Search engine optimization (SEO) continues to evolve with each passing year. Needless to say, with the ever-changing landscape, what worked yesterday, last week or last year, can’t be counted on to work NOW.
When you spend countless hours of time, energy and money to build your website, you want to be sure your investment is worth your while.
Starting with a solid SEO strategy is paramount to your website success. Here, we’ll refer to several “Google-safe” tips to help you get started.
Tips on Making SEO Work for Your Website Success
Keyword Research
Which keywords are you hoping to rank?
You may already have a general idea of some basic keywords, but you need more information on them, such as search volume, competition, related keywords, etc.
Check out Google’s Adwords Keyword Planner Tool, an excellent (and free) resource to research keywords for your SEO strategy.
Anchor Text
Think about which keywords you wish to use as anchor text for your site’s backlinks.
In the past, it wasn’t uncommon for webmasters to use the same anchor text over and over, as this encouraged higher rankings for the respective keyword. But Google, along with the other major search engines, now places an emphasis on diversified anchor text.
Instead of using a single anchor text keyword, use several different keywords along with multiple variations of those keywords. Remember, your backlink portfolio should look natural and not artificial.
Web Design
When designing your website, there are a few things to keep in mind. For starters, it should be compatible on both desktop and mobile devices.
Responsive Web Design (RWD) is the preferred configuration for creating smartphone-optimized websites, as it uses proportion-based grids and CSS3 media queries to automatically adjust the website’s design to fit the user’s device.
Google has said that mobile-friendly websites will rank higher in mobile searches than non-mobile websites.
Speed Matters
Another essential step in planning an SEO strategy is to optimize your website’s load times.
Slow-loading websites may suffer from a higher bounce rate, which in turn may negatively impact its search ranking.
You can speed up your website by:
- using a Content Delivery Network (CDN);
- enabling browser caching;
- enabling GZIP compression;
- optimizing images, and consolidating CSS files.
Content Generation
Content and SEO go hand in hand. By creating high-quality content that’s interesting and relevant to your target demographic, you’ll attract backlinks naturally, without having to manually create them.
Blogging
You should have a sound strategy in place for creating web content. A simple and effective solution is to launch a blog and attach it to your website. Schedule posts to be published every couple of days, boosting your site’s authority while attracting new backlinks in the process.
Want more tips and tricks on SEO strategy?
Here are even more resources!
5 Reasons Why Your SEO Efforts are Failing
Simple But Effective SEO Tips For Web Content
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