I need to update my website for SEO - what are the top 5 things I should do right now?
There are so many algorithm elements to consider, so I want to know what I can do right now to start boosting my results ASAP? The top 5 would be great of what I should concentrate on now, and then what should I consider after that?
If you really want to spend endless hours to learn it all, do it yourself. If not, go to seocreativity and let them do it.
Hi Tony,
You are right, there are several areas needed to be taken into consideration, when it comes to boosting your SEO score. Let me take you through the top 5 things that can help you optimize your website and move up in the search results. You should note that all these tips are for on-page SEO:
• By adding canonical tags appropriately, you avoid losses that occur when website goes against Google guidelines. At the same time, all your pages remain live to users.
• If a page is indexing and has good links from other sites but ceases to offer a product/service, it must be 301 redirected to a relevant page to save your search engine benefits.
• Check website pages in Google Webmaster that show ‘Not Found’ status. There could be various reasons like page deleted, renamed or misspelling in link. Monitor your Google Webmaster and redirect the ones that are renamed, and fix the others
• Creating robot.txt file is a handy way to keep pages on the backend only by providing instructions on which pages should be disallowed from being displayed on SERPs.
• HREF lang tag helps businesses that have wider audience belonging to different regions serve local audience better. It adds signal that helps spider find relevant page instantly. This way, you do not need multiple websites to target people from different geographical regions.
These five tips would surely boost your website ranking. For more information on these tips, you can go through this post (http://www.fatbit.com/fab/6-crucial-page-seo-tags-rank-high-google-2015/) that elaborates on each point efficiently. After incorporating all these tips, you can also move your website from http to https, which gives substantial benefits in search ranking. Google has been promoting websites that use https rather than http. However, you need to take cognizance of certain aspects before making this shift. This post (http://www.business2community.com/seo/10-seo-considerations-moving-website-http-https-01368982) provides all the information in that aspect.
Hope my tips help you in getting the desired result. If there is any further query, feel free to ask.
1. Update your website's Title, Meta Description, Content and Heading Tags.
2. Do internal linking of website's pages.
3. Use Alt Tag on images.
4. Checked Canonical Tag & Broken Links.
5. Create your brands page on social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter & Google+.
HI Tony - I actually recently put together this "Top 11" Things to focus on based on the released Google Guidelines for SEO. This should help you get started (there's also a link to the full 160-page Google document, but I pulled out the most important things for small businesses to know.
http://www.neverstopmarketing.net/google-guidelines-2015-10-things-you-need-to-know-as-a-small-biz-owner/
Hello Tony,
That would be good if you share your website link so that you will get better advice on the same. Any how, I would recommend you to do following things on your website:
- Check URL Structure. keep it clean and simple. Avoid using query strings.
- Update your website title, meta description, meta keywords, content including heading tags, sitemap and internal linking of pages.
- Do image optimization
- Create and optimize official social media profiles for your brand, integrate them on your website and update them regularly.
- Check all the redirections, broken links (if any) and canonical tags.
Tony,
We handle the marketing for a company that puts out an expert webinar series and one of the presenters JUST spoke about this. You can view the presentation here >>> https://youtu.be/eL_8gd-81F4
Hope this helps!
Dave
The only real answer is to use a true SEO expert. There are too many variables to consider and they are constantly changing. This is so specialized that Google states that even 19 out of 20 web designers can't even do true, white-hat SEO. They can only do bits and pieces. Hire an expert that will keep your unique situation and goals in mind. One size does not fit all,
Make Sure your page title are correctly opimised for your niche
Make sure you use your keywords in the page titles
Make sure your keywords are in your url's
make sure you use keywords in your anchor text
Make sure your sitemap is up to date
There is loads more....
Keyword research is your top proirity, get this right with local search terms.
1. Keyword research
2. On-page SEO - title, decription and alt tags
3. Check Page Authority and Domain Authority
4. Check Trust Flow and Citation Flow
5. Find top 3 websites for your search term, check their backlinks and copy them
Concentrate on optimization and using the power of your google local listing to get organic traffic to the google 3 pack.
Make all other local citations match exactly as the google listing
Geo tag all media and do nate name images dc34.jpg but use the keyword like best limos in atlanta etc.
Get social signals to the desired pages after they are optimized.
Be sure to submit your sitemap to google via webmaster tools and ping the url to be crawled by the google bot. Also make sure you have readable robots text and o not block any resources.
ETC.
ETC.
ETC.
I think that you may contact us. We can help you to do what you need to right now for your website doing SEO.
Thanks,
Omar Sani
Thing One - Stop updating your site for SEO. Update your site for the people who use it. If your site is not relevant to the people you are trying to reach you're wasting your time and your your money.
Focus your efforts on providing content that solves the user's problem or provides them with information. Remember your site viewers use search engines to find information that is relevant for them. If it's a match, the search engine provides your listing in order of relevance. If you provide crap, your results will be crap (unless you really are providing crap).
Thing One point five - Take the time to answer Tom Shivers' questions. Why is SEO so important?
Two - Make sure your site operates correctly from a technical perspective. This includes being mobile friendly and being hosted on a reliable platform. Shared hosting can be OK, but be aware that overloaded servers can be slow and affect your site performance from both a speed and downtime perspective.
Three - Optimize your content. As others have mentioned, use the appropriate semantic tags on your content (H1, H2 etc) and on your images. A key part of optimizing content is optimizing your media assets. Images should be optimized for fast loading, as should audio and video content.
If you have done these things, you have optimized your site from a search perspective. Additional activities fall into marketing and should be considered as a part of your marketing activities (i.e. paid search, inclusion in directories, etc).
1. On Page Optimization: Title Tag, Meta Description, H tags, (skip keyword meta tag...it is NOT used for site ranking), Images; Images need ALT text and keyword based files names.
2. Use Keywords in the On-Page Optimization. Understand how your competition is or is not using these on their sites.
3. Canonical URL structure using keywords
4. Backlinks from high value websites; Facebook, LinkedIn, Social media posting.
5. Blog; weekly around important keywords. If you know the monthly search volume of each phrase, concentrate on those phrases with higher than average monthly searches in that month.
Hey Tony,
Here you go:
1. An extremely well written piece on over 260 ranking signals based on Google sources and patents: https://northcutt.com/wr/google-ranking-factors/
2. Google's Offcial Search Quality Guidelines for us humans: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//insidesearch/howsearchworks/assets/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf
3. Utilize real sources like the search engines themselves, and steer clear of those quick money "How To's" on SEO as they'll lead you into trouble with Penguins and Pandas. Like this one: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
4. Are you planning to provide SEO as a service? If not, go to #5.
5. If you are not planning to provide SEO as a professional service, then why are you doing DIY SEO? An unprofessional, DIY SEO project even on completion is still an unprofessional, DIY SEO project. You may find yourself back here asking, "I need to update my website. What are the top 5 SEO things I should do right now?" in a number of days/months Those top 5 today could be eliminated tomorrow by one algorithmic update or manual action. It is in your best interest to find someone that is in the know to assist you. A professional will have you too busy with clients to even think about any DIYing. How much money you think you are saving may not be as much as you'd be making when utilizing a professional with anything it is you do. When your check engine light comes on, do you plug your car's computer into a code reader then fix it yourself? Just something to ponder as you tackle this on your own.
BONUS: A look into the future...App Indexing (https://developers.google.com/app-indexing/?hl=en) with the not quite yet famous Accelerated Mobile Pages (https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/introducing-accelerated-mobile-pages.html). And our lovely AI, RankBrain: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-26/google-turning-its-lucrative-web-search-over-to-ai-machines.
Good luck!
Ben
1- On-page website optimization
2- Research "the right" quantified keywords and apply them to your website/blog
3-submit your website
4- List your company in reliable directories
5-Social media
1. Most important aspect is to make sure that your website is mobile friendly based on Google's new algorithm.
2. Make sure the website is social media friendly.
3. Unique content on the website which is keyword friendly and has video content.
4. On-page optimization
5. Continuously create backlinks from high ranking websites
Continuously morph the website based on Analytics.
* First do On page optimization like Title tag, Description and Keyword and H1 Tags
* Create Backlinks
* Brand profile creation
* Blog Creation
1. On-page optimization and complete meta data
2. Make sure your content is quality and relevant information
3. Use and optimize rich media
4. If you are a local business, set up local citations
5. Social media
If you do have a local brick and mortar store, check out the local search ranking factors at Moz https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors
If you have questions on how to implement, feel free to contact me.
I wish you success!
Chris
Simple content.
Carefully labeled images and videos.
Clearly worded information in the initial aspects of the post.