Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not something that can be successfully done overnight. Nevertheless, there are a few useful techniques that you can do to help boost your chances of getting good results on major search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. With no particular order, here are the top 10 SEO tipsthat you can perform:
- Content is and will always be king – The phrase, “Content is king” has been overused so often that it already sounds more like a cliché. Yet, this adage remains true ever since. The rule of thumb is simple—constantly update your web content withfresh, steamy content (relevant, of course). As robots dig fresh content, keep adding unique and quality content regularly to attract then and help you rank well on SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
- Backlinks are key – The more backlinks you have, the merrier and the better. But keep in mind that quality has much more bearing than quantity. The goal is to get backlinksfrom high quality, high ranking websites that are related to your products/services. Plus, you need to avoid link farms and other spammy pursuits at getting links back to your website. Instead, there are numerousniche directories that you can utilize to submit your website to or some blog articles, and generate backlinks.
- Keep tagging – Create keyword optimized title tags for every page of your website. Your keyword should be as near to the beginning of the phrase as possible. Also, remember that the title tag of your web page can be different from the heading title of the article itself.
- Map it out – Create a sitemap so that search engine robots can easily visit and index your pages. A sitemap is basically an XML protocol that notifies the search engines about the URLs or web pages on a website that can be crawled. Alternatively, you can use Google and a number of free applications that generate sitemaps.
- Anchors away – Use the same keywords for your anchor texts that link to the different pages on your site or when backlinking. Having anchor texts instead of using “click here” helps site visitors and search engines understand what they’re going to find when they click the link.
- Link deeper – Don’t forget to create deep links, which is linking to a web page other than your home page. Deep linking ensures that you have backlinks coming in to as many web pages as possible. Deep linking also signifies that you build links to relevant and worthwhile content or webpages of your site.
- Start blogging – Create a blog about your products/services and make the URL as: yourdomainname/blog. The advantages of starting a blog are: it helps in adding fresh content, you get extra SEO love when other websites link any of your blog posts, and you also get new content when readers leave comments on your blog.
- Tag those pictures – All images on your site should also be well-optimized with targeted keywords. Describe them briefly using alt tags to help search engines that index images find your pages easily, offering greater chances of getting higher search engine rankings. Also, adding image alt tags or alt attributes help the visually impaired to easily access your website using a screen reader, including those visitors who use image search and text only web browsers.
- Don’t dare to trick the search engines – Using hidden text, joining link farms, keyword stuffing, and other practices that meant to mislead search engines is not a good idea. Doing so can only harm your ranking, and the penalties will certainly outweigh the temporary benefits. So, keep it clean and to avoid being blacklisted by the major search engines.
- Don’t forget your human readers – Always remember your human visitors when optimizing your website—and not just the robots. After all, SEO is meant to help your readers discover the informative content on your site. So, make your content interesting and useful while keeping in mind both the humans and the search engines.