An Effective Guide To Get Started Improving SEO - Semalt Expert
Do you want to improve your SEO? SEO is important. At least, if you want to attract more visitors from Google and make your website easier to find.
This article covers 8 tips to improve your SEO. It is important if you are stuck somewhere, to go back to the basics. This article is the basis for good SEO measures.
To begin, I invite you to understand the difference between on-site and off-site SEO factors.
Difference Between On-site SEO and Off-site SEO Factors
In this article, we will cover both on-site and off-site signals from search engine optimization. Off-site factors are mainly link building and branding and take place outside the site. It often takes weeks to months for them to take effect. On-site factors take place on the site. These are easier to check. You can immediately do on-site SEO on your site, for example in your CMS, and in addition to off-site SEO, it is important for your online findability in search engines.
Now let's review the 8 tips to improve your SEO!
1. Don't align your policy with the numbers of the Google Ads Keyword Planner
The Google Ads Keyword Planner is a product of Google Ads that gives you all kinds of suggestions and numbers for keywords. The keyword numbers listed in this tool are not accurate at all.
In that case, what tool can be used to trust these indications? I myself am a fan of the SEO Dedicated Dashboard, but it is a paid tool. Indeed, the SEO Dedicated Dashboard is a state-of-the-art SEO tool developed by SEO experts. This tool is equipped with powerful functionality to help any SEO expert or SEO agency to accomplish any SEO task in a short time and have satisfactory results.
As far as keyword research is concerned, this tool gives you exact numbers that you can rely on to implement a winning promotion strategy.
The good news for you is that this tool has a 14-day free trial so you can appreciate its SEO capability and effectiveness.
2. Improving SEO and adding more text on your website
The text on your page is an important element for search engines. One of my clients once asked me why he didn't score higher than position 9 for the keyword "wholesale cleaning products".
I advised him to put some text on the page that dealt with the topic "Wholesale Cleaning Products". He did so and immediately rose to №4 on Google.
As you can understand, the text was written for Google. By itself, it doesn't add anything to the user experience. But it doesn't hurt it in my opinion either. Decide for yourself what is more important for you: to get a better ranking on Google or improve the user experience. The choice is yours...
3. Beware of tags and tag clouds on blogs
In WordPress and other content management systems, it is possible to tag articles. Dividing blog articles into tags is a big risk.
Why?
That creates a duplicate content problem. Duplicate content within your website means that many URLs contain the same content. A lot of URLs like this mean that Google will get confused and your traffic will drop. The reason your traffic is dropping is that Google is paying attention to the wrong URLs.
Solutions for this are the following:
- Remove all tags. After all, your blog is already divided into categories.
- Working with canonical tags.
Just to be clear: I'm not talking about alt tags with images or photos here. Alt tags on images or photos are good for SEO and they certainly help to rank web pages higher.
4. Improving SEO through quality links
Qualitative links to a website count for a lot in improving your SEO. It is therefore important to collect links to your website.
Without links to your pages, they rank poorly or not at all on Google. It is possible to have 50 pages on your site without generating even 1 visitor.
If you make good content, will the links come naturally?
I recently heard from an 'SEO-er': "We don't do link building, we just make good content. Then the links will come naturally."
I got itchy.
You just don't sit on the moor with your shop under the guise of "we have good products, so people will come to us anyway."
Links don't come by themselves.
At least, if you assume that, then the process is very slow.
Ask for links, arrange them or promote your content. That will get you links, higher positions and more traffic.
However, it is important to understand the concept of quality links. What I mean by this is that you need to make sure that you get those links from sites that are more valuable than yours. Getting a link exchange from a site that is less valuable than yours won't do you much good and can lower your ranking in the search results.
5. Improve SEO through better content
In addition to links, other things are also important in 2021 for a site to rank. That is, for example, content.
Let's illustrate why with a simple example.
A client of mine had a website with only 150-200 words per page and his website traffic was decreasing. He had a lot of good links, so that wasn't the issue.
When he noticed the decrease in traffic, he immediately contacted me. What we have done to solve his problem is the following:
- We have provided his most important pages with more and better text. We have also placed more photos and links to other pages.
- In addition, I deleted about 60% of his pages.
- Of course, I have provided these with a 301-redirect to new URLs.
This resulted in a traffic increase of 70% compared to the same period last year.
So make sure you write pages for readers. Preferably good pages so that people are interested and want to buy from you.
Of course, SEO writing is an important part of content creation. Lots of content is nice, but it's still important that you mention the right keywords and related words on a page. Otherwise, you won't score.
6. Does anchor text still work?
Anchor texts are the text of links. An anchor text is used by Google to determine the relevance of a linking page. If you link with the anchor text "Personal trainer Amsterdam", then it is clear to Google that the referring page is about that topic.
Optimized anchor text works well to push keywords up in Google. The link with anchor text "Personal trainer Amsterdam" will make the referring page easier to score on "Personal trainer Amsterdam".
A few weeks ago I moved a fairly competitive local keyword from position 10 to position 5 in Google. This happened with 1 link with an optimized anchor text from a homepage.
It is an SEO trick that you should use carefully. Although it works well, Google also gives penalties for anchor text (over) optimization. So watch out.
My advice for anchor text is: beware of it. On the other hand, it is a very nice way to get better positions at Google. Even if it is a bit artificial.
7. Do your main keywords need to be in the URL?
I regularly come across advice on the web about including keywords in the URL. This is true. But it is also true that the URL is not the most important part of a page in terms of keywords.
It does have an effect, but your page also ranks fine in Google without your keywords in the URL. My advice is to take it into account, but if it doesn't work out, then there is no man overboard yet.
8. Enter the SEO title tag according to the SEO standards
A title tag is an HTML element used to write the title of a web page. The main task of an SEO title tag is to show visitors and search engines what to expect from a page (as short and concise as possible).
The title tag is the title of a web page. It is also known as meta title, SEO title, HTML title or search engine title. Just that this title is not in the text. It's at the top of your browser.
We should all do it. Write good title tags so that we get high in Google.
The problem is that many people don't know about SEO title and why this thing is important to Google. Google looks at your title tag first when it examines your page. It determines what your article is about based on the content of the title tag.
Here are some tips for writing a good SEO title:
Put your keywords first in the title tag
Always place your most important keywords at the front of the title tag. This will help with your ranking in Google.
The reader also pays attention to the keywords, so if he is in the front of the title tag, he will click through to your site from Google faster.
Use a tool to keep the SEO title short
For years, the title tag had to count 67 strokes. Only the keywords within these 67 characters counted in the ranking. The rules have changed since 2014. An exact number of characters can no longer be specified. Now the number of characters is between 50 and 60, but you actually have to count the number of pixels. Since that is impossible, it is best to use a tool.
Readability of the SEO title
Make sure your title tag is readable for users. Although the title in the bar at the top of your web browser is hardly noticeable, there are always people who read it. If you're unsure about the readability of your title tag, read it out loud. Then you immediately know whether it is easy to digest.
Brand name
Place your brand name at the end of the title tag if there is still room for it. It is often the case that Google places the brand name in the search results in one way or another, sometimes even in the foreground.
That is how Google does it and there is nothing you can do about it. If there is no room for the brand name in the title, I usually leave it out.
Separator
Provide a separator between your text and your brand name. That can be a comma, a colon or a dash.
Write an SEO title suitable for CTR
From the search results, users are more likely to click on a title tag that appeals to them. So: make it a nice sentence. As you may know, CTR is (probably) a ranking factor in Google, so the click through to a nice SEO title tag will eventually give you higher positions.
If you need to learn more about the subject of SEO and website promotion, we invite you to visit our Semalt blog.