SEO is important to every online business. If you are ignoring this crucial part of your business, now is the right time to act and improve your online presence on search.
To improve the ranking of any website here are 101 actionable tips to #nextlevel your SEO Results. These tips guide you in the process of making your website accessible, searchable and useful to readers or visitors. Get more traffic and exposure to directly to your customers!
1. Without SEO it is difficult to get noticeable search engine traffic. That means without application of Search Engine Optimization techniques to website, search engines will not automatically categorize and rank your website for keywords relevant to your business. You have to take action for any search engine to know what your website is about through use of specific keywords according to business category.
2. Any website need both on-site and off-site SEO. The two types go hand-in-hand without their application, you will not realize reasonable results as expected. One depends on the other to make a complete site optimization.
3. Avoid postponing, take action now. The longer you take to optimize your website, the higher your competitors get and therefore more difficult to get their ranking level.
4. Get to know about your competitors. Use your website or business keywords and search for websites ranking high on the first page using similar keywords. This will guide towards achieving target results through taking effective on-site and off-site optimization.
5. Learn and appreciate that every website is unique and different form the other. There are many factors that affect website SEO and strategy used to achieve better ranking results. Whatever applies for one site does not guarantee duplicate results when used on another website.
6. Search Engine Optimization does not have to be expensive. It is possible to achieve the best results on low budget while you take your time to create high quality content and networking through frequent link-building process.
7. Optimizing any website for higher search ranking results does not guarantee instant results. Any effort applied recently might not be noticeable at that particular moment and search engines might not have any influence on it even after weeks or months. SEO is a process that is achieved gradually.
8. The newer the website, the more patient it requires. For the expected results to happen, there has to be persistence, energy and time until success is achieved. The main point here is that you should not expect to outrank older and established sites.
9. Never consider your current website as complete. For the website to maintain any higher ranking, get more traffic and increase sales, you should continuously update and improve multiple aspects of your site.
10. Learn and adapt most recent algorithm updates. To retain good rankings, there is need to learn how search engines evolve with time and adapt them to improve your SEO strategy.
11. Your website doesn’t need to be submitted to search engines. They have their own mechanism to detect and index online websites automatically by submitting your sitemap. It is also worth noting that any company that claim to charge for services related to search engine submission, is behind the times.
12. Follow SEO guidelines provided by Search Engine companies. For example through use of Google Webmasters and their Webmaster Guidelines, they also have tutorials which clearly outline what is expected from any website to rank better.
13. Avoid risks involved with penalties. Google has dominated the search engine market and getting penalty from them have a significance long term effect to your website traffic and business. Since you are in control of anything performed on your website SEO, you should get to know what is good or bad and avoid blaming your SEO service provider. The search engines do not negotiate on this.
14. Use Google Search Console to learn about keywords that rate your website and other sites linking to yours. It is also important to check for search positions and number of impressions for specific website pages. This will show where much effort is needed to improve on their ranking.
15. Use statistics tools such as Google Analytics to determine your website traffic, keywords used to find it, web pages visited and time frame spent on specific pages. Most of these tools will give data on demographics, type of device used to browse, and the most visited pages.
16. Use Google+ to create a page for the business website. Search engines will trust and improve search ranking results based on localized keywords.
17. Although Google is the most preferred source of website traffic, diversify on traffic sources. Avoid relying 100% on any particular search engine as it makes your website vulnerable to competition.
18. Diversify on techniques used to acquire website traffic. Although SEO is effective, use PPC or both at the same time. PPC may cost more compared to SEO but it is useful as well. Pay attention to investment and returns to avoid over-spending on ineffective website traffic.
19. Not every effort is practical or effective enough. Practices such as poor Backlinks or low quality content may cause your website to be penalized and therefore should be avoided.
20. When creating web content, make it useful for visitors and not search engines. It is unrealistic to rank high when the content does not interest or look important to people. The main reason to rank good and attract more visitors is to persuade them buy your products or services. Without gaining through the process, then it becomes meaningless.
21. Get rid of duplicate content. Search engines penalize for repeating content or anything virtually identical on several pages of the website. It would affect negatively on ranking, therefore make every webpage different by posting unique content.
22. Pages with little content material should be removed, combined or their content added. Little webpage content causes short page view duration and search engines may downgrade all the other website pages.
23. Avoid plagiarism by all means. Search engines have their own way to determine unique content and if found copied from other websites, you risk downgrading your website’s ranking. Sometimes this may lead to blacklisting of entire website where the rank is dropped completely.
24. Have authority over your website content by claiming authorship. Use social media accounts to link to your website content. This affects positively by improving search positions and click rates.
25. Have a complete article ready before posting. If your article is not better compared to the current ranking page of its keywords make necessary improvements.
26. Engage your readers through informative articles. The more it participates in keeping the readers on the page, the better because it provides high viewing time and signals the search engine that your website deserves attention.
27. Include video content. Videos are important part of the website content and give rise to time frame spent on the pages. Additionally, it enables the site get hyperlinks from video related websites.
28. Include infographics, charts, graphs or stats supporting your written content. Rich content is likely to get more shares and connections compared to plainly written content.
29. Provide more material for web content to win more ratings from visitors. The results will drive more traffic and sales. Search engines favor this type of content and visitors build more trust to websites full of good quality content on multiple pages.
30. Create a blog for the website. Let it be simple but complete and it will improve the general website exposure through posting fresh content material to your site.
31. Have a balance between informative and marketing content. Creating plain information without diverting towards products and services provided, your readers may think that your website is all about informing and will not link to for business purpose.
32. Develop unique, precise, and descriptive titles for every page. Every full page should have a title that summarizes clearly the subject of the page. It should use catchy words that will attract visitors attention and want to read the entire content on the page.
33. Write descriptive and distinct meta description for all webpages. Use about 150 characters to describe the topic covered within the page using persuasive language so that people can click on your website instead of others as outlined in the search engine results and content summary.
34. Before using any keywords, analyze them correctly. Use of incorrect keywords means every effort made to perform on-site or off-site SEO will hardly give expected results. The website will not get visitors or will have traffic that does not reflect on your sales.
35. Google Keyword Planner should be used to effectively generate content related keyword. The tool has important functions that cannot be ignored when it comes to on-site SEO.
36. Use other people’s personas to get keyword suggestions. These can be business partners, customers, suppliers or friends. As they observe your website, they have a different view and relate it to various context. When you have a list of personas to choose from, it makes the optimization process simpler.
37. Have a list of related keywords and use them naturally within website content. The more related keywords used, the more it becomes possible and faster to rank higher. It gives a higher exposure to visitors who convert to buyers or clients.
38. Focus on industrial keywords. Your business needs to attract visitors who are potential buyers first and foremost.
39. For additional search traffic, use long-tail keywords. Websites rank higher in long-term through use of specific keyword phrases. This because more than 40% of search queries are composed of 4 or more words in a phrase.
40. Each topic should be dedicated for a single page. Doing this makes it easier for search engines to categorize web pages and rank them accordingly.
41. Use keywords in the right places. It is considered less important but it is advisable to include them in URLs, meta descriptions, page titles, image alt tags and header tags.
42. Avoid keyword stuffing. Frequent use of keywords on webpages will lead to penalization and low ranking instead of acknowledgement and SEO improvement.
43. Backlinks play an important role in search positions. The quality and number of links directing to the online business affect the general website rate and position on search results.
44. Use of automated Backlink tools should be avoided. Creating external links form website is reliable procedure that should be continuous, and consistent. The process should not aim at a specific target or stop after a certain number is achieved.
45. Back-links should come from relevant sources. Search engines display relevant results according to each keyword used and links from related pages or sites act as supporting signals to them that your site is associated with the keywords used.
46. Get links from authoritative sites or pages. Links that come from trusted websites will signal search engines that your site is as well trustworthy.
47. By using Backlinking to gain higher ranking, be prepared for high quality of the same. The more easy it is to get a back-link from a site, the less worth it is.
48. Do not buy Backlinks from cheap marketplaces. Buying back-links is not bad. However, it has definite risk that comes with cheap prices from those who sell them.
49. Avoid associating your website with link networks. Probability of getting improved results with links from networks is low whereas chances of search engine penalization is higher.
50. Diversify your link profile. The simplest method is by getting links from a variety of IP addresses, different websites and from different regions.
51. Make Backlinking more effective. Build links to every page of the site that you want to rank better. Also, get people to link to the inner-pages of your site. This includes those with specific keywords as well as the home page.
52. Business partners are good source of Backlinks. Your suppliers, supporters or other business companions will likely connect to your website in case you are successful or keep things in order.
53. Get the best Backlinks that your competitor has acquired recently. If someone has recently linked to any of your competitors recently, it is likely that they would like to link to you if only they are provided with a good reason.
54. Use target keywords as link text to acquire some extra Backlinks. This an important part of the Backlinking process, but should not be used more than 5% of the time to link your online business.
55. Ensure that almost or all the Backlinks are top quality. The back-link profile should not contain hyperlinks from bad neighborhoods as it signals to the search engines that you have manipulated link construction.
56. Get to know and understand who is linking to you. It is possible to establish this by use of Google Search Console. To use this function of the tool, go to Links under Traffic options. This will give an overview of websites linking to your site.
57. Use Open Website Explorer or Sign up for Ahrefs SEO Tool. This a good source of extensive information about your website’s back-linking and also those that compete with you.
58. Ensure that every page of the website is associated to the other, with a minimum of one page association. Avoid including webpages that are not related to their associates, either internally or externally.
59. Create direct links from Homepage to the most important pages of your website. This mainly done to pass or share authority to the important pages, therefore improving further ranking.
60. Always include in content links to relevant pages of the website. Although they are not as effective as external links, they improve ranking among the website pages at a significant percentage.
61. Any outbound links that do not add value should be removed. It is important that you always link to web pages that add value to or are important to your visitor.
62. Link out to other relevant online websites. This helps build your relevance and people will notice when you connect to them and they will connect back if they find your website useful to them.
63. When people comment on your website’s blog or forum page, keep the comments even when they contain information related to other websites. This will create good relationship with other people, both online marketers and other website owners.
64. Join blogging groups in your community or industry. The more you become social to people that you share same interests with, the more they are likely to share your content and link to you.
65. Other small businesses that have relevant websites are important to you as well. Contact them and help to market each others website. This makes SEO process simpler and cost effective to both parties.
66. Use the website blog to write press releases and share your business news and opinions. Take the opportunity to get content outside your site and get links from websites under different category and outside your connections through the press releases.
67. To develop and improve online interactions, phone other people. Email is important part of building relationships to other people but calls are important as well.
68. Website is not only a business avenue but a relationship space. Use it to build trust, keep discussions active and more people will like to be associated with you and your active business.
69. Have your contacts and address show on every page of the website. It does not only build trust but also improves ranking by using keywords targeting your local area.
70. Get listed on local web directories. It is obvious that not all online directories are relevant but you can choose the top ten and ensure that your website is listed alongside your business contacts.
71. Use review features such as Google+ profile to get customer’s opinions and reviews. This can also be done through directories and other business resources available online such as Facebook reviews. It has a direct positive impact on Google’s local listing and search result rankings.
72. Take advantage of acting personal unlike big companies. Application of personality and individuality in both off-site and on-site SEO in guest posts, press releases, outreach emails, Tweets etc, can make others have the urge to connect with you and build a personal relationship.
73. Through social sites, connect and promote what other people have alongside your own site. People will appreciate when you take action on their personal websites by helping them rank better. Once they notice your voluntary help, the probability of them returning the favor is high.
74. Add social media buttons on all articles and page content. The simpler it is for other people to talk and share your content, the more it is easier to connect and talk about it with their other social connections.
75. Social media is not a replacement or short-cut for SEO. Social strategy applied should be part of or go hand-in-hand with an already established and working SEO strategy.
76. It is also worth noting how search engines work. They rate webpages, and not Internet websites. If any of the pages rates high for a specific keyword, it wholly depends on the general grade of that individual webpage and does not represent the general grade of the whole website.
77. Operating a website for small business has high chances to out-do big business in ranking if using effective SEO services. It is common that pages from small business rate higher than pages from a big established business website. This may not only happen locally but internationally depending on SEO strategy used. Therefore, never under-estimate SEO efforts.
78. Use search engines to check your website’s ranking on regular basis. Through using Google Search Console, visit the Traffic section and Search details. This will display where your website is ranked for various keywords.
79. Always aim at the very best 3 top positions in ranking, and not top 10. If the whole website is not ranked among the best top 3 ranking positions through your keyword, then it is likely to get significantly 10% and below from the search results traffic.
80. Sometimes, rankings could mislead your overall website judgement. Getting to first page ranking is irrelevant if the ranking does not covert to high traffic and does not reflect in your business sales. There are online tools that measure how much a business is worth through ranking. This not always the case if that traffic is not reflected on purchases and profit made in reality.
81. Don’t worry in case you have done all what is necessary and still experience low domain metrics. Tools that check metrics have their own unique databases that are not always up to date.
82. When choosing your website’s domain, have a clear distinction between use of www. and when not using it as part of URL. The website should be set to load either through www.domainname.com or domainname.com, but not both.
83. Adopt flat and simple website architecture. All the website pages ought to be available and load faster within or less than 3 clicks from the landing page or home page. If otherwise, not that they are likely to affect website ranking negatively.
84. Choose and use a short, clear and memorable domain name. It enables people to relate easily, remember and guess the main purpose of the website from the first sight of the web address. A memorable web address relates to the main topic of the website and easily informs the visitors from the beginning what they expect by opening the website. It is also known that search engines will find it easy to scan through the URL address and categorize the website for easier ranking.
85. Within the website, categorize and arrange content accordingly to make it easier to browse the subjects with thin the entire site. If the content is more than 3 clicks away for readers to locate it, then it should not be on your website.
86. Check for the correct use of header tags. That means H1, H2 or more should have variations of keyword focus within different web pages.
87. Use schema data and rich snippets effectively. These two offer more information about the website to search engines. When the search engine’s spider is scanning through the website pages, it will find full or complete information as expected and this will automatically influence them to improve the appearance of website’s listing in search results.
88. Check and correct the use of 301 redirects where necessary. In case you change any website page URL but fail to redirect the outdated address to the new one, all hyperlinks that points towards the old one will not function. Always update links and hyperlinks at the same time to avoid dead links which can have negative impact on your search results ranking.
89. Create and set-up a 404 error page. Choose the best page from the website that has great content and link it to 404 error page. It is more likely that website visitors who view it will not leave your website. If website visitors view blank error page, that is to be one of the most annoying experience and they may decide to leave your website completely. By linking the 404 error page to rich content from other site pages, it is likely maintain them as they will keep reading through other page’s content.
90. Optimize image content from all web pages. Images are usually optimized by including target keyword phrase or keyword alternatives in their description or as names. As website administrator, locate your images folder or sub-folders and under file names, check that img alt tags of every image used on your web pages are correctly named and described. Their links too may include the keyword or phrase.
91. Use small (resolution appropriate) or compressed graphics whenever possible. Graphics are known to increase page loading time. Use them only when necessary and they should not be complex to take much of visitors data when loading.
92. Use Facebook Pages for Marketing to get your website on the forefront. This can be done simply by creating Facebook page where both your customers and possible customers can read your posts and rate you. The advantage of this feature is that it becomes easier to create Facebook advertisements which will target the right audience according to their interests. The same feature will allow access to page insights on how your audience interact with your page content.
93. Optimize your website for responsiveness. A complete and functional website to rank better should support all browsing devices such as mobile phones, Tablets, Smartphones, laptop or desktop. This can be done easily from the start when choosing the websites framework, theme or alternatively, use bootstrap to build your website pages.
94. Check for browser types and their compatibility to your website. Use Browser shots and ensure that the complete website display quality is the best. The site should generally render correctly in every browser by giving the correct resolution.
95. Optimize the website’s loading speed. Use Website Speed Test and PageSpeed Insights to determine the loading speed on devices used to browse your website and use their suggestions to adjust accordingly for better results.
96. Use a reputable and dependable website hosting company. The website’s keyword rank will drop if the site is regularly inaccessible or has a low response time. This sometimes has to do with the hosting company package chosen. It is worth paying for services that you get without limitations. In case your traffic grows than you had estimated, consider upgrading the hosting plan to avoid search engine downgrading the website.
97. Carryout regular website backups. It is worth noting that you have come a long way and losing website data means losing the ratings too. Search engines act quickly to remove or drop rankings of sites that don’t load their results.
98. Keep good record and updates of trending SEO techniques from various news sources. You can read them from sources such as Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Roundtable and Moz Blog. Always be aware of any SEO changes from Google through their official SEO blog/website for webmasters.
99. Clarify and question anything you are not sure concerning SEO techniques. Thoughts or questions are worth sharing and discussing through SEO forums and discussion boards. Alternatively, get in touch with SEO experts.
100. If you get all of your SEO done by professionals ask them questions. It is less risky getting to know almost everything, if not all, about the SEO service provider and their methods.
101. For reliable and safe SEO, build a good relationship with your SEO provider. The more your search engine consultant understands about your online business and you know about there SEO work performed better outcomes are likely to be reflected.
