Don’t keyword-stuff or over-link says Mr Flynn
It seems like SEO best practices are ever changing, and it can appear difficult to keep up with what is good SEO practice, and what is outdated or even ‘black hat’ tactics.
By Mike Flynn, CEO, Fast Web Media
To help keep track and guide newcomers through the SEO process, here’s a checklist of SEO best practices for 2013. Remember that SEO is a continuous process, and it’s a good idea to regularly consult this checklist and verify that everything is up to your standards.
The checklist has four main components:
- Getting Ready ensures that your site is ready to go live and start bringing in traffic.
- On-Site SEO outlines what tasks you should be doing internally, on your actual site, to engage visitors from your homepage
- Off-Site SEO helps with link-building and networking, driving traffic from other parts of the Internet to your website.
- Finally, Social Media builds on Off-Site SEO, with recommendations for how to engage your audience on social media platforms in addition to your website, and how to drive traffic between the two sources.
Getting ready
Before embarking on the SEO process it’s important to make sure that your website is fully ready to accept traffic. Consider a few basic questions:
• How does your site look in different browsers?
• Is your site mobile-friendly?
• Is it aesthetically pleasing and inviting to the user?
• Is it user-friendly and quick to load?
These may seem basic questions, but they are crucial to SEO success. Many people overlook the fact that search engine optimisation incorporates the design and layout of a website as well as the content.
So take the time to evaluate your site; make sure that everything is laid out in a logical fashion and, importantly, clutter free.
When preparing for a successful SEO campaign, it’s also important to carefully consider your purpose and goals.
Again, this may seem a basic point but if you aren’t clear on what you’re trying to achieve, chances are you’ll miss out on traffic. For example, when generating titles there is very little point in focusing on the art of creative, cryptic word-play.
Instead, keep things simple; when dealing with SEO there is far more value in getting straight to the point and making sure titles are as descriptive, concise and user-friendly as possible.
Keywords matter
Using the correct keywords across your website is another area to focus on. Consider which words and phrases are most likely to direct maximum volumes of visitors to your site.
For example, if you sell health products, ‘vitamin tablets’ may generate more results than ‘dietary supplements’.
One of the most important concepts to keep in mind is the ‘relevance’ of chosen keywords to your site.
If you don’t have certain features / products on your website, don’t include them as SEO keywords; false phrases will do nothing other than mislead users (and potentially damage your reputation).
A good tip is to use Google Analytics to check keyword rankings. It enables you to find out exactly which words and phrases customers search for online, allowing you to identify appropriate keywords that are popular and easy to use.
Finally, when checking that your website is ready to go live, make sure that all links work correctly. Broken links and error pages are highly frustrating for visitors and can also affect your search rankings.
On-site SEO
The key to strong SEO is good quality, unique content. Reliable, helpful information is not only essential for building your credibility with users and search engines; it is also instrumental in raising shareability, which in turn will encourage links from trusted sources who value your site’s content.
Closely linked with creating good content is enabling search engines to gain a sufficient understanding of your site’s structure.
By using a tool such as robots.txt you can reveal which parts of your website search engines should and shouldn’t visit; it’s important that you have the ability to control the content that is indexed in search engines.
When constructing your site, remember to pay attention to your meta description – that is, the text that appears underneath the title of your page within search engine results.
If you don’t craft this correctly, Google will just take the initial part of your site’s content instead. Create a concise, accurate description, no less than 150 characters, that effectively summarises you site’s purpose.
Another good tip when focusing on on-site SEO is to use the rel=”author” tag. This will establish authorship of your content, build your AuthorRank, and help protect your content from plagiarists.
Aside from steps you should take to ensure an effective SEO campaign, there are of course a few things that you shouldn’t do. Don’t be tempted to:
• Copy or steal content
• Link to irrelevant content or link too frequently
• Over-use keywords; often referred to as keyword stuffing
Committing any of the above may seriously damage your site’s Google ranking.
Off-site SEO
Once you’ve done everything possible to engage your audience from your homepage, it’s good practice to concentrate on ‘off-site’ SEO. Through effective link-building and networking, you will be able to drive traffic from other parts of the Internet to your website.
There are numerous ways to achieve this, such as creating a place listing on Google Places and adding your site to appropriate online directories.
It’s also important to build positive relationships with other businesses in your industry; either in person or via online discussions. ‘Word of mouth’ goes a long way in helping to drive traffic to a website!
Finally, it’s very useful to keep track of your site’s performance (and those of your competitors) to evaluate how well your SEO campaign is working.
There are several free tools available that will help you to compile your baseline metrics (for keyword performance, organic search traffic, inbound links etc), which you can then use to generate closed-loop analytics for evaluation. If you can then pinpoint any areas with disappointing results, you can amend your SEO campaign actions accordingly.
Social Media
Social Media can play a huge role in extending upon Off-Site SEO, and there are several ways through which you can engage your audience on social media platforms, in addition to your website, and drive traffic between the two sources.
Invest a little time in determining which social media sites are appropriate for you, then make sure you create a profile with as much relevant detail as possible. Importantly, link back to your website and vice-versa.
As many social media sites can be a little restrictive in the volume of content you can create, make sure that any content you share is eye-catching and engaging.
Use social media sites as a platform to allow users to ‘preview’ snippets from your website. ‘Follow’ other users, ‘like’ and ‘retweet’ content, and above all interact with users to build your network and encourage traffic to visit your main website.
Thanks for your check-list, it’s really useful.
I would also suggest (although it is rarely the case) that clients who want a site should visit a professional like yourself BEFORE they contemplate building a site. You can then help with keyword research which may indicate the name of the site and (obviously) the keywords and pages on the site. It is harder to rank some sites when the competition has the best domain names! It all helps!