Image via Scarletts Web

While your site might get away without needing heavy implementation of off-page SEO, on-page SEO is essential to the performance of your website on a SERP. If on-page SEO is not properly integrated into your site, you can drastically reduce your chances of getting organic traffic to your site.

Let’s start with the basics – content creation.

Create Good Quality Content

Applying keyword research

When creating content, have this rule in mind, “Brilliant content will do well, with or without SEO. Bad content will not do well, with or without SEO.”

What is good content?

• Original content (text, articles, videos, images, infographics, presentations, comments, etc.)
• Exclusive content. Your original material published on another website must have canonical tags
• Text content. Include written text to accompany your non-text content.
• Publish useful content. Create content that adds value to your website and which is helpful to your viewers/readers
• Well researched content. Search engines are intelligent and prefer well-crafted content. Your site’s users also want to read coherent and well-prepared content

In the articles preceding this one, we learnt how your target audience searches for content. Now, let us put that research into practice.

Here’s a simple outline to follow when applying keyword research.

Survey your keywords:

Group them according to intent and similar topics

The groups will be your pages. This method is preferable to creating individual pages for each keyword variation

Create a list of keywords – single, LSI, and longtail keywords. Use them in your headings, titles, descriptions, and content

Evaluate the SERP for every keyword or group of keywords:

• From the information gathered, determine the type and format of your content
• Look out for the following ranking page characteristics:
• Are they video or image-heavy?
• Is the content short and concise or long-form?
• Content formatting: Paragraphs, bullets, or lists?
• Ask, “What unique and valuable content can I offer to make my page enticing and better than the pages ranking for my keyword?”

On-page SEO enables you to convert your research into compelling and attractive content that your audience will love. Be careful not to use low-value tactics that’ll hurt you, more than help!

Avoiding Low-value Tactics

Your website should basically:

• Answer your sites users questions
• Guide the visitors through your site seamlessly – without any frustration
• Help anyone understand the intention and purpose of your site

Therefore, content is not supposed to be created for the purpose of ranking highly only. A site’s content should comprehensively meet the searcher’s need for answers, while ranking will help that searcher “find” your website more easily.

Focusing too much on ranking is putting the cart before the horse, therefore exposing your site to low-level content tactics, which will only serve to undermine the quality of your website.

Examples of low-level tactics are:

Thin content

An older content strategy used to be creating a page for every single iteration of keywords so as to rank on the SERP’s first page for those highly specific queries.

For instance, a bridal gown shop would create individual pages for “bridal dresses,” “wedding gowns,” and “bridal gowns,” even though each page was repetitive in its content. This strategy was effective because, at the time, Google couldn’t distinguish the relationship between a site’s pages.

However, thin content spread like wildfire through the web, and finally, Google had to address it with its 2011 update referred to as “Panda.” Panda penalizes low-quality web pages and rewards high-quality pages by giving them top spots on SERP’s.

In 2012, Google introduced Penguin, which is a tracking software that penalizes over-optimized anchor links, low-quality links, and link farms.

To this day, Google penalizes thin content and low-quality links with manual actions while also promoting good quality pages on its SERP. Getting a manual action or penalty from Google will ensure that a web page from your site or even your entire website, won’t appear in search results.

Google advises that a website should have a comprehensive page on a specific topic rather than multiple pages for each group of keywords or variations of a keyword.

Duplicate content

This is as it sounds; it refers to the content shared between domains or between several pages of a single domain. On the other hand, “scrapped content” goes a step further and uses material from other sites blatantly, without any authorization.

Scrapped content is either:

• Using content and republishing in its exact form or
• Modifying slightly, without adding any original information or value to it

There are, however, legitimate reasons for duplicate content, so Google permits the use of a rel=canonical tag to show the original version. Google doesn’t penalize duplicate content; it simply prioritizes those with a canonical (source) URL when displaying results on its search results page, to improve user experience.

Cloaking

According to search engine guidelines, the HTML code of your website should not contain text that a visitor to your website cannot view in the displayed content. The content that a visitor views should be the same as the one read by a search engine’s crawlers. When this tenet is not followed, search engines call it cloaking or “black hat cloaking,” which is penalized when discovered.

Cloaking is done for a number of reasons, in a variety of ways. Cloaking can be done for positive or negative reasons. Sometimes a website might “cloak” what is presented to a search engine in order to improve user experience. To be safe, follow Google guidelines on cloaking.

Keyword Stuffing

People are normally advised to use keywords that rank highly, repetitively, so as to be able to rank higher. They do not know that Google considers it “keyword stuffing” and penalizes it.

For example, you discover from keyword research that the top-ranking blog post on “Spring Bridal Gowns 2020” has the following number of single word or group keyword references as follows:

• Spring bridal gowns – 100 references
• Bridal gowns – 150 references
• Spring – 100 references, etc

Upon making that discovery, you decide to double or triple the word references to increase your chances of ranking highly. This is considered keyword stuffing. Another method of keyword stuffing is bolding all your targeted keywords.

Auto-generated content

This is arguably the most aggressive form of low-quality content. It is created programmatically and is auto-generated, with the intention of manipulating search rankings. Auto-generated content is spammy and contains incoherent messages. Auto-generated content is usually sent to the spam box folder of your email account.

Avoid low-value tactics and instead, focus on creating “10X content,” i.e., content that is 10X better than the highest-ranking web page in your category!

Optimize Meta Descriptions and Page Titles

Meta descriptions and page titles are vital for on-page SEO. Search engines specifically check for the page title and description of a page. They read them so that they can understand the purpose of the page and then rank your web page (for keywords) based on domain authority, competition, off-page SEO, among other considerations.

Page Titles

Each page should have a unique title on the browser tab window, that will help both the users and search engines understand what the web page is about.

A page with the title “On-page SEO checklist..” or “Neapolitan noise..” is preferable as compared to a page with “index.html.

A page title is one of the most critical on-page SEO factors.

To optimize a page title:

• Add keywords to the first set of page titles. This helps search engines know, from the get-go, what keywords the page is targeting. Don’t force it though, and avoid keyword stuffing
  • Short descriptive titles. A title does not need to be long, 60 characters or less will suffice. In any case, Google shows less than 60 characters of the SERP title
  • Include power words and numbers. Including power words, e.g., Actionable, ultimate, checklist, amazing, etc.,” with numbers, e.g., “10 Actionable..,” draws readers and increases their CTR
  • Do not include the domain. Google automatically adds the domain name, so don’t add it to your title. However, if you have a powerful and recognizable brand, consider including your domain into your title

Meta Descriptions

A meta description box will describe on the SERP, in up to 200 characters, the content of your page. If a compelling read, it can draw users to your page. If not, most user will move on to the next web page.

Avoid auto-generated descriptions because they sometimes do not make sense. As good practice, also add your target keywords. Google highlights search terms, so the searcher will be drawn to any meta description that contains relevant keywords.

Optimize Page Content

In addition to keyword research using tools, for example, Moz Explorer, use these features by Google: People also ask for, Google suggest and Related searches.

• Google suggest

When typing a query on Google search, several options are provided for you to choose from. These are good keywords to use in your content

• People also ask

This is similar to Google suggests, where “people also ask” will present query results that you can use in your sub-headings

Image via MediaDigi

• Related searches

Google shows all your associated searches at the bottom of the SERP. Mention some of the words, without keyword stuffing

Headings and Content Formatting

A page should be formatted appropriately, with both a heading (h1) and subheadings (h2, h3).

You can have either the same <title> and <h1> tag, or get an alternative title for the heading. Search engines display the results of the title tag and not the h1 tag.

You should:

• Write useful and captivating headings. Avoid using single word headings
• Headings should be hierarchical i.e. tag 1 <h1>, tag 2 <h2>, tag 3 <h3>, etc.
• Use suggested keywords in your headings and subheadings and content

With content formatting:

• Ensure that the content is easy to read and comprehend
• Use italics, underline, or bold to highlight the essential parts of the content
• Use a large font, at least 15px
• Use small paragraphs containing 3-4 lines max
• Provide adequate spacing between paragraphs
• Use of CSS to make sections that stand out

Multimedia Elements

Images are essential for presentation purposes. They brighten up a page and make it more attractive, engaging, and easy to comprehend.

However, they slow down the speed of a page and can sometimes be challenging to understand if not correctly used.

SEO best practices for images are:

• Reference the source of images or use original images
• Reduce the size of the images – the lesser the bytes, the better
• Use an ALT tag for description purposes to help search engines understand the intention of the image
• Use descriptive file names, e.g., “man exercising.jpg” instead of “image 1.jpg.”
• Load your pages faster with a CDN – Content Delivery Network, if you have numerous images on a single page. A CDN will enable your images to be hosted by several servers, therefore speeding up the loading process

URL Optimization

To get the absolute best from SEO, optimize your URL. This features two parts: URL optimization and URL structure

Image via Neil Patel

URL Optimization.

A permanent link or slug is the URL of each page. Good URLs are less than 255 characters and also use hyphens “-“ to separate the different sections, e.g., “..puppies-adorably-confused-by-rainbow.”

Good SEO friendly URLs are: descriptive, short, and include target keywords.

Examples of bad URLs:

• https://www.digimarketing.com/p!162 or
• https://www.digimarketing.com/seotipsforbeginners/ or
• https://www.digimarketing.com/123131/publish/data2/seo_Tips.html

URL Structure.

A URL structure should look like the structure of a website.

URL best practices are:

• Use categories. Group your pages to help search engines and users find your pages faster. Don’t overuse subcategories.

For example:

Homepage > Social Media > Instagram > Article

Not…

Homepage > Social Media > Instagram > How To > Article

• Add a breadcrumb menu. It helps users navigate your website easily while keeping track of the home page.

Internal Links

Link pages within your website for optimization because:

• It’s like building your own web.

A search engine spider will first crawl through a site, looking for and following all links. If it doesn’t have any links within the page, it’ll read the content of your pages and then leave. If you have other links leading to the rest of your website, you’ll enable the spider to gather more info on your site, which will improve it’s ranking

• It informs a search engine about the most important pages.

Every site has anchor pages that are more important than the other pages. Internal links pinpoint the most important pages.

• It increases the time spent on your website.

A user interested in a particular topic will follow the links provided on your site and will spend time on it, therefore increasing the time spent on your website, and on the pages visited, and as a result, decrease the bounce rate.

Best practices are:

• Use keywords for both internal and external links
• Incorporate internal links only when they are useful to site users
• Add links to the main body of your page and not in the footer or sidebar

External Links

Google uses external links to understand the relevance of a site and its connection to specific topics. Linking to high-quality websites that are relevant increases the trustworthiness of your content, leading to improved SEO.

Webmasters are fearful of external links due to the misinformation surrounding the release of Panda and Penguin. Google doesn’t penalize the use of useful quality links to your site.

Page Loading Speed

Page speed is now an officially ranking speed due to Google’s quest to make the web faster. They plan to include the fastest websites to their index. Ensure that your page loads very quickly for SEO purposes and also for customer retention.

Mobile Friendliness

60% of searches are derived from mobile phones. Make sure that your site is mobile-friendly, and that the content is displayed correctly, including the CTA buttons. Check and fix potential problems with the Google mobile-friendly tool.

Comments and On-Page SEO

Comments are relevant today because they interact with your page and indicate what they like and what they don’t appreciate. Those who read or post comments spend time on your site, and that boosts your SEO.

Best practices

• Moderate all comments
• Only publish comments that are relevant to page content
• Don’t approve comments from fake names
• Respond to comments on your site

Now on to off-page SEO. If anyone asks, on-page SEO is more important, especially for new websites, because it builds the foundation for a good website and a solid SEO.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to the activities that you perform externally, outside your website. These activities are:

• Social media marketing
• Link building
• Brand mentions

Let’s start by examining the benefits of off-page SEO.

The Importance of Off-Page SEO

Off-page provides Google with a good picture of the relevance of your website to the outside world.  A high-quality website will receive backlinks (references) from other websites. It is also more likely to enjoy mentions on social media; for example, Facebook shares, Tweets, Pins, etc.

A successful offsite strategy will benefit the owner in the following ways:

• Increase in rankings on SERPs, leading to more traffic
• Increase in PageRank. 0-10 is the number given to a website by Google, to indicate its importance
• Greater exposure leading to more visits, more links, and more social media mentions
• Establish trustworthiness through Google’s Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T). EAT establishes the expertise of a website on a subject matter via algorithms that indicate that relevant sites agree that your website provides expert information

Link Building

Building links to your website helps you get “voters” and is the most popular off-page SEO strategy. Basically, with many voters, you by-pass competitors and rank higher.

For example, a website referencing your site on their page tells search engines that you provide relevant information. Over the past couple of years, websites used to increase link counts through:

• Blog directories – Similar to yellow pages, with each entry pointing to a website
• Forum signatures – People participated in online forums with the sole purpose of obtaining a link back to their site. They provided their links in their forum signatures
• Comment link – Similar to forum signatures, except that one would comment on a number of websites or blogs with the purpose of getting a link back. Users wouldn’t use their names but would instead indicate, e.g., “ SEO guru comments.”
• Article Directories – Some directories accepted and published unique content, while others received material from any source. These published articles enabled websites to get a link, or more, to their websites
• Shared content directories – Sites published content where one could include links pointing to websites
• Link exchange schemes – Instead of posting content on the platforms mentioned above, websites cooperated with relevant sites and directly linked content from their sites to the other sites

All the methods listed above are now outdated and lead to penalties if attempted today.

Google approves of any links that are natural, where a website owner links to a different site simply because they like another blog or website. A good link has to have relevant anchor text.

Social Media Marketing

Off-site SEO comprises of social media marketing – it’s a form of link building. It would be good to note at this point that just about all social media links are “no-follow.” They are, however, still valuable. Proper configuration of SM profiles can also boost SEO.

Brand Mentions

Google loves brands. If you look at your SERPs, you’ll notice that most branded websites are ranked at the very top. This is because of the aforementioned E.A.T. Large brands are trusted by users, are more reliable, and this translates to happy Google users and better user experience.

Brand mentions do not usually have a link pointing to your website. Your site can be mentioned in articles, forums, social media networks, or reviews. Crawlers pick up these signals and evaluate them to get a picture of your brand as other sites perceive it. Your off-page SEO should strive to always pursue positive mentions of your products, services, or authors. Make sure to respond to any misleading or negative comments about your website.

The post On page SEO: Google Ranking Guide appeared first on UrBizBoost.

Knowledge in the technical aspects of SEO will help you optimize your website for search engines as well as establish credibility with developers.

Technical SEO is the precise steps needed to optimize your site for both crawling and indexing. It is referred to as technical because it does not have anything to do with website content or site promotion.

Now that you understand what SEO is, it is essential to obtain a foundation on keyword research and how search engines work, so as to grasp the technical concepts contained in this article.

Index via Search Engine Journal

How Search Engines Work

To find a site on the vast world-wide-web, you probably type the address into your browser’s address bar. What happens when you don’t know the URL? Well, you would need to search for that particular site and other information using a search engine.

Finding Things Online

First off, think about the combination of words to use in your search – too many, and you’ll get an error; too few, and you’ll get irrelevant and misleading results.

For example, “What nations did the Vikings raid and conquer?” is unnecessarily wordy. Instead, save time and focus on specific keywords. Omit joining words and punctuation and search for the following keywords “nation Vikings raid conquer.”

Search Engines and Indexing

To locate what seek, a search engine will typically “crawl” its index of web pages for related content. The robotic program that accomplishes this is called a “spider” or “web crawler.” These spiders search for new and updated content. Content types vary and can be – an image, web page, PDF, video, etc. Regardless of the format, content is discovered and identified by links. Each time a web crawler visits a site, it creates a copy and adds the site’s URL to an index.

After that, the web crawler visits all the other links on that web page. It copies, indexes, and follows each link. The crawler repeats this process, building an extensive index of web pages as it goes along. Sometimes some websites use programs that hinder web crawlers from visiting their sites. These pages are not added to the index, together with any pages that people do not link to.

The gathered information then becomes the search engines index. A web crawler has visited every page that shows up on an SERP.

Image via How Stuff Works

How do Search Engines Organize Results?

Search engines organize results and present, or rank, those that they deem useful – from top-ranked to least ranked. PageRank is the best-known Google algorithm used to improve search results. In other words, think of PageRank as you would a popularity contest. A web page is considered useful and wins the PageRank popularity contest if numerous links point to it. It will appear higher up in the SERP compared to other web pages.

The web pages listed on the first page of the search engines result page are the ones that PageRank thinks are the best. Search engines are also very attentive to “signals” when calculating the order of web pages on SERPs. An example of a signal is, how often a site is updated, and if the domain is trustworthy.

Every search engine has a unique algorithm. This means that some websites will rank their results in a totally different order or may show results that are poles apart.

In summary, search engines have three main functions:

• Crawl: They scour the world-wide-web looking for content and examining the code or content for each URL that they encounter

• Index: They store and organize all content discovered during the crawling process. Once a page is indexed, it is entered into a popularity contest, in order to be displayed as a top result to relevant queries

• Rank: They provide the portions of content that best resolve a searchers query. Meaning that search engine results pages are organized starting with the most relevant to the least relevant result

For detailed information, read How Search Engines Work.

Keyword Research

Now that you have read on the functions of a search engine, and how web sites show up in search results, let’s understand what your audience is looking for.

What is keyword research? Keyword research is the SEO process of finding and analyzing popular search terms that people use in search engines.

Why is Keyword Research Important?

The power and objective of keyword research lies in determining the strategic words to use in the content of your website and how to craft and organize that content to satisfy both search engines and users. Keyword research is comparable to market research – understand your target market and how they search for products, services, or content.

Keyword research provides data that answers queries like:

• What are search engine users looking for?
• How many users are searching for a particular item?
• In what format do they want to receive that information?

Once you discover how your target audience searches for the content you provide, you will uncover an entirely new world of strategic SEO!

Ask Questions Before Researching

The very first step before conducting keyword research is – ask questions. It defeats the purpose of keyword research and SEO, if you do not understand:

1. Your business’s (client’s company’s) objective’s
2. Your customers
3. Your customers’ goals

Finding the answers to the above questions will help you understand what your audience wants and what you want to rank for – two very different things. Successful SEO campaigns require that you focus on your audience’s proclivities and then use keyword data to hone in and package those insights into excellent content.

For example, J&L (a Seattle-based, organic dairy, sweets and pastry shop) has heard about SEO and needs your help to improve how often they show up in organic search results (pun intended).  To help them, you may ask questions such as:

• What are your best-selling desserts, pastries, snacks, candy, ice-cream, chocolate, etc.?

• What types of desserts, pastries, snacks, candy, ice-cream, chocolate, etc. are people searching for?

• When are people searching for desserts, pastries, snacks, ice-cream, etc.? Does your data reveal any increased conversions during weekends, holidays, temperature spikes? Are there seasonal trends throughout the year, etc.

• How are your customers searching for ice cream?
• What questions do they ask?
• What terms and words do they use?
• Are the majority of searches from mobile devices or computers?
• Where are your clients located? Are they local, national, or international?
• More importantly, how can J&L help provide the best content about their sweets and pastries, to cultivate an on and offline community and fulfill what your clients are searching for?

Asking these questions will guide your planning and keyword research and enable you to craft better content.

What Terms are People Searching?

As individuals, we have unique ways of describing things, situations, what we do, etc. Think of keyword research in the same manner. How does your audience search for the service, product, or information you provide?

Answering this question is the most crucial step in keyword research.

Discovering keywords

You may have a few keywords that you want to rank for. These will be, for example, topics that your website talks about, services, or products – they are good keywords for your research, so start there!

Run your keywords through a keyword research tool to find out similar keywords and their monthly search volume. Using a keyword research tool will help you discover common questions, other keywords, and topics for your content that you might have missed. Determine which word variations are the most popular keywords.

Example

Let’s use the example of a company that specializes in designing wedding invitation cards. Your word search combination is “wedding invitation designs.” You may instead find highly searched and relevant terms like:’

• Wedding invitation designs free

• or Wedding invitation card design
• Wedding invitations
• also Wedding invitation
• Shutterfly wedding invitations

From the image below, you’ll be surprised to discover that the keyword “wedding invitations” has a whooping monthly search volume of 118k-300k!

While looking for keywords that are relevant to your content, you will notice that the search volume varies greatly. In as much as you want to use the exact terms that your audience is searching for, sometimes it’s better to use search terms with lower search volume – they are less competitive.

Therefore, make it a practice to incorporate both high and low-competition keywords into your content to give your web page the most significant strategic advantage.

It is important to note that web pages rank for keywords and not entire websites. With big brand websites, you will often find that the homepage is ranking highly for several keywords. However, this isn’t usually the norm. Most websites receive more organic traffic to their web pages and not their homepages. Leading to the main reason why you should diversify your web pages by optimizing each page for unique and valuable keywords.

Frequency of Searches

“Keyword difficulty” is the term used to describe when it is difficult to achieve higher ranking due to a high search volume for a specific keyword or keyword phrase. Keyword difficulty is sometimes caused by big brands using lots of SERP features that clog up the results page, e.g., knowledge graph, carousels, featured snippets, etc. Big brands can take up the top ten results for high-volume keywords, so the battle for ranking can take years of effort to win.

So, the higher the search volume number, the tougher it is to achieve top organic ranking. Aim for a median search volume number – too high, and it’ll take too long for your site to get noticed. Too low, and you will miss out on drawing searchers to your site.

Read more on keyword research on HubSpot and Moz.

Technical SEO Optimization

Now that you have a solid foundation on SEO basics, it is essential to develop your developer’s language and grasp certain technical aspects of a websites formation and SEO.

Because the technical structure of a site will have a considerable impact on its performance, everyone needs to understand the following principles. In the section above, we spoke on how search engines work, and we also mentioned the crawling, indexing, and ranking process.

There are three main pillars of SEO: On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, and Technical SEO.

On-Page SEO: Is about content and how to make it relevant to the user’s search processes

Off-Page SEO: Also known as link building, refers to the process of acquiring mentions or links from other sites to increase trust during ranking

Technical SEO: Refers to the crawling and indexing process

Image via Reliable Soft

It is evident from the above image that technical SEO, off-page SEO, and on-page SEO have to work in tandem to produce a fully optimized website.

Technical SEO Best Practices

A website’s creation begins from domain purchase, up to the point when it is fully rendered in a browser. The rendering path is an especially critical component of a site’s journey because that is when a browser turns a website’s code into a page that a noncoder, i.e., a non-techie, can read and comprehend.

Therefore, it is important to have technical SEO best practices because:

• The page assembly process can affect page speed or load times. Good speed is essential for keeping users on your website. It is also a ranking factor on Google and other search engines
• Google renders, e.g., JavaScript, the second time around (second pass). It will examine a page without scanning JavaScript, and then a while later, it will render JavaScript. This means that SEO-critical elements using JavaScript might not get indexed.

Think of a website loading in the same manner that you would think of your commute. When driving, say, you come across a gridlock, and you’re forced to sit in your car until it clears up. Sometimes you may leave an essential document on the table and have to return to get it. You may also run out of the house, briefcase in hand, wearing mismatched socks. This example paints a picture of an inefficient website.

This section will teach you how to implement technical SEO best practices to diagnose website inefficiencies and help you streamline them to improve user experience and gain positive rankings.

Lets begin.

Specify a Domain

When setting up your blog or website, you need to buy a preferred domain. Therefore:

• Purchase a domain name, e.g., jandlsweets.com. These are purchased from domain name registers such as HostGator or GoDaddy. These organizations are but two of several registries that manage domain name reservations

• Ensure that the domain name is linked to the IP address. The Internet does not comprehend names like “jandlsweets.com” without domain name servers (DNS). The Internet uses Internet protocol (IP) addresses, which are sets of numbers. For example, 124.0.0.1. Human beings will not go out of their way to remember the names of websites in number form, hence, jandlsweets.com. DNS links machine-readable names with human-readable names.

Make sure that the website is accessible with or without “www” in front of a domain name

For example, if your domain is “jandlsweets.com,” your website can be accessed through both “http://www.jandlsweets.com” and http://jandlsweets.com – without the “www.”

If you do not include both variations, you will encounter indexing issues, loss of page ranking, and duplicate content because searching engines will consider them to be two different websites.

Using “www” or not using it is a matter of personal preference and does not affect SEO in any way. Some people prefer using a plain “http://” and others “http://www.” What is important is informing search engines about your preferred website address name and being constant in using that preferred domain. One typically uses canonical URLs to do so – read on to find out about canonical URLs.

If you change your mind about the URL, you can always switch between the different formats with 301 redirections. However, this is not recommended because there are always risks when making domain migrations.

Optimize your Robots.txt

Upon setting your preferred domain, you can now optimize your robots.txt file.

Robots.txt is a text file that resides in the root directory of your site, which gives instructions to search engines on which web pages to crawl and index. The file format is simple, and in most cases, you do not need to make any changes to it.

Image via Moz

Image via Backlinko

Optimize your URL Structure

Periodically check-up on your site’s URL structure/format.

URL best SEO practices state:

• Use lowercase letters
• Use – to separate URL words
• Make URL words short and descriptive
• Avoid unnecessary words or characters
• Use target keywords, do not keyword stuff

Only optimize your site’s URLs when putting up and publishing new content. It’s not recommended that you change your permanent link structure because there’s scarcely any benefit in doing so, but if you do, to be safe, use 301 redirects.

If using WordPress as your CMS, this process is automatic. WordPress creates your URL from your post title. Meaning that if you have a long title, you get a long URL.

For example, if your title is, “10 Beautiful Shades of Color for your Summer Events,” the URL generated will be http://jandlsweets.com/10-beautiful-shades-of-color-for-your-summer-events.

You could always shorten it to: http://jandlsweets.com/10-beautiful-shades-events, which is much simpler to remember.

Image via Moz

Navigation and Website Structure

Website structure is vital to SEO because users will stay on longer and find what they want faster, while search engines can index a website easier with proper site structure.

Google considers a website’s structure, so, for example, don’t hide your archive pages or put content on a single page – that is wrong SEO practice!

Google has provided the following guidelines for website structure.

Image via Diffy Web

Add Breadcrumb Menus

Image via VWO

A breadcrumb menu allows users to navigate to a previous page or category page or to the home page. It is a set of links located either at the top or bottom of a page. Breadcrumbs are highly recommended and useful to SEO, provided they have the proper schema.

A bread crumb menu serves two purposes:

To help users navigate a site without pressing the back button

To provide a hint to search engines about the structure of a website

SEO and Structured Data Markup

Structured data is gaining importance because Google uses it a lot in the Search Results.

Structured data is basically code that you add to your web pages, which is visible to search crawlers. It helps search engines understand your content’s context, in a language they understand.

Structured data, though about website content, has to do with technical SEO. This is because of the inclusion of code, which helps enhance your listings presentation on SERPs either through photo carousels, featured snippets, etc. and also increase your CTR (click-through rate). 

Canonical URLs

All web pages should have a canonical URL. This URL is defined by adding the tag <link rel=”canonical” href=”yourpageurl”>, in the <head> of your pages and posts.

It’s a simple way to alert Google which page version to consider when indexing your website. It is similar in concept to your preferred domain, where a single page can be accessed through various URLs. Use rel=”canonical” when you have web pages with similar content, and also to avoid having duplicate content problems when you add content to your site from other websites.

Generally speaking, specify a canonical URL for all web pages.

Check your site to see if it provides a canonical URL by visiting any of your web pages, right-click at any point, and select VIEW SOURCE. Search for rel=canonical and also investigate the value.

If you cannot find a reference to canonical, use a plugin, and if you are on WordPress, use Yoast SEO or hire a developer. Once set up, you do not have to do anything else.

Optimize your 404 Page

A 404 page is shown when: a URL doesn’t exist, the page was deleted, or the URL was mistyped. WordPress themes have optimized 404 web pages by default – you can also edit your templates or use a plugin.

Don’t spend too much time on this. However, ensure that you have an optimized 404 page, in case a page is not accessible.

Optimize your XML Sitemap

Image via Reliable Soft

An XML sitemap is one of the most essential components of technical SEO. An XML Sitemap is a file that lists all posts/pages available on your website. Besides the title, it includes both published and updated dates.

Search engines use the XML sitemap as a guide when crawling a site.

XML sitemap optimization is straight forward. Simply include on your sitemap, web pages that are important for your site. More than not, these would be your posts, pages, and categories. Do not include in your sitemap, pages that do not have original content on their own, tag pages, or author pages. Ensure that your sitemap is updated each time you publish a new page on when a page is updated.

Submit your XML sitemap to both Google and Bing through Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and check the status. 

Add SSL to Make your Site HTTPS

HTTPS is a ranking signal. Due to fraud cases involving credit cards, HTTPS establishes trust with users. Your website can only be accessed with HTTPS when you install SSL. This means that information transferred between the server and your site is encrypted, for example, passwords, personal data, etc.

Contact your hosting provider. Request that they enable SSL. Then follow a migration process that will activate SSL on your website without losing your rankings. Be careful not to miss any steps.

Website Speed – the Faster, the Better

Google rewards fast websites with higher ranks. So, the faster, the better.

Image via Marketing Sherpa

Website speed speaks to your technical SEO needs, so if your site’s speed is slow, you will need to make changes to your site’s infrastructure.

First, check your speed by using three web tools: Pingdom tools, Google page speed insights, and Google mobile speed tool. They’ll provide recommendations on how to improve your websites speed.

Generally:

• Upgrade your server and use a 64 bits OS
• Upgrade to PHP 7.2> which will provide substantial speed improvements, compared to PHP 5.2
• Optimize image size without compromising HD quality
• Minimize plugin use
• Upgrade all WordPress plugins
• Don’t use heavy pre-made themes. Invest in a custom made theme
• Optimize and minify JS and CSS Files 
• Use a caching plugin
• Avoid having too many scripts featuring in the <head> of your site
• Use asynchronous Javascript loading

Mobile Friendly

Your rankings will suffer if you do not have a mobile-friendly website – Google has a mobile-first index. Mobile-friendliness requires technical knowledge, but once it is properly configured, you will not need to deal with it again.

You should ensure that:

• Your mobile site should have the exact same content as your desktop
• Your site should load on your mobile device in less than six seconds
• Optimize your mobile website often, even though it is normal to experience lower conversion rates
• Avoid using popups on mobile
• Accelerated Mobile Pages do not replace your need for a fast-mobile website

Get Accelerated Mobile Pages

Google provided these to make mobile web faster. AMP HTML is a cut version of normal HTML. Once you create AMP pages, they are stored and given to users via a special Google cache, which is faster (loads almost instantly) than mobile-friendly pages.

AMP has both pros and cons.

AMP Pros:

• Makes pages on mobile sites load faster
• Increases CTR

     AMP Cons:

• Difficult to implement
• AMP cannot be used for email marketing purposes
• Technical coding so that you’ll need to hire a developer
• Analytics and reports get confused due to the two different desktop and mobile website

The post Technical SEO: Secret Rank Building appeared first on UrBizBoost.

What if I told you that you could increase your brand recognition, traffic, and sales by spending a few hours a week on social network platforms? Imagine that! Let me give you a couple of reliable statistics to highlight the massive reach of social networks and why your business needs a social media strategy. 

A 2019 report written by We Are Social reveals that the United

States has 230 million active social network users, and globally, social media users are 3.5 billion strong. It is pretty evident that having your business present on a social network is no longer optional.

A 2019 Social Media Examiners report further reveals that while 97% of Small and Medium Businesses (SMB) use social networks to get new leads and sales, 85% of business owners are not sure about what social media tools to use. Most importantly, the Social Media Examiners report indicates that 63% of customers who seek out brands online, will more likely conduct business with the brands that have an established social network presence. 

Therefore, it is vital for a business to comprehend the benefits of implementing an effective social media strategy.

1. Get Inbound Traffic

The fastest way to achieve an increase in inbound web traffic is through social media. Without social media, your digital and traditional marketing efforts will pretty much be limited to savvy individuals who know how to search ranked keywords and those familiar with your brand. 

 

In the absence of a social media marketing strategy, attracting new people to, say, your startup will be an uphill climb. The different social media platforms and profiles that you utilize in your marketing approach will act as a gateway to your site. Every account platform and content type should appeal to a different demographic. 

 

For instance, research carried out by Pew Research Center in 2019 shows that United States adults prefer interacting with content found on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. 

 

By having a social media presence and by posting relevant content frequently on the various platforms, you add a new path of customer traffic to your website. In the long run, your efforts will lead to higher traffic and more conversions.

2. Increase Conversion Rates

Social media is a useful tool for obtaining new leads and moving potential clients through your sales funnel. Whether your establishment is business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C), the increased visibility provided by social networks will give you more opportunities for conversion. Without exception, all activity on a social network, be it an advert, a news feed post, a comment, a shared blog post, an image, video, or even a new follower, will send viewers to your company website. Social media marketing allows you to convert people into customers.

Most people want to do business with a friendly company intent on building a relationship with them, versus a company that simply wants to sell their items. The more convincing you are, in this regard, the more customers you will gain and retain. The constant human communication between your social media manager and customers will present your business in a positive light. Brands become warm and personable when they interact with the people.

Due to the emotional connection that is formed through social media, potential clients will have your company in mind when they need your products or services. Because people stay connected on social networks, they’ll also recommend your brand and products to their friends, families, and communities. 

Social Media Examiner reported that 66% of marketers experienced lead generation benefits from using social networks at least 6 hours per week. As such, compared to outbound marketing, social networks have a 100 percent higher lead-to-close rate. Positive social media interaction, where people are talking, sharing, and liking in a safe environment, will improve your existing web traffics conversion rates.

3. Enhance Brand Awareness

Being present on the most popular social media platforms, that is, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, will give your brand the ability to connect to various demographics. Social media marketing is one of the most affordable digital marketing methods that serves to increase your business’ visibility. Due to social media’s ability to attract people from all walks of life, the implementation of a social media strategy will serve to boost brand recognition. Social media allows you to display your business’ personality, making it one of the best ways to connect with your clientele. Social channels also allow you to create content that gives your brand a unique voice, only associated with your brand. 

With a business social media account on, e.g., Instagram or Facebook, you can encourage your customers, sponsors, employees, and business partners to “share” and “like” your posts. Each liked and shared post will be encountered by potential customers. Therefore, building new networks of individuals on social media could eventually lead your company to fame and fortune, at record-breaking speeds!

In today’s super-competitive market environment, it is advisable to spend at least an hour a day on your business’ social media account to post about your products/services, respond to queries, offer coupons, give compliments, etc., as it will benefit your brand in numerous ways. A visible, recognizable, and consistent social media presence will ultimately lead to repeat customers.

4. Improve Search Engine Rankings

Social media is vital for search engine optimization (SEO) because it makes your daily SEO efforts powerful and worthwhile. Search engine optimization is critical to obtaining higher page rankings and gaining traffic to your website. A vast majority of internet users search for information on Googles search engine, and most will not navigate beyond the first page. More often than not, the sought-out information will be present on Google’s first page of results. With that said, if your website is not ranked on the first page, as part of the top five sites, you may need to invest in an affordable SEO strategy.

Now to be clear, social networks do not directly improve your search engine ranking. The simple reason being that Google does not view social signals as ranking signals. While Google does index social media pages and profiles, it does not take the number of shares and followers into consideration when ranking. Due to the numerous updates, added followers, and constant shares that take place on platforms 24/7, search engines cannot keep track of social media content. That, in turn, affects a search engine’s ability to rank them. The advent of bots (digital robots) also made it easy to cheat the ranking system. These combined factors have led to search engines not directly ranking social media web property.

So, how does social media affect your SEO? Social media activity has a positive effect on page ranking, albeit indirectly, due to the interaction between a site’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) and its social signals count. The result is – higher indexing of the website by search engines. A quick investigation of popular and top-ranking sites reveals that just about all of them have strong social signals. Social Media Examiner, in its 2019 report, states that over 58% of social media marketers who have used social media platforms for over one year have observed improved search engine rankings.

The simplest way to increase your website’s search engine ranking is by implementing a social media marketing strategy. By creating and posting high-quality content such as infographics, blogs, case studies, business information, and compelling stories about your products, employees, and community projects, your business will achieve credibility and endear itself to the masses. 

An active community of followers will also allow you to proposition industry influencers, who will endorse your business to their followers and share your social networks and website links. The influx of their curious followers to your website will give you customers and improve your search engine rankings. Please note, nano influencers have upwards of 1,000 active followers, while certain major influencers have active followers running into the millions! 

In 2019, Dan Zarella of Hubspot researched 25,000 URLs that had been shared on at least one major social network, within a time frame of one month and with one incoming website link. Dan discovered that there is a measurable and positive correlation between a (website) content’s social media shares count and the number of backlinks provided.

 

 

For example, the URL’s that received more Facebook love also received more link love.

5. Better Customer Satisfaction

A study conducted by Social Sprout in 2017 shows that the majority of consumers want to purchase items from a brand that they perceive to be helpful (78%), friendly (83%), and honest (86%) and which also provides excellent social customer care. A business that is interactive on a social network will build trust and credibility. Being present on social media gives your company a humanizing voice, and customers appreciate receiving personalized responses from human beings instead of automatic messages from bots. 

Pay attention to your customer’s comments on your social networks and always go above and beyond the call of duty to resolve their issues promptly. This type of concern will go a long way to providing excellent customer care experience.  One-on-one interaction with individual customers on social media gives you the chance to demonstrate thoughtful behavior, even compassion, for your clients. A conscientious brand should take the time to address a question or a complaint with a personal message that will be viewed by all in a positive light. 

6. Marketplace Insight

If you are a numbers person, who favors market analysis, one of the benefits of social media is the marketplace insight that

most social network platforms provide. How can you best know and serve your customers if not by talking to them directly? Social media allows you to conduct affordable market research on your platforms and gauge your customer’s response to, e.g., a new product that you are about to launch. Monitoring the activity on your profiles, will allow you to hear your customers’ opinions, and find out their interests, information that you might not have had access to if your business did not have a presence on social networks. Social listening is key to improving your social media strategy.

Social media can be used as a complementary research tool that can assist you in gaining information that will enable you to understand your industry better. Facebook Ads metrics maybe even more crucial to your business than A/B testing!

 

With a sizeable following, you should obtain additional tools to compile and analyze your clients’ demographics. Another aspect of social media marketing is its ability to categorize and section your content syndication lists based on a topic. 

Having your lists in segments will allow you to identify which content types generate the most response and impressions. There are digital tools that give you the ability to calculate conversions based on various social media posts, across several platforms, to establish the perfect revenue-generating combination. 

7. Increase Brand Loyalty

Gaining clients is one thing: keeping them is a whole different story. Brand loyalty and customer satisfaction are intertwined – they have separate definitions, but work in tandem. A company that masters the art of customer satisfaction on social media will obtain a solid and loyal following. Therefore, it is necessary for a business to engage with its customers regularly, and purpose to develop emotional bonds with them. 

On social media, a brand must go beyond the minimum marketing requirement of introducing products and conducting promotional campaigns. Today’s customer views these platforms as an intimate service channel where they can communicate directly with a company and receive personalized care. Failure to meet this reasonable expectation will lead to a disappointed customer base who will quickly replace you with a brand that meets their needs!

Brands that engage with their customers on social media channels receive more loyalty from 50% of American consumers than those that do not. Millennials are a particularly sensitive group of customers because they are the most brand-loyal consumers of them all. The millennial generation, comprising of people born between 1981 and 1996, is the largest in the United States labor force. 

Numerous studies show that millennials are most responsive to brands that engage with them on social networks. In other words, if your product is geared towards millennials, you had better be present on all the major social networks and have an alluring and captivating social media strategy to obtain and retain their business. Millennials are also a highly opinionated and passionate group on social platforms, so it would serve your brand well to be able to respond to negative feedback professionally. Any missteps with millennials will spread like wildfire and send your brand’s reputation crashing.

On the flip side, a good social media strategy will cause them to support your business in droves – millennial brand loyalty is a leading cause of the desired “sold-out” moniker. A brand must utilize innovative methods and a variety of digital tools to build strong emotional connections with millennials. They are technology experts who are not easy to convince, but when you do, you will have an incredibly loyal customer.

Regardless of whether your customer base is predominantly drawn from either the millennial generation, Gen X, Gen Z, or Baby Boomers, having a comprehensive social media strategy will prove to be a goldmine to your business.

8. Improve Brand Authority

A company becomes an authoritative figure in its niche industry when it regularly interacts with its customers on social networks. Brand loyalty and customer satisfaction play a role in making your business an authority. Brand authority on social networks and in general can be attributed to having an excellent product/service, posting original and creative content, and regularly engaging with your customers, among other things. 

Credibility is built on social platforms when your business demonstrates that it cares for its clientele. In turn, clients will become confident in recommending your company simply because of the wonderful response that they received from your social media team! Satisfied and vocal customers will voluntarily advertise your business, leading to your recognition as an authority in your field. 

9. Maximize Savings

Marketing and advertising are mostly about budgets. A more substantial marketing budget allows you to hire high budget marketing and advertising agencies, which leads to better results. Now, not every business can have a multi-million-dollar marketing strategy. However, thanks to the reach of social networks, small, medium, and large company’s have been able to market themselves and acquire customers with very affordable social media marketing services. The cost-effective nature of social platforms will make it worth your while.

Signing up is free for most social networking platforms. Compared to advertising costs on traditional platforms, i.e., billboards, radios, TV networks, and print media, advertisement costs on social networks are relatively low. Social media marketing provides your business with quantifiable benefits because it allows you to reallocate your overall budget. This enables your company to focus on other business expenses while allowing you to see a higher return on investment. For instance, a company that manufactures its own products might want to focus more on research and design versus marketing and advertising. 

If you use social media for advertising, make sure that you research on how to reach your client base via the specific platform. Instagram has a different advertising format from Facebook, so it is highly advisable to study individual advertising formats. Start with one platform, for instance, Facebook Ads, and with minimal amounts of money. Errors in inputting information in the demographic, location, and payment sections can have you losing hundreds of dollars, even thousands of dollars in a useless advertising campaign. You may want to consider hiring a person well versed in the different facets of Facebook Ads, Google AdWords and social media advertising across several platforms.

There is one primary defining metric that makes social media advertising the more affordable option – cost per thousand impressions (CPM). CPM is an algorithm, an advertising metric, which measures how many advertising dollars your business must spend, to reach 1,000 people. The goal of any advertising campaign should be to reach out to as many potential customers possible, at the most cost-effective rate.

Social media advertising is currently the most affordable form of advertising per 1000 viewers. In other words, it is one of the few types of media that can expose you to more than 1,000 people for less than $3. Interestingly enough, on social platforms such as YouTube, you can monetize your business content and receive advertisement revenues from the volumes of traffic to your channel! But that’s another topic altogether.

10. Increase Leadership Profile

It is crucial that your business posts respectable, well-written, and insightful content to its page. Social media is a fantastic way to become a leader and expert in your field. A variety of methods can be utilized to ensure that your business takes its place as a leader in the marketplace. One way to achieve this is by fully taking advantage of social media platforms.

Build your presence by connecting with your audience. Share content, be communicative, and promote your expertise and leadership. Create value-added relationships with your customers that will allow you to become a recognized and notable influencer and leader in your niche.

Start Your Journey!

If your establishment is not already on social media, begin your journey by creating profiles on the major social networks. Major platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are highly recommended. Make sure that you provide pertinent information about your company and post engaging content daily to begin gaining followers. Encourage people to “share” and “like” your business page to build your profile and to also grow your social media following. It takes a while to achieve positive results, so don’t get discouraged.

 

 

It would be well to point out that having your company present on a social platform without a competent social media manager can be catastrophic for your business. Consider hiring a digital marketing agency to ensure that you maximize the potential of social networks while applying the least amount of effort. With consistent updates and friendly interaction with followers, a properly implemented social media strategy will lead to brand prominence, increased web traffic, better SEO, higher conversion rates, and so much more.

The post 10 REASONS WHY YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY appeared first on UrBizBoost.