Secrets of an excellent SEO
We all search about hundreds of topics at our favorite search engine. The first result of the search is probably the most clicked, the second one is less clicked and so on. But have you ever asked yourself why a certain website is the first and not the tenth listed at the search results?
There is definitely a reason for these rankings at the results´ list. That is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Google evaluates your website and if it is “Google friendly”, then it will show your website at the search results. There are algorithms that Google uses to make these decisions, but they have decided not to make their implementation visible to the public eye. The good news is that we can still learn some tricks on how to SEO.
The first thing you have to know is that being a SEO is not about being a programmer. It is all about strategies and data analysis, no coding at all. A very important technique is KEYWORD. If you type “developer” at the search bar, then definitely the pages that appear at your result list, contain the word “developer”. That happens because “developer” is the keyword of your search. Google, simply by using their well crafted algorithms, searches through web pages for your keyword and shows them listed from most to least related to the keyword. Another thing that Google loves is DIFFERENCE. If after three months Google evaluates your website and it finds the same content as it was three months ago, then your website ranking will be destroyed. So, try to post, try to add new content and try not to be monotonous.
But, how to be the SEO of your own website? The most important thing you need to do is that you have to be updated with what Google is looking for at trusted websites. Do not ever read tips from 2018 when your calendar says it is January 2019. Also, be careful to read these tips at official Google pages, because unofficial ones might be misleading.
The domain of your website is very important. It has to be unique and competitive against “your rivals”. For example, let us suppose you have a blog for developers and you want to create your domain ‘developersFordevelopers’, because the statistics show that it is one of the most searched from your target group. The problem is when you realize that this domain name is already taken and you are not able to use it for your own website, then what can you do? Keeping in mind that ‘developersFordevelopers’ is already a good domain, because your target group searches this keyword, another alternative strategy would be to use numbers. So, your domain could be ‘developers4developers’. This way, you will have a unique domain, attractive for your target groups and competitive to similar websites like yours.
Using featured images and infographics at your website will make it more attractive.
Be careful with the links that you put in your website, because it may lead users to other pages and this will reduce your own website’s traffic. This is certainly not what you are aiming for.
What you can do at your website to have a better ranking is called On Page SEO, just like those mentioned above.
There are strategies like marketing campaigns on social media, that put on the best efforts to lead traffic to a website. These are called Off Page SEO.
For example, you can have a Facebook campaign to introduce people to your website and to make sure that what they will find there is going to be interesting.
Now, let us focus on some technical details. Assume for a moment that you own a WordPress website. Besides the techniques mentioned above, what can you do to improve your SEO?
First, you can install YoastSEO, the best SEO plugin that is a must for your website. Yoast includes options for linking social media accounts, creating and editing snippets and meta tags, and controlling the indexing of archives and specific pages. If your site is already up and running, you can direct Yoast to allow ranking immediately. If it is still under construction, this plugin for WordPress can suspend ranking until the site is ready to go live.
SEMRush is another powerful tool. It helps you learn about organic keywords (that are used to attract free traffic through search engine optimization), places where you can get back links from, insights into your competitor’s advertising strategies, and so much more.
Also, a very good advice would be to put your keywords at your HTML tags, metadata and titles at the header section, alt values and quality of images. A website content, that is rich in HTML elements, is a bonus for your Search Engine Optimization.
Google analytics is a very useful tool to use, because we can obtain different types of data such as: the location of the visitors of your website, the time of the day with the highest traffic, which is the date with the maximum number of visitors, what is the duration of the sessions and so on. These data help you analyze your visitors´ behavior, categorize the target groups and plan an online/offline marketing campaign for your website or your products.
You can uncover what mark has Google appointed to your website by using PageRank, where 0 –the worst and 10-the ideal ranking. But even a 5 is a good ranking. You can see the changes of your page ranking after 3-4 months of working with your SEO website. So, be patient!
Nowadays, people have the highest consideration for their SEO. Some of them choose to pay for their SEO website, others prefer learning it themselves. So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and discover more secrets on how to SEO.
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