Top 5 SEO tips to maximize your website
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.It is an enhancing process for your website that helps search engines find and access your site. It also helps search engines to understand your site better and decide what positions it should take in search results.When you work on your website’s SEO, your job is to make it clean in code, presented with clear and well-structured content and make it user-friendly.Have not done SEO yet?Here are the top 5 tips for what you can do right now to maximize your website:
1. Create great and well-structured content
Remember, the most important thing for any blog post you’re writing – providing value for your readers. Answer a question, provide some comprehensive guide, anything that can be helpful for your visitors.Even if you need to spend more time on writing amazing content that stands out from a crowd, it will be a great investment.Besides writing great content, make it optimized for SEO:
- Add your keywords in content, use synonyms, and related phrases - Structure your post with main heading (h1) and sub-headings (h2, h3).
- Make lists, bullet points, tables, etc.
- Make it easy to read. Hemingway Editor tool may help you!
- Use images or videos
- Connect emotionally
- Add Call-to-Actions to your post
- Integrate Social Sharing buttons (it improves user experience = improves SEO)
- Add some techie “SEO Love” to your post: optimize it with title tag, meta description and ALT tags for every image.
Using WordPress? Install Yoast Plugin that helps you to optimize meta data without you touching the code.
2. Improve loading speed on your site
Web visitors today have more options than ever when it comes to viewing content and purchasing goods.That’s right: you have a tough competition out there.And if your website isn’t fast enough, your potential customers will most likely move on to the next website that provides a better experience.That’s why, Google officially confirmed that loading speed is a part of their ranking algorithm, and it’s more than ever important for your site now.
How to check the loading speed of your site?
My favorite tools are:Google PageSpeedInsightsGTMetrix
Have loading speed more than 3 seconds?
Here is what you can do to improve it:
- Reduce images size with compression
- Install and set-up caching plugin, like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache
- Use a good theme. Sometimes poorly developed theme may consume a lot of resources
- Clean up your database (WP Optimize is cool plugin that deletes all the stuff you don’t need in your database)
Nothing helps?
Well, may be it’s time to change your hosting company to the one that provides better loading speed.Seriously, sometimes the reason is in your hosting. In this guide, I put together how to choose the right hosting for yourwebsite.
3. Go Mobile
Same as loading speed, mobile responsiveness is crucial for your site.Always choose the mobile responsive theme.If by any chance you don’t have a mobile version for your site right now, and changing theme is not the option, you can try to fix this problem by using WP Touch plugin.After installation, it will automatically apply a mobile friendly theme to your site.
4. Claim your free backlinks
- Give testimonials. If you’re using a product or service that you like, consider sending them a testimonial and add your link to your review.
- Find link roundups in your niche and ask authors to add a link to relative content you created
- Use HARO. It’s one of the best ways to obtain a high-quality backlink
- Submit your blog to top blog directories, like Alltop.com
- Find Guest post opportunities, but provide your links to good quality sites with relative niche! Be careful, as getting links form low quality sites may lead to Google Penalty.
5. Analyze your competitors
It’s always good to know what your successful competitors are doing for search.Here is how you can promptly check them:
- Quickly analyze their On-Page SEO. What keywords they put in title and headings? This Chrome Extension “Open SEO Stats” will help you check them right from your browser.
- You can also check where your competitors are getting their backlinks. For deep and precise analysis you need to use premium tools, but you still can check some backlinks to your competitors websites with free tools like Link Popularity.
If you need more comprehensive analysis for your website, or you need any advice – you can always contact me. I’ll be glad to help!Anna Bogushevskaya - WordPress & SEO SpecialistWebsite:http://digitaldrivewithanna.comFacebook:https://www.facebook.com/digitaldrivewithanna/Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/digitaldriveanna/