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SEO Tips and Tricks 2018 |
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is a way to reverse-engineer how a Search Engine (Google) works in order to rank higher in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs). By having a strong SEO, a website owner can get free organic traffic that otherwise he or she would have to pay for (e.g. via Google PPC Adwords). Easier said than done, ranking on the first page of Google is both a science and an art.
Which factors affect SEO?
SEO is affected by a multitude of factors such as the authority of your root domain (flux.la), your subdomain (sub.flux.la) and the authority of the url itself (flux.la/10-seo-tips-worth-thousands/). Also Google takes thousands of other cues when it comes to ranking your site, such as time on site, bounce rate, social shares and more. Remember, the goal of Google is to show visitors the best information within the first few results, so their algorithms must analyze a lot of factors to achieve that.
Find the Right Keywords
A word of advice: be sure to find the balance between keyword competitiveness and demand.
Like I said before, this isn’t rocket science. Most of the time, high demand keywords will be harder to rank for. So unless you’ve got a big appetite (and deep pockets), avoid the most competitive phrases.
Instead, be on the lookout for medium volume keywords that have a low competitive index.
While you’re at it, make sure you consider searcher intent. Although broad keywords may receive tons of monthly searches, that doesn’t necessarily mean that searchers are looking to buy a product or service.
Sometimes, broad terms are used by searchers just to show images, or to find wikipedia listings.
Here are a few ways to refine your keyword search:
- Incite Action – To target potential customers, add action-oriented phrases like “for sale” or “for rent”.
- Mention Your Location – You can also narrow down your keyword search by being more location-specific.
- Add More Context – Whenever possible, focus on long-tail SEO keywords that ensure more targeted traffic.
2. On-page SEO
Fix all your meta tags. Install Yoast SEO and make sure all your blog posts have a green light. Make sure to fill in a keyword rich title and description. You can find very valuable and highly-converting keywords by looking at the Google Adwords being displayed when you search for your keyword. Here’s an example of what shows up when I search “digital marketing”.
- To increase the CTR of your page, add any of these proven keywords to the title and description of your post: Today, Right Now, Fast, Step-by-Step, Simple, Guide. Also add numbers, i.e. “22 Marketing Techniques You Must Try Today”. Having a high CTR will bump your page towards the top of the results.
- Use descriptive and straightforward URLS. example: https://alejandrorioja.com/blog/seo-tips/
- Link to authority sites. Various studies show that linking to high domain authority sites like Wikipedia or Harvard can increase your Google rankings. Make sure you include at least 3-4 outbound links on each post.
- Site speed is important. Google has indicated in their webmaster’s blog that page load time is one of the signals they look at when evaluating your site: “Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there.”
Here is what you can do to improve your site speed- If you’re using WordPress,
- Install WP Super Cache (easy to use, less control) or W3 Total Cache (more control, harder to use)
- Install Ewww Image Optimizer or Shortpixels to reduce your image sizes.
- Otherwise, you will need to do the following
- Compress your HTML, JS, and CSS files via Gzip (Don’t do images)
- Use a content distribution network (CDN) like Amazon Cloudfront. (A CDN is a network of servers located all over the world all of which contain copies of your site. Using a CDN, you can distribute the load of serving your pages so that your sites can load faster.)
- Use Photoshop to optimize your images for web.
- If you’re using WordPress,
- (Nice to have) Buy an SSL certificate (i.e. https). This will make your site more “legit” but also will also give you a boost in the search results. Read the official announcement about SSL by Google.
- Learn how to create the perfect SEO article or hire me to write a perfect article of 1000-1500 words for $350. By perfect I not only mean SEO-wise but also content-wise such as this article, so you keep people on your site and also generate business from it. Send me a topic via email and I’ll write something for you.
- Add multimedia to your posts (i.e. images and videos). That will make your site more useful to the user and will also make them spend more time on it.
- (Bonus) Read my in-depth article that covers all the on-page SEO factors.
3. Track Your Data
It should come as no surprise that without tracking the right data, you’re not going to be able to learn much about your SEO efforts. After all, how would you even know if one approach worked, if you didn’t know what improvements to look for in the analytics?Adaptability is perhaps the most important trait for SEO success. After all, you can’t design an optimal, self-sustaining SEO strategy overnight. If you want to grow and rank highly in search engines, you need to learn how to measure results.
Tracking your backlink profile is a step in the right direction, but it’s barely enough. You should also monitor other key performance indicators, such as web traffic, click-through rate, and search rankings. Only then will you be able to make data-driven decisions moving forward.
Apart from backlink checkers, some of the SEO tools that can help you with analytics are:
- Google Analytics – Helpful for tracking raw site data, such as traffic sources, bounce rate, and session duration.
- Moz Pro – A complete suite of tools for tracking search engine rankings as well as keywords.
- SEO Analyzer by Neil Patel – A free-to-use tool that can provide you with quick insights regarding your website’s SEO.
- Google Search Console – This is your one stop shop for all things SEO data. Be sure to set this up as early as you get around to Google Analytics.
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