An SEO's Checklist: 101 Ways to Improve Your SEO in 2014 | Venture Harbour. Search engine optimisation: one of the most (if not the most) controversial digital marketing topics. Some say that content marketing is the new SEO. Others say that it’s possible to link your way to the top of Google. Matthew Woodward, on the other hand, will tell you that it’s possible to rank a blog (and yes, even make it to the top 100 in Technorati) with zero intentional backlinking efforts. There seems to be no clear answer to what works and what doesn’t … because, well … there is no clear answer to what works and what doesn’t. In short, what worked for Rand Fishkin may or may not work for you.
SEO doesn’t have to be difficult though — you just need to think it through, discover what works best for your site, and (above all) track your progress to see what is/isn’t working. To get you started with that, here’s a colossal list of 101 SEO tips (similar to a recent post we ran on 101 conversion optimisation tips). SEO Jargon You Should Know Ready? Keyword Research & Optimisation Branding. Onsite SEO - The SEO Anatomy of a Blog Post - SEO Tips. Onsite SEO – The SEO Anatomy of a Blog Post Onsite SEO – you’ve probably heard the term but now it’s time for me to really open up my SEO toolbox and give those of you who read this the not-so-secret secret sauce for onsite SEO, or, at least how I do my onsite SEO.
It all starts with a target keyword. In the graphic below the keyword is “first words” and, as the graphic shows, first words are important for onsite SEO. Let this be one of the key takeaways you get – always ensure that your keywords appear towards the start of your title, description, etc in your post as that way you’re making it easier for search engines to crawl them and get a better idea of what your post is about. Onsite SEO – The Big Three For onsite SEO there are 3 areas of your post that could be considered as the most important. Onsite SEO – The SEO Anatomy of a Blog Post Make sure your keyword appears in the first paragraph and where possible make it bold. Onsite SEO – That’s A Wrap. The SEO pro's secret path. Key Points Find groups of keywords (keyword niches) that your target customers search with.Research each keyword niche - its size, the competition, your site's current traffic and sales from it.Compare and prioritize your target niches in order of profitability.
Your prioritized list of keyword niches is your SEO strategy. Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should focus on achieving success for the keywords that will deliver the most profit. That seems obvious but how do you find and prioritize those keywords? SEO pro Mark Nunney introduces the process so you can apply it to your own site. Before they do any work on a site, professional SEOs use keyword research to find the groups of keywords - the keyword niches - they want to target. The path I take includes the following steps: Find relevant keyword nichesEvaluate your keyword nichesPrioritize your keyword niches Let's look at that in some more detail... Find possible keywords and niches Wordtracker's lateral search tool SEO Action. SEO And The New Domain Extensions. For many, determining how websites rank on search engines like Google probably seems like pure voodoo magic. But in reality, there's a whole industry dedicated to helping businesses and individuals boost their search ranks--search engine optimization (SEO).
In the field of SEO, Moz (previously SEO Moz) is probably the top resource for the best practices and trends. And with the new gTLDs coming soon, they have some interesting things to say about how the new domain extensions will affect SEO. Naturally, as a Moz reader, you may be wondering what weight the new TLDs will have with search engines. Generic Top-Level Domains and SEO. Top-level domains could become an important factor in ranking and online brand visibility. Today, the new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), the thousands of new domain extensions such as “.photography”, “.london” etc., that will be flooding into the market over the next few months, took a step forward and entered a new phase where they are open to applications from anyone.
So are the new gTLDs set to shake-up the way businesses pick names for their websites? When it comes to their online presence and being visible to Google searches, are there any benefits to be had? gTLDs open up the possibility of the TLD becoming an important ranking factor in the future, particularly for the truly “generic” gTLDs (i.e. not brand gTLDs). What’s more, if Google does use the TLD as a ranking factor, this will most likely be used to categorise the topic of a site.
What do gTLDs mean for SEO? As yet, there are no particular SEO benefits from the TLD. Google Response Next steps for businesses. 3 easy advanced steps to optimize your WordPress blog. Everyone has a list about keyword counts, link text, and meta descriptions when they are working on their website or blog’s SEO. You read blogs that talk about title tags and that tell you to make sure you have an image that is named properly, but what else is there?
A LOT! This article will go into the details about three of the more advanced (but equally relevant) SEO-related processes you should be thinking about when optimizing your blog or website, not only for search engines, but for Social Media and your visitors/readers. The Framework Images for Social Media and driving traffic Video and your users 1. The framework. Many people use WordPress and have a custom designed template for their brand. A) It’s better than others. It saves you time, money and possible SEO headaches to have your web pages be responsive. B) It’s built off Schema, which is the standard in coding used by major search engines. C) The community behind it. 2. C) Watermark everything you own. 3. Ideal Blog Post Length for SEO. “It depends.” What a totally unsatisfying answer.
Of course it depends. But there are rules of thumb. There is research. We can analyze what works and draw conclusions. We can create guidelines, especially for things that are measurable. Here are guidelines for length for ten types of content. Now that you’ve got the data, let’s look at the research… Ideal Blog Post Length for SEO Blog posts vary in length from a few short paragraphs (Seth Godin style) to 40,000 words (Neil Patel style). When serpIQ analyzed high ranking pages, they found more text correlates with high rankings. (source) On this chart, “content” includes navigation, sidebar content, and other page elements, so the numbers here look slightly higher than the recommended blog post length. Think about it this way: Google is a research tool. Another reason is links. The ideal length for a search optimized blog post is 1,500 words. Ideal Length for an Email Subject Line The ideal email subject line is 50 characters or less.
Three Free Google Research Tools You’re Probably Not Using—But Should. Good marketing research is not only hard to come by, but can be pretty costly, too. High cost barriers can discourage startups from exploring research that can help their marketing programs. Thankfully, Google offers several free research tools that can help inform marketing strategies for companies of all sizes. Check out the following tools if you’re looking to amp up your marketing strategy: 1. Think Insights Think Insights is a research hub that provides insights into 14 different industries. It provides case studies, articles, infographics, interviews, research, webinars, and other insightful content. 2.
Google Trends is a robust tool that provides several pieces of trend information about how people search. Additionally, you can see related searches and what geographical areas see the highest and lowest amount of searches–which can help inform local marketing strategies. 3. This competitive metric provides insight into how many brands are bidding for presence around searches. 9 Best Practices Title Tag Search Engine Optimization - SEO. When I do an SEO audit on a webpage, one of the first things I check is the <title> tag. Why? Well, I have several reasons. Best Practices for Title Tags in SEO In my book, the It has the most SEO power of any tag on the page for establishing keyword relevanceIts contents are the source for the blue-link text shown in the search engine results pages (SERPs)It’s the best place to get a concise description of the content on the page (well, that’s the theory) In an optimal world, the last bullet above would always be true.
But how many times have you seen a page come out of development sporting the <title> tag text “Page 1″ or “Home Page” or “Template” or even simply left blank? Yeah, too many times (me, too). This one tag is a huge opportunity to properly introduce your page to both human users (via the SERPs) and to search engines (for building keyword relevance). When you are reviewing the code of your webpages, look for the <title> tag. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Practice note. On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page.
When it comes to on-page SEO, I’m sure you’ve heard enough about meta tags and keyword density for one lifetime. If you’re looking for some practical strategies that you can use on your site today, then you’ll love this infographic. It’s a simple checklist that will bring in more search engine traffic from every piece of content that you publish: Here’s my take on the on-page SEO insights from the infographic: 1. Use SEO-Friendly URLs Google has stated that the first 3-5 words in a URL are given more weight. So make your URLs short and sweet. And always include your target keyword in your URL. In other words: Avoid ugly URLs: backlinko.com/p=123Or long URLs: backlinko.com/8/6/16/cat=SEO/on-page-seo-is-so-amazing-omg-its-the-best Brian's take Click “play” to see the tip: 2. Your title tag is the most important on-page SEO factor. In general, the closer the keyword is to the beginning of the title tag, the more weight it has with search engines. 3. 4.
The H1 tag is your “headline tag”. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. SEO Page Title Tag Best Practice for Google in 2014. Google Ranking Factors: The Complete List. You might already know that Google uses over 200 ranking factors in their algorithm… But what are they, exactly? Well, you’re in for a treat because I’ve put together a complete list. Some are proven. Some are controversial. Others are SEO nerd speculation. But they’re all here. And I recently updated this entire list for 2022. Let’s dive right in. Domain Factors 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Page-Level Factors 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.
But what they do with that information is up for debate. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. Site-Level Factors 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. According to Google, however, HTTPS only acts as a “tiebreaker“. 75. 76. 77. Google states that: “Google Search uses breadcrumb markup in the body of a web page to categorize the information from the page in search results.” 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 88. 89. 90.
Give Your SEO a Boost: Title Tags and Meta Descriptions. There's been a lot of talk lately about how SEO has evolved and what it means for digital marketers. Just today, I read an article on Moz which discussed the possibility of keywords as we know them being dead. But let's get real - SEO is changing, but the fight to get to the top of Google will not be over any time soon. One of the most important facets of SEO which will consequently be sticking around is the practice of on-site optimization.
What is on-site SEO, you ask? It's all of the practices which simultaneously ensure visitors enjoy your site and search engines can crawl and index your pages. There are several considerations which can roll up into the on-site arena, and we're going to explore the most basic and critical ones today. Before we get too far into our detailing of SEO practices, let's take a breather and recall the key concepts that contribute to a great site that's primed for engines and users: Feeling refreshed? So, how do those blocks of text get there? Easily. Got it? The Definitive Guide to Keyword Research. If you’ve ever wondered: “How do I find keywords my competition doesn’t know about?”
“How do I know if a keyword is too hard to rank for?” “What’s the best keyword research tool on the market?” “Where do I even begin with keyword research after Google Hummingbird?” Then I’ve got just the thing for you: Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide. It’s a comprehensive guide that will show you EXACTLY how to find awesome keywords for your business. Here’s what you’ll learn in each chapter of Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide: Chapter 1: Keyword Research That Works in 2014 – The approach to keyword research that works today. Check out Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide now I’d love to hear what you think about my new guide. Leave a comment below with your thoughts. And if you learned something new from Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide, I’d really appreciate a tweet — Click to Tweet If You Enjoyed This Post, Sign Up for Free Updates.
Improve Your Startup’s SEO With These Fundamentals. Starting a business can be pretty intense. Although many startups depend heavily on the web, search engine optimization is often an afterthought. As a consequence, website owners may launch their new site and see very little traffic from searches. Showing up in search results is a free, passive way to connect with potential customers, so it’s important to consider these fundamentals when establishing your online presence. Read Google’s Webmaster SEO Starter Guide and Install Webmaster Tools To make sure your site is maximizing your search traffic, make sure to follow Google’s published SEO guidelines (aka their SEO Starter Guide).
Pay particular attention to your HTML tags, URL structure, load time, and the amount of crawlable text copy on page. Additionally, make sure to install Google Webmaster Tools on your site. Build Content Around Non-Brand, Category-Relevant Topics For a site to rank for a search phrase, you almost always need content that speaks to that phrase. Have Local Pages. SEO Checklist: Using Page Headings Correctly. Some time ago I reviewed tools that help understand the page HTML semantic structure based on H1-H6 headings. While some webmasters question the overall necessity of headings, I insist that they should be used to structure the page content for: SEO benefit: H-heading is one of the best ways to give your keywords prominence;Accessibility and usability: headings enable screen reader and some browser (e.g.
Opera) users to use voice and keyboard commands to navigate throughout the page (see this video explaining the importance of headings for accessibility);Web etiquette: like clean (preferably validated) code, good page structure is the sign of proper behavior and trusted brand. Here is the checklist of proper heading usage (please add your points or argue mine): Each of my pages have at least one heading; I have only one H1 heading per page; H1 heading is the first heading on the page; I use the page main keyword in H1 heading of the page; I don’t skip heading levels (e.g.