SEO is imperative when it comes to optimizing websites for traffic. So, it does not matter if you have a new website or an older one, you need to manipulate certain SEO elements in order to fare well in the face of excessive online competition. Here are 5 great SEO tips to help.
When it comes to new websites, an individual’s lack of knowledge or inability to implement SEO best-practices often costs them dearly. Many owners without detailed SEO knowledge opt for affordable SEO services to gain an advantage over their competitors. This is fine; however, opting for external help with zero basic SEO knowledge forces individuals to play a passive role; one that allows other people to assume a leading position in your projects. It means you either keep paying your SEO provider or drop out of the SEO game. You need to play an active role by not only actively participating in the search engine optimization process but also providing useful suggestions that could pay off well in the long run.
Keeping this in mind, here are five critical SEO tips, that will not only help you optimize your website but will also help you actively participate, in case you need to opt for external help.
1. Focus on Creating Great Content
Content is the king for a reason! When it comes to SEO, Google closely inspects how well your content satisfies the needs of your online visitors because you’re in this together. If Google does a good job providing valuable content to users, they keep using the Google search engine, which generates massive income for Google. If you’re providing value, Google will serve up your content so users easily find it (and click on to your site). However, if something is amiss or your content lacks value, it won’t take long for Google to catch up and penalize your site by moving your links lower on the results page (SERPs), thus reducing the traffic to your site. Hence, Google employes its users to guide them on how high up to present your content.
Your website must contain unique content. You don’t have to create the content yourself, although you know more about your business and target audience so you’re in a great position to develop content that resonates with your customers. If you don’t have the bandwidth to create unique content, SEO services are expert at crafting great content, not only saving you time but quite often adding new ideas and skillsets into the equation. Creating content is certainly important though and must always be at the top of your list.
The content you choose to put on your website can either help you enhance your standing or it can lead your site to unpleasant outcomes. Because of its importance, great content is the most critical SEO strategy and you need to work on it for better-optimized results. You must identify your audiences’ needs and try to provide answers to your visitors in the form of blogs. Or you can produce evergreen content that will help optimize your website until the end of time.
Fulfilling a website’s content needs means creating valuable content on a consistent basis, however, lazy or uneducated site owners might try shortcuts or strategies that no longer work (Googe updates the algorithm the fuels SERPs constantly). So, stay well clear of these strategies, including duplicate content, fluffy content with no real meat, keyword stuffing, and subpar quality content.
2. Make Responsive Design Your First Priority
Mobile optimization is our second SEO tip. Having good quality content is only the first step in achieving SEO optimization. Next, focus on achieving a mobile-friendly design because you must ensure your site is available for easy viewing for almost every kind of device. That said, the availability of tons of electronic devices with differing screen measurements makes it mandatory to invest in responsive design.
This type of website is important because Responsive Web Design (RWD) adjusts and readjusts the website without affecting the URL and HTML structures, it is a preferred mode of website optimization by Google since these designs save resources, improve UX experience, and help in avoiding SEO traps like unauthorized redirects. Using multiple websites based on the device the user has can hurt your SEO
Opting for a responsive design does not directly impact your site’s SEO. However, it influences the factors responsible for improving the SERPs ranking, i.e. site usability, load speed, and decreased bounce rate.
3. Focus on Improving UX Experience
If you’ve opted for a responsive design, you’re not done with enhancing UX experience.
So, to ensure that your website delivers a smooth experience, focus on the following things:
- Navigational Issues: Complex and poor navigation has the same effect on users. Both are tiresome and cause users to quickly lose interest, causing high bounce rates, which hurts SEO, and poor page depth, which hurts conversion. So, go for intuitive and easy-to-use navigation that guides users towards all the important pages effectively.
- Flash: We do not recommend the use of flash because not every user has the updated version of the software, leading to poor performance as it keeps users from viewing Flash-supported content. Additionally, Flash is not compatible with all web crawlers and decreases overall web performance.
- Browser Compatibility: Your website cannot look and work the same in every browser. The lack of compatibility issues can turn a user’s experience sour. So, always ensure to use the right tools to check the compatibility across multiple screens and devices.
4. Make it Easy for Bots to Crawl Your Site
You’re almost to our last SEO tip, making your site easy to crawl.
Despite the usability of your website to humans, you should make it easy for site crawlers to crawl your pages and have them indexed by Google fast! Otherwise, Google and other browsers aren’t able to offer up your content. If you fail to provide suitable conditions to the site crawlers, your web pages will not be ranked in the SERPs for anything.
Fortunately, there are many things you could try to improve the site crawling rate and having their web pages indexed within a few minutes of publishing. For instance, you can create detailed and thorough site maps and block access to unwanted pages. Additionally, you need to avoid duplicate content, improve site speed, depend on reliable hosting services that boast good uptime, and optimize the site’s images.
5. Focus on Keyword Research
Keyword-rich content is mandatory for website optimization, so that’s our last SEO tip. However, you cannot stuff useless or irrelevant keywords into your content in hopes of securing better ranks in the SERPs. This practice not only results in a penalty from Google but it also contributes toward a low click-through rate(CTR) that you need for conversion.
Nowadays, effective keyword research is increasingly important. It not only helps with the SEO but it also aids marketers who need a little help finding popular topics for content creation. Additionally, it guides marketers regarding the kinds of phrases they should integrate into their content.
The power of keyword research is tied to your understanding of your target audience along with their search patterns, i.e. how they search for products like yours and in what format they want that specific information. So, to strengthen your keyword research game, start by understanding your audience by going through posts, forums, and niche-related communities. Then, use any analytic tool to find the search terms people use to reach your website. If the terms are already integrated into your content, then all is good. However, you need to integrate them ASAP if your content lacks specific terms.
You can also spy on your competitors to learn about their keyword strategy and other specific terms that are helping them in ranking well in the SERPs. From there, you can integrate these keywords in your content for better website optimization.
Conclusion
Every website is different. This means that if something is working favorably for one website, it may not produce the same results for your website. That said, you need to identify the unique element of your products/services and try to capitalize on them by putting them in the spotlight. Still, you will need to depend on the good old SEO tips we shared to set yourself apart from the competition and optimize your website for better ranking.
If you act according to the SEO tips we have mentioned above, you will have no problem optimizing your new website.
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