SEO can be complicated, but overcomplicating it by involving hundreds of aspects and thousands of tools makes little sense. There might be 200 factors that contribute to Google ranks, but not all of them make sense to all businesses. In fact, the journey for a B2B company that offers business-oriented services is very different from that of a B2C business offering latest winter clothing. Their website layouts will be different and so will be their priorities. Although many people are reluctant to admit it, SEO for each business endeavor is unique like their products and their needs. Don't forget to take a look at SEO services templates.
The Four Cardinal Pillars of SEO
After a lot of thought and analysis, we have boiled SEO down to four most important factors:
- On-site SEO: this includes the optimization of your on-page content and the HTML source code of that page. It also consists of the meta-content, title tags, alt texts and URL structures.
- Off-site SEO: This includes all kinds of off-the-page optimization techniques including link building, social bookmarking and social media marketing. Both inbound links and outbound links contribute to off-site factors of search engine optimization.
- Website content: The content of a website surely depends on what the entrepreneurs are offering. For great rankings, content must be unique and riveting. In fact, your team should be thinking of keyword strategies before your website structure is ready to rank high enough in relevant search terms.
- Technical SEO: This includes the optimization of your crawl budget. You need to think like a search engine bot before you submit your XML sitemap. The bot should find it easy enough to crawl all your pages, find its way and not miss any critical content. Whatever these bots crawl, go for indexing. You cannot afford to take a chance here!
SEO Mistakes You Must Stop Making Right Now!
These are the four pillars of SEO that have been holding strong for at least one decade, and we can hope for them to do so for the next few years as well. However, there are quite a few methods that just do not work anymore. While some are obsolete thanks to the modern frill-less codes, others have become obsolete due to Google’s vigilant indexing.
Ditch Overusing Your Keyword
Your keyword might sound fancy, and you may have put in a lot of work to find it, but Google does not like to find it often in your content. To be precise, websites with more than 4-5% keyword density have attracted the wrath of the search engine god. Google likes it when you use synonyms, other forms of the same phrases and long-tailed keywords. As of now, you should undoubtedly focus on voice searches. Use your keywords to answer most asked questions by voice search users, and you will find traffic pouring into your site.
Forget Quantity, Focus on Quality
You need to forget about link farming. Low-quality high-density linking is just not going to help you anymore. Google can judge the quality of links and score them. Even if you have thousands of bad links, any website with 100 good quality links will perform much better on the SERP. A smarter way to get around this somewhat new restriction is to start guest blogging. You can even encourage your users and team members to share your webpage links on social networking sites. While many naysayers will try to tell you that social links do not count, authorities like Moz say otherwise.
In the process, do not forget about internal linking. There is always the perfect balance between internal links and external links you need to find. Once you get the hang of it, these internal links will improve your SEO like never before.
SEO Audit by TemplateMonster Service Center
Do you need your website be visible to your target audience in search engines and you don't know where to start? SEO audit is the first step to creating an online marketing strategy that really works. You will get the analysis and guidelines on how to implement the given recommendations on your website.
Do NOT Ignore Your UX
User experience is everything right now. You will have no traffic and activity without your users. Your users are human, just like you, sitting somewhere in front of a PC or a phone. You need to think of the human users while designing your website layout and navigation options. Even the search engine crawlers have become humanized, and they tend to "behave" like human beings on your site. So, if you are optimizing your website for the latest updates and latest crawl patterns, you should not be facing as much trouble with UX.
You can always start by removing your Adobe Flash multimedia presentations. No one cares for them anymore, especially the mobile users who cannot view them. Do not use extensive drop-down menus, non-responsive designs and do not miss out the filterable live search option. You need to make your search mobile-friendly since you can expect at least 60% of your traffic from mobile users.
Website SEO is multi-dimensional. You can manage your own site and the factors of optimization. However, it always turns into a full-time job. Always remember the four pillars of SEO that can help your website stand out in the crowd.
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