uganda. If you’re interested in the ebook feel free to join our emailing list or send me an email at [email protected] with a subject heading that includes this article’s title.