Have you noticed a drop in your website’s rank lately, since Google made additional changes to its rank algorithm’s? Well, these mathematical operations set the bar as to how your website will rank, based on a number of criteria, which are often vague to site owners. The most recent algorithm updates have hit the website SEO community hard. Keeping that in mind, it’s important to remember that Google’s algorithm changes aren’t new, and they’re certainly not going to stop.
Keep your website SEO efforts effective by always implementing the following WEBSITE SEO essentials:
On Site WEBSITE SEO Tips
Yes, on-site website SEO is still necessary, despite rumors that great WEBSITE SEO is all about offsite content. For solid on-site website WEBSITE SEO, be sure you include targeted keywords in your site content and META Tags Title, Keyword and Description (see graphic below), including H1 and your site url if at all possible. This is the content that search engines will seek out first to gauge what your site does and where it should rank.
Quality Inbound Links
As the newest trend in website SEO shows, building permanent back links from content you post on niche blogs or sites online give your site a real website SEO boost. You can get these links from an offsite blog, from article marketing or even tweets and posts in your Social Media platforms.
Site Authority
More about backlinks, but in lieu of building backlinks with your content, having links from authoritative sites in your industry add merit to your site’s authority and help with ranking. Reach out to the powerhouse websites in your industry, online publications, blogs with millions of viewers, even YouTube videos that speak to your target market and request link exchanges with them to allow search engines to view your site as authoritative in your industry.
Tip: You would create a links page on your site and load the provided links from these authority sites to that page to garner website SEO benefit.
User Experience
Does your site load slowly? Have you made it easy for your visitors to navigate from page to page? Do you monitor site traffic? Is your bounce rate high? Do more than 35% of your visitors “bounce” away without even reading your site content?
If any of these is true, it could have a negative effect on your website website SEO. Be sure that the visitor experience is good, that the page loads are fast and navigation is easy to move up the rankings.
Tip: To bring your site up to speed, consider reducing the amount of graphics on the home page or adding some new links to make navigation easier.
Fresh Content
Along with the other on-site SEO notes above, your site content should be kept fresh at least every week, but for best results, updating your onsite blog, a news page or other keyword-oriented site content. A keyword-oriented website is built when your content includes relevant keywords that search engines can recognize it by. Updating your site content several times a week will garner more good attention from search engines.
Adapt
Does your site look or feel dated compared to other sites in your niche? Be sure to keep up on the latest technological advancements and requirements that can have a negative effect on your website’s SEO. For example, you site is still showing low page rank after following the above notes. One reason may be a Flash graphic or scrolling image on your home page. Java script is the preferred SEO option for website graphics these days. Talking to a skilled web marketing consultant will get you the nitty gritty on the latest trends and technological enhancements to build SEO for websites.
Tip: Is your website mobile-friendly? This is a definite MUST-DO for today’s websites. With more than 5.3 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, a website that can be seen and function in its entirety on a mobile phone (a/k/a mobile-friendly) has the advantage of being accessed by those 5.3 billion mobile users. Do you know any company that would have no interest in segments of that audience? We don’t either.
Your website is the bottom line of your web marketing plan. If it’s no one can find it, your engaging content and layout are moot. Make your website SEO a priority today.