A lot has changed in the world of search engine optimization – and there’s a lot of SEO tips out there.
However, certain fundamental principles remain unchanged.
For example, targeting keywords with the sole intent of improving organic rankings no longer works with search engines but choosing the right keywords is still an important piece to the puzzle.
Beyond getting SEO juice, keywords reveal a lot more about users and what they’re struggling with.
With so many SEO techniques, it’s become almost impossible to determine which ones to stick to and which you can safely ignore.
Is link building a thing of the past? Should you devote your time and energy to on-page SEO? How can you write a title tag to drive your rankings with search engines? Where do SEO and social media intersect?
And, seriously, what are the truly best SEO tips that’ll lead to results?
Both B2B and B2C marketers want more search leads, because they result in 8.5X more clicks than paid search results.
Brian Dean did a fabulous job when he created a post showcasing 200 Google ranking factors. The post went on to become extremely popular and generated thousands of new leads from organic search for Brian.
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This article may not be as in-depth as Brian’s, nor will I be answering all of the questions raised above. Instead, I want to show you the 10 most important SEO tips you need to know to help your site rank right now.
If you focus on these techniques alone, you’ll definitely drive more organic traffic to your blog and improve your search rankings without risking a Google penalty.
Let’s get started:
1. Remove Anything that Slows Down Your Site
Page speed is a critical factor in SEO.
In the past, you could get away with a slow-loading site. I recall when I had to wait for about five minutes before a popular news site fully loaded.
I’m sure you can relate to that.
That’s never a good experience but it’s the kiss of death in today’s marketplace.
A slow page frustrates users and ultimately discourage people from buying your product.
Data from Strange Loop shows that a mere one-second delay in page load time can yield a whopping 7% loss in conversions.
In the mind of potential buyers, a slow site is an untrustworthy site. Period.
Page speed is vital to search engines, too. According to eConsultancy, “40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.”
As businesses become more aware of the opportunities to generate targeted leads and increase revenue through search engine optimization, there is a huge demand for speed.
10 years ago on April 9, 2010, Google included site speed as one of the all-important ranking factors.
This means that if your pages are slow, you’re fighting a losing battle for top organic listings, regardless of the quality of your content or your professional website design.
Get rid of non-essential elements that slow down your site. If you’re a WordPress user, consider deactivating plugins you don’t actually need.
Also, declutter your sidebar and put only essential widgets there.
To learn how to get more out of search engines by improving your page speed, visit Ubersuggest.
Step #1: Enter Your Domain and Click Search
Step #2: Click Site Audit in the Left Sidebar
Step #3: Scroll Down to Site Speed
This shows how quickly your site loads and how quickly key elements become available to users.
My desktop loading time is one second and my mobile loading time is two seconds. Both of these fall within the “excellent” range. As a general rule of thumb, if your site speed doesn’t score as “excellent”, you should make changes to improve it.
Review the advanced breakdown for additional guidance. For example, “speed index” shows how quickly the content of a page is visibly populated. If your website is lagging behind here, there’s a good chance visitors are leaving because they don’t want to wait for your content to load.
Every additional 0.5s it takes to load your site drastically increases the number of visitors that will leave your site. So, even an improvement of 0.5 seconds will increase traffic to your website.
2. Link to Other Websites with Relevant Content
Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger Media says:
Linking out to other blogs is critical to growth.
Some people think, linking out to relevant and authoritative content pages is bad because it takes people off your page.
But, I don’t think so. Link building remains a fundamental part of smart search engine optimization strategy. I link out to tons of high-quality sites and sources, including my direct competition.
Why? Because it helps you, my reader.
According to Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz,
Linking out sends trackable traffic, it makes your site a more valuable and scalable resource.
If you’ve been reading my blogs, you’ll notice that I regularly link out to different sites. Whenever I write a new post, I reference other trustworthy sites, where appropriate.
You can’t expect to get from others if you’re unwilling to give first. For example, if you’re looking to get inbound links from authoritative blogs, one of the easiest ways to do that is to show your willingness to link out to those blogs from your own content.
Of course, you should only link out to content pages that offer tremendous value. It’s a good SEO practice.
More important, you can notify an influencer when you link out to them, and, if your post is valuable, they can link back to you, share the post, or even email it to their huge email subscriber list.
Link building is also all about quality, not quantity. You’ll build more trust in your niche if you have a few authoritative links rather than a dozen poor quality links.
3. Write for Humans First, Search Engines Second
Lately, I’ve noticed that more and more bloggers and content creators are going back to the old method of SEO, where keywords meant to drive search results surpassed the real qualities of engaging, valuable content. If that’s you, it’s absolutely time to change your mindset.
Many people still aren’t capitalizing on long-tail keywords, preferring instead to attempt to manipulate search engines.
That’s the wrong approach.
Don’t prioritize search engines over the actual humans reading your work. Instead, write content for the user, people who have eyes to read and credit cards to purchase your product.
Search spiders are just scripts — they don’t buy products, they don’t engage with you on social media, and they won’t become a loyal customer.
Copyblogger is my #1 go-to site when it comes to putting readers first. No wonder Brian Clark is so successful at content marketing. He’s even turned Copyblogger into a multi-million dollar digital marketing company.
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