6 Easy Things You Can Do to Improve Your Website SEO
6 Easy and Powerful Things You Can Implement Right Now to Improve Your SEO
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of optimizing your website’s content on-page and behind-the-scenes to make your website more visible to Search Engines. It’s accomplished by incorporating meaningful content with various parameters and technical guidelines that allow Search Engines to more easily interact with your content.
Google and other search engines continually update their algorithms and machine learning to assess whether your content answers users search queries and is easy to interact with. These algorithms try their best to imitate a human being, and then search engines rank your website’s pages according to a variety of factors, some public and others proprietary. The ranking is directly visible through the Search Engine Results Pages, or SERPs, so you can definitively see your rank. The ranking I speak of is the order that websites appear in Search Engine Results Pages.
The goal is to be the first result on a SERP for the keywords users type in to bring up those results.
Why Should I Care About Search Engine Optimization?
Sucessful Search Engine Optimization drives organic traffic to your website. First, lets define a few things:
Organic traffic - The traffic your website receives as a result of search engines, which does not include Paid Traffic or a Referral (from another website such as a link).
Paid Traffic - Paid Traffic is traffic that your website receives as a result of a paid advertisement.
Referral Traffic - This is the traffic that your website receives as a result of being linked to your page from another website.
Social Traffic - This is traffic to your website that originates from social media platforms, such as Twitter or Facebook.
E-mail Traffic - This is traffic to your website that originates from successful e-mail marketing and has been tagged as such, so Google Analytics (and other softwares) can pick it up as such.
Direct Traffic - Direct traffic is traffic to your website that does not originate form a search engine, website, social media or e-mail. In other words, it’s everything else (which is generally not very many places.
Bounce Rate - The percentage of users who visit your site that immediately leave without viewing any other pages on your website.
Pogo-Sticking - Users who visit your website from SERPs that then leave and click another link on that SERP. This would indicate that your website, perhaps, doesn’t answer the user’s query as well as other websites. The website that the user spends the most time on after having left a bunch of websites is the website that Google may give more credit to answering the query most accurately.
Let’s discuss these types of traffic to give you some context.
Paid traffic is a sure fire way to get people to your website. Google’s AdWords and Pay Per Click advertisements are examples of advertisements that would yield Paid Traffic. Organic traffic, on the other hand, is traffic from google users searching for information on their search engine.
Organic Traffic generally has a lower bounce rate then Paid Traffic. The reason for Organic Traffic having a lower bounce rate is because when users type something into a search engine, they generally have intent - whether that’s the intent to learn a piece of information, find a particular website, or are looking to buy something.
Paid Traffic, on the other hand, is sometimes accidentally clicked on. But even if it is intentionally clicked on, users are only being brought to the website due to the level of success (persuasiveness, for example) of an advertisement. If they’re already trying to be sold something, they will generally not be interested in the rest of your website unless they already had the intent to look at other products related to your brand or business.
Referral traffic is highly sought after for a number of reasons as well. Referral traffic generally comes in the form of links from other websites. These are great for your website for a couple of reasons.
Referral Traffic often has a lower bounce rate, giving you a chance to communicate more information to a viewer than, say, paid traffic.
When someone links to your website, they are conferring to users on their website that the information on your website is trustworthy and valuable. It tells Google that the website linked to has some degree of credibility and authority.
Social, e-mail and direct traffic have varying degrees of bounce rate and success, and depend largely on the industry of your business, non-profit or website.
So, now we know about the various types of traffic to your website.
Key Question: What does this have to do with my business, and Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization focuses on developing Organic Traffic to your website. Organic Traffic is all based on Keywords, and is highly sought after and is very competitive depending on the keyword. Since users type in keywords into search engines to produce answers to their questions, keywords that are searched more often are generally more competitive. There are two types of Keywords, Long-Tail Keywords and Short-Tail Keywords. Let’s define:
Short-Tail Keywords - These are keywords that users type into Google that generally are one to two words. Example include “Shoes” and “Coffee Shops”
Long-Tail Keywords - These are keywords that users type into Google that are generally more than two words. Examples include “Things to do in Dubrovnik” and “White running shoes for women”.
The reasons why you should care about Search Engine Optimization are plenty. They are listed below, in no order of importance.
At this point, you should assume all competitors are engaging in SEO. This means if you aren’t, then you’re slowly being pushed to the end of the search results.
The majority of Search Engine users do not go past the first page of the search results. If you aren’t on the first page, you’re missing out on a ton of organic traffic.
Google is the true front page of the internet (sorry Reddit). Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Google is the title page. Keywords are the chapters, and the SERPs are the sections. Websites are the actual content of the hypothetical newspaper/book. If the internet is an infrastructure, if you’re the first or second result on a highly searched keywords SERP, that’s akin to being on the first business on a busy street. It literally indicates importance, credibility and trust - If Google thinks you should be ranked first for “Contractors in New York City”, you’re instantly a reliable, trusted and credible Contractor in New York City.
It helps drive traffic which helps drives lead generation and, in turn, sales.
Google and Search Engines are getting smarter, incorporating more into their algorithms and its machine learning components, which gives more opportunities for you to help drive traffic to your website.
So, now we know why we should care about Search Engine Optimization. But here’s the thing. Search Engine Optimization is kind of hard. In fact, it’s so hard that SEO Specialists are now a profession and are highly sought after. Of course you can learn SEO on your own, but to really stay competitive and incorporate SEO best practices as comprehensively as possible, people are simply hiring folks to do it for them.
But, not everyone can afford a good SEO. In regards to hiring someone to do SEO for you, you have two options:
Freelancer - A freelancer is an individual who provides a (Digital) Marketing solutions, including SEO services, for clients. These SEO services range from SEO-incorporated Content, SEO-incorporated Copywriting, Blog SEO, SEO for an entire website, and SEO for individual landing pages.
Agency - An Agency is technically 2 or more people (although usually it’s 5 or more people) working together to provide (Digital) Marketing Solutions to clients, including SEO services, generally to larger businesses. The SEO services are the same as Freelancers.
The main difference between Freelancers and Agencies is that Freelancers generally serve smaller to medium-sized businesses, and Agencies serve medium to large-sized businesses. There are other nuances and differences between freelancers and agencies including the degree of a personalized solution, scope of projects contracted, and price.
Freelancers generally are cheaper, offer am a more personalized solution, and take projects of smaller to medium scope. Agencies are usually more expensive, offer a more standardized streamlined process, and take up projects of a larger scope. It’s important to note that regarding SEO, unless you're Amazon (which you aren’t), or somehow have a huge degree of landing pages (likely product pages), the scope of an SEO project generally won’t be too large for an individual to handle.
For SEO specifically, it’s often advantageous to hire a freelancer unless you are looking for more services then just SEO. For example, regarding a content creation solution or blogging project, the scope can suddenly have a much larger potential and thus it can make more sense to hire an agency to complete the project. Most websites, especially associated with smaller to medium-sized businesses, don’t have a ton of landing pages. However, if you’re looking for a strong reputation and have the budget, it can often be a good idea to use an agency - it just depends on a variety of factors.
So let’s assume, for the sake of this article, that you’re not hiring out and you’re looking to just do what you can with SEO as you grow your business. Maybe you’re a small business, a start-up or just starting to hire people (making the transition to a medium-sized business) and you don’t have the budget to hire someone.
These tips can help you instantly boost your SEO-profile. I hope these prove to be useful to you as you.
However, before we move onto the tips I want to make a quick note about Content Management Systems.
Content Management Systems
It is quite likely that you use a Content Management System for your website.
Content Management Systems, or CMSs, are platforms that help manage and modify digital content. Content Management Systems offer varying degrees of user-friendly interfaces to build websites. They also manage the backend management, varying from indexing to programming and database management.
All Content Management Systems offer some degree of automated SEO, with the ability to customize and manually optimize your website for search engines. There is actually a pretty large difference between the SEO capacities of CMSs. I use the word capacities deliberately: some CMSs literally don’t let you do things that are very important to SEO. Some CMSs let you go farther with your SEO efforts than others. Below is a small summary about the capacities of 4 of the most popular Content Management Systems: WordPress, SquareSpace, WIX and Weebly.
WordPress: WordPress is THE BEST CMS for SEO. There is zero debate about this within the SEO world - they simply have the highest ability to customize for SEO. In fact you can do virtually everything with WordPress. Conveniently, however, WordPress is also the hardest of the main four Content Management Systems to use. If you’re using WordPress, one of two things will need to happen before you’re incorporating best practices of SEO. Either you’re going to need to commit a lot of time to learn about SEO and WordPress, or you’re going to hire someone to do it. I recommend the latter, if possible, in regards to WordPress. But if you have a lot of time, you can learn WordPress - it just calls for a lot of time.
SquareSpace: SquareSpace is average for SEO. While you can easily manipulate basic things such as meta data, the content the SERP displays for your website, alt text - all things I’ll get into with this article - there are obvious short comings. For some bizarre reason you can’t go past H3 for heading tags, which limits the degree of organizational sophistication of blogposts and landing pages. This is likely due to their uniquely beautiful designs - they probably don’t want any of their pages to get too messy. However, what this means is there are basically only three layers of organization to your webpage’s diction and images (aka: content). It’s also quite difficult to edit things such as nofollow/dofollow tags for links, and other elements. SquareSpace also lacks a integrated guide to SEO - so you sort of have to figure out what to do on your own.
WIX: Wix is a little above average for Content Management Systems. One good thing about WIX is that there is an SEO Wizard which basically helps you incorporate basic SEO things into your website. This means, while it’s overall SEO capacity isn’t much better than SquareSpace, you can some good things just by following the wizard. But an example of something weird that you may miss if you did not know is that WIX changes the file names of all pictures, and this can be an important part of on-page SEO. Further, WIX’s blog SEO isn’t too great. On a positive note, it’s likely that they will be improving, as they have been improving significantly over the past couple of years in regards to their SEO capacity.
Weebly: Weebly is also slightly above average in regards to their SEO. Specifically, an issue I have with Weebly is their blog SEO is awful. In fact, Weebly just isn’t a good blog CMS to begin with. Also, Weebly also restricts the number of heading tags you can use, meaning that like SquareSpace, you can’t incorporate the often needed level of on-page content organization you can with WIX or WordPress. However, with Weebly, you can download a plug-in that lets you go further, but if you’re using Weebly because it is the easiest Content Management System to use, then you’ll likely have some complications with this - as such, it is a silly element of Weebly. Weebly also has some other benefits such as an App store. (SquareSpace is the only one of these 4 that does not have an app store)
As you can see, there are positives and negatives for each. In my tips for SEO, I will address these and what you can do to overcome them (if possible).
If you’ve made it this far, you now know what SEO is, why you should care, and some very basic differences between CMSs in regards to SEO.
For more help on CMSs, check out my blog post about Picking a Content Management System.
Without further ado, 6 Easy Things You Can Do to Improve Your Website SEO.
6 Easy Things You Can Do to Improve Your Website SEO
Tip #1: Keywords
Keywords Typed Into Google
Keywords are one of the foundations that SEO is built off of, and you have probably heard about keywords. I mentioned them briefly in the introduction sections, but there are a variety of ways you need to treat keywords in the crafting of web pages and blog posts. Keywords are the words that we (should) build webpages around that, ideally, are the words that users type into Google and other Search Engines.
For example, if you’re typing in “funny cat videos”, this is the keyword that
Someone searching for a web page full of funny cat videos would be typing in.
Someone who makes a webpage full of funny cat videos should try and target to get the above user to their website.
I think one of the main mistakes people who are not very focused on SEO are making is that people are not starting with a keyword and creating a website. They are doing the exact opposite. While those intentions might be honorable, people who are finding a keyword and then proceed to creating content or landing pages around it are going to be much more precise and on top of their SEO.
It can be hard to do this, but I hope my rationale makes sense as to why you should be taking a keyword and creating a website, instead of writing something and then editing it to try and target a keyword:
There are some Bingers, Yahoo! people, but the majority of us use Google. Why do we create a website? We create a website because we want to convey information to someone, whether that’s informative, encouraging a transaction, or guiding someone somewhere else on the internet. That’s all fine and good, but we need to think more about the platform of the internet, and the relevant players. As I mentioned, everyone uses Google. So then those are the rules you should abide by - the rules they create. Google is a service too, so they are trying to satisfy people also. That is why they have this crazy algorithm and are constantly updating their service, and throw all this money into their product. They want to “Organize the world’s information and make it universally successful and useful”. So if the major way people can learn anything, or find information on the internet is Google, and the only way to search on Google is with Keywords - Google takes these keywords and tries to optimize their product around it. So, to help Google, we need to create websites based on Keywords, so google can easily find them and provide them to users. Google wants your page to be useful - and they know the user experience better than anyone. Trust Google, and use keywords to create your webpages, so Google can provide your content to users looking for answers to specific questions.
If you do this one thing, you’ll already increase the SEO of your pages significantly. But you may ask how do I figure out what keywords to target?
Enter Keyword Research.
There are a variety of tools online that you can use to find this out. Basically, the ideal keyword is one that people type in at high volume, and as few as possible websites try and provide information for it.
But that keyword basically doesn’t exist.
The compromise then is to target more specific keywords with less volume until you get the level of traffic on your website that allows you to start targeting more competitive keywords.
So how can you have access to this information?
Well, a lot of people make you pay for this information, but if you use a combination of free third-party tools, you can find out most of the information. Below is a short list of good keyword tools that are (basically) free (but there are a ton of them out there) :
Keywords Everywhere - This is Google Chrome plug-in that basically tells you the search volume per month, and the Cost Per Click data for advertising. The Cost Per Click can be sort-of interpreted as the level of competition for a keyword, although it is not the exact statistic.
Kwfinder.com - This is a pretty comprehensive tool that tells you all the information you would need to make an informed decision about picking a keyword. However, Kwfinder only gives you a few free searches.
Answerthepublic.com - Answer The Public is a tool that gives you alternative keywords that people type into search engines by gathering all the suggested searches from across search engines for given keywords. It also organizes them in a easy way to interpret.
When you are creating content with keywords it is important to understand how to incorporate them and how not to.
Another really important thing to understand with Keywords is Intent. Think about the difference between short-tail keywords and long-tail keywords.
If you type in “shoes”, what do you think people are trying to find out from their search query? Believe it or not, Google doesn’t even know. No one does, becuase there is no intent that can be extrapolated from that word. That’s why google provides a broad range of results. For Google, anther safe result for them to provide is Wikipedia, as Wikipedia basically gives you the entire background on, well… anything.
Now what if we typed in "Green women’s running shoes”. Now suddenly we know that they are looking for a very specific type of shoe. Furthermore, we know that they are likely looking to buy some or research prices on shoes, which means Google should show you people selling shoes, and focus their SERP on sellers of shoes.
Now, “Shoes” will have a much larger search volume. If you rank #1 on shoes, good for you. But when people come visit your website, there is a variety of intent of the visitors so you will likely get visitors who don’t need your website and leave it pretty quickly. Because of this, it isn’t actually as valuable to rank for as you may think. Still it’s valuable. For example, if Nike came up, that would be awesome for them because of the power of their brand. Surprisingly, at least to me, Zappos comes up. But since they’re an online platform to begin with, it makes sense that they’ve been working on this for some time.
For “Green women’s running shoes”, the people who typed that in have intent that Google can picks up on, so your website visitors will be more “organic”, hence the term organic traffic. However, it will have a lower search volume. But it’s still be better to get meaningful search volume. Quality over quantity here friends!
Always think about intent when creating content for your webpage based on keywords, as well as doing keyword research.
Lastly, a very important thing some newcomers to SEO ask is: Does a website target a keyword or a webpage?
The answer is that a keyword is specific to a webpage. You are optimizing webpages. Each webpage should have an overarching keyword that you target, and then have some ancillary keywords.
Incorporating Keywords in Content
When you are creating your content, the most important piece of advice one can receive is to make sure you use keywords in your content naturally. Back when Google’s algorithm wasn’t as developed, website creators would create these websites that you probably remember (at least I do). The content on the pages went something like this
Title of Webpage: Hilarious funny cat videos, funny cats, cats doing funny things, hysterical cat videos, Funny Felines
Beginning of Content: For your funny cat videos, look at funny cat videos about cats being funny doing funny things cause their funny cats.
… You get the point.
But now-a-days, you literally will not get away with this.
You’ll get penalized, and you don’t want to get penalized by everyone’s favorite search engine, or any other for that matter. Google updated their algorithm a long time ago (in internet years!) to take away these annoying pages, and force people who were trying to game the system to actually create meaningful content. You’ll notice as time goes on, Google gets better at answering our questions.
Google’s algorithm is so powerful these days it knows what content is authentic and what is just trying to beat the system.
The Point?
Actually create good content and insert your keyword meaningfully so it actually makes sense. In fact, these 6 things you can do to improve your website SEO I’ve written this entire article about help you do this exact thing, to help you create more meaningful content that is natural.
… But did you see what I did there?
I was able to use almost my entire keyword in my text, meaningfully, which is good for you, good for me, and good for google. That is the approach you want to take when you’re targeting a keyword and creating content based on it.
Much of the content in the remaining 5 tips below will discuss ways to incorporate your keywords into specific parts of the web page, as well as some other key SEO improvements you can make.
Tip # 2: Heading Tags
Heading Tags H1 to H6
Heading Tags are tags that tell Search Engines what the block of text below it is going to be about.
Think of it as a half-sentence summary about the content directly below it.
When you create a document offline, such as in Microsoft Word, you actually use these already. Think back to college or high school when you organize your essays - same concept, only this is for your content online.
Now, I am going to introduce a concept in search engine programming that is a little technical but, you don’t need to completely understand it.
Basically, Google sends out bots we’ll called ‘spiders’ that crawl the web, consuming content and ‘indexing’ it in Google’s servers.
What this means is that these bots scan your page’s content, send it back to Google, and then Google uses this information to help decide the page’s rank in the SERPs. While this is oversimplified, what it means is that the clearer a page’s organization the better. We use Heading Tags to do this.
Heading Tags help these bots scan your page and absorb content. These bots try to imitate the online behavior of humans - if your content is messy and hard to read, the bots will also have a hard time reading it.
In all Content Management Systems, users can insert Heading Tags. In your CMS you can insert “H1” or “H2” all the way to “H6” (noting that SquareSpace and Weebly don’t go all the way to H6). These are the tags that the spider bots will use to tell what’s described in the block of text under it. While they also read the block of text to some unknown degree, these Heading Tags are very important.
Tips for Heading Tags
Use easy to understand language in all Heading Tags.
Your H1 tag should be the title of your webpage - and should also include your keywords. This tells google, “oh, this page is about ‘Things you can do to improve your SEO’ ”, because it’s used in the H1, Title, and the Keywords that appear on the page multiple times (naturally).
Don’t overuse Heading Tags, use them sensibly as an organizational tool. Use them to enhance the user experience on a specific web page - if it doesn’t seek to clarify or organize the layout or content on your page, then don’t use it.
Use words that are descriptive and meaningful, and do not make your headings too long.
SquareSpace users - if you intend on sticking with SquareSpace, get used to making pages with three layers of organizational depth. Your H1 should introduce the page, your H2 should be each sub-topic on your page, and your H3 should be a topic that supports the purpose of the block of text under your H2. The H3 topic should be a succinct piece of information that is related to your H2 sub-topic but deserves enough text. Unfortunately, it is not possible to go deeper then that with SquareSpace.
Weebly Users - If you don’t download the H+ Tag app, you cannot go to H6. I think it is silly that Weebly does this, however, here is the explanation on how to do add the H+ app.
Implementing good Heading Tag SEO is a great thing you can do to telling google that your page has exceptional user experience. Human beings like when information is organized. You may be tempted to write more “good stuff”, but people actually like reading less deep information that is organized well as opposed to super complex information that has terrible organization. It’s just how we learn.
Tip #3: Meta Title & Meta Description
Meta Titles & Meta Descriptions are very important elements of SEO.
When you search a keyword in a search engine and you see this:
The “50 Things to Eat in San Francsico - Spoon University” is the Meta Title.
The description “As a San Francisco native, I (along with all those who helped me compile this list) know the ins and outs of finding good, relatively cheap food in the City by the…” represents the Meta Description.
As you can see, these are two very visible elements for any web page you create and are the very first interaction a potential user will have with your content. This content must be carefully thought-out and incorporate certain elements.
The main element of both your Meta Title and Meta Description is your Keyword. Your target keyword for that page must be in the Meta Title, and in the beginning of the Meta Description.
In this example, the keywords are in the Meta Title, but not in the meta description.
All Content Management Systems allow you to manipulate the Meta Title and Meta Description for each page on your website, including blog posts.
In SquareSpace, for example, you can edit the Meta Title and Meta Description by clicking “Options” during a blog post, and clicking “SEO” under regular landing page editing. It shows an image of it as you are editing it so you are able to see what it will look like as it would appear on the SERPs.
In WordPress, various Plug-Ins such as Yoast and RankMath, there are intuitive ways to edit this information. WordPress allows you to do far more than just this, as many of these Plug-Ins walk you through your blog posts or landing pages in an intuitive guide to optimize the web page. Beyond that, in WordPress, there are additional things users can do if they are familiar with HTML, CSS, etc., however this depends on the Website Template/Theme being used.
In WIX, there is a convenient SEO wizard that allows you to edit some key pieces of information such as the Meta Title and Meta Data. It walks you through all the things you need. It is also easy to find.
In regards to Meta Titles, there are a few things (this goes for the keywords being targeted as well) that you can do to help improve your click-through-rate.
Click-Through-Rate - The number of clicks you get per people who are able to see the link. More technically it is number of clicks per impressions (impressions are the number of people who could have clicked on a link).
To increase your Click-Through-Rate, some key elements can be included:
Use numbers. For example, “6 Easy Things You Can Do to Improve Your Website SEO” generates more clicks than “Things You Can Do to Improve Your Website SEO”
Adjectives. For example, “5 Exciting Attractions in Porto, Portugal” is better than “5 Attractions in Porto, Portugal”. Consumer Behavior tells us these adjectives can help drive traffic to your website because it when people hear or read the word easy it instantaneously and momentarily makes them feel better, and it becomes associated with your article.
Most CMSs will tell you as you edit the information but there are character limits for all Meta information. Your Meta Title should be 50-60 characters. Your Meta Description should be 150-160 characters. Aim to be in this range, to provide maximum value and information without risking being cut off. You don’t want your title to be cut off mid sente…. -> it looks bad.
Tip #4: SEO for Images
When a search engine crawls your website, it knows images are there. However, it is not able to view the image like you and I are.
While these spider bots are created and tasked with crawling the web imitating the online behavior of human beings, they haven’t incorporated any actual visual perception. As a result, there is this attribute called Alternative Text, or Alt Text for short. Let’s Define:
Alt Text - An HTML attribute that specifies a text that should be displayed when the original piece of content cannot be displayed. This is most commonly associated with Images.
Sounds complicated. But not really.
If you load a web page, and an image isn’t able to load, instead you’ll see a little icon that represents a broken image. Under that image, you’ll see the Alt Text (“Kanye Laughing”). Google’s Search Engine spider bots use this alternative text to help tell it what can be found in the image contents.
So for example, if you have an image of a pig flying over a traffic light, the Alt Text may read “Pig flying over a traffic light downtown”.
However, say you have an entire article about pigs being able to fly. Maybe the article is titled, “Amazing Discovery Shows Pigs Can Fly”. And you have multiple pictures of pigs flying. It is very important to try and include the main keyword the web page is targeting, and incorporating that into the Alt Text. Don’t do it for every image, or Google will be like “… wait a second”.
The Alt Text should talk about what is in the image. But perhaps you have an image of a pig flying in a lab as scientists watch. Then, the Alt Text “Scientists in Awe At Amazing Discovery Showing pigs can fly”. Magic right? But naturally being able to include your keyword in webpages is actually not as hard as it looks.
It’s important to try to align as many elements of your web page with the keyword you’re targeting. In some instances this may be easier than others - sometimes it just won’t work grammatically, or none of your photos can have such a description attributed to it.
Try and include as much as your keyword as possible, but if that is not even possible you should default to describing exactly what is in the image.
There have been tests over the years as Google has developed its algorithm further, as to the number of words that can be used in Alt Text. Specifically, SEOs were trying to discover how many words are used by Google to figure out what is in an image. Well, it appears that the number of words (with no character limits) is around 16 words.
But as with anything SEO, try to keep it as succinct as possible.
For example, in the image placed in my Meta Description and Meta Title section above, the Alt Text I used is “Meta Title and Meta Descriptions are easy things you can do to improve your website SEO” - it describes the image, and uses the keyword I've used in this blog post in the alt text. I won’t be able to do that for each image here though, for others, such as the featured image. I simply write “SEO increases your website traffic”.
As I mentioned in the Keyword section, it’s important to include it naturally, and not any other way. If it doesn’t make sense, seems awkward or forced, DO NOT include the keyword there.
If you do your keyword research well, and are really able to answer the question that people have when they type in words, you’ll be able to incorporate the word naturally at key areas that seem almost serendipitous - like wow, that just worked.
With images, there are more pieces of information that you can include per image that you should absolutely include, besides Alt Text. Alt Text is the most important, but definitely be sure to include a title for the image.
Be sure that the title isn’t like “img4232.png”, and is something that’s at least basically descriptive. Something like “pig flying” works.
Also be sure to include a caption, which describes the image.
But try not to be robotic and copy the title and description and all the elements I've mentioned here in this section. Maybe put something like “Pig flying over stoplight in NYC” or you can even get creative “pig flying… yes flying”. Google pays attention to all of this stuff, but it puts much more stock in the Alt Text.
Some CMSs will let you put a description. Put something here as well, and be sure that none of these texts for the image have the same exact words. It will show that each are more meaningful if they are different. Under very few circumstances does Google like copying information.
Tip #5: Linking
Having links in your blog post or website is crucial.
It tells Google many things, and is an important element of Google and Search Engines determining your page rank. But there are different types of links. Let’s define them:
Internal Link - This is a link that links from one page in your main domain to another page in your main domain. For example any link you’ve seen so far in this blog post that links to another page on my website is an internal link.
External Link - This is a link that links from one domain to another domain. For example, if I linked to the BMW’s website, that would be an external link.
Backlink - This is an external link on someone else’s webpage that links to your page. These are extremely powerful, as they tell Google that this website’s content is credible and trustworthy. If someone is willingly linking to your website, they’re incorporating your content into their content (via a link) and tells Google that your content has authority.
DoFollow Link - These are any type of link that tells Search Engine bots to follow the links direction and crawl the content on the other end of the link. For example if a DoFollowlink goes from my page to your page, I am telling Google to index the fact that I am linking from my page to your page. This means that it helps your page with its SEO, and specifically page authority. Links default to this style, unless noted otherwise in the HTML.
NoFollow LInk - These are basically the opposite of DoFollow links. In the same example in the previous definition, if I link to your page but make it a NoFollow link, I am telling Google not to jump from your page to my page and crawl your page. This means that it does not help your SEO and Page Authority. You would maybe do this, for example, for a competitor.
While you cannot control the DoFollow and NoFollow of other websites, or rather you really shouldn't (because Google doesn’t like this), you can control your internal linking and external linking.
Also, you can cultivate relationships with fellow bloggers or businesses that are mutually beneficial. When you do this, you can do things like guest posts, or collaborations where you will gain links on their page to your page. Be careful with this, however. It should be something legit, and not “hey dude, wanna like link to each others websites repeatedly?” It’s 2019 and Google is much smarter than that. Doing this naturally will increase your backlink profile. Not doing it naturally will not bode so well for you.
Increasing your backlink profile is hard, and it takes a lot of time to develop.
But some immediate linking you can do are developing internal and external links.
Consider external links the websites you “hang out with” and internal links as displaying the comprehensiveness of your own content.
On every webpage, you should try and include internal links, but this holds especially true for blog posts. ALWAYS internally link to other blog posts as it helps for a variety of reasons. These reasons include actually providing valuable and complimentary content to your current pages content, increasing your SEO, and it enhances the user experience because when you link in the middle of content to other content it is extremely convenient for the user.
Also be sure to show Google you hang out with websites of high authority. This is because this gives Google the association of “oh, Colinhj.com keeps linking to Moz, he must know a thing about SEO and be in the industry” - this ends up helping me.
Don't overdo it though. Keep the links meaningful.
Some of the CMSs allow you to edit whether a link is DoFollow or NoFollow. Well, let me rephrase that - all of them do. But some of them are far more difficult to implement than others. Basically, for SquareSpace, Wix and Weebly, you have to insert the code.
While the code is pretty easy to understand (and if you follow the directions exactly it works) but, it is likely that you aren’t comfortable with doing this - especially if you really don't understand HTML and Coding. For these reasons, WordPress is really useful for this because WordPress has Plug-Ins that can edit this for you.
Paradoxically, this is the only element really that is intuitive for WordPress for folks who aren’t quite comfortable with doing technical internet related things. So I suppose it’s sort of not useful that it’s easy to add the NoFollow attribute to links on WordPress.
Note that all links by default are DoFollow links, unless you specify that links should be NoFollow.
Do not make all inks NoFollow though, Google doesn’t like that as it used to be part of a method of Gaming Google, and you never want to Game Google. That being said, there are Plug-Ins on WordPress, for example, that make all your links NoFollow, so theoretically you could have all your links be NoFollow on accident.
It should be pretty clear though if you search your SEO Plug-In of choice, whether that is the case as that is a red flag that Plug-Ins will notice.
For reference, the code for creating a NoFollow link is this:
<a href=”http://www.google.com” rel=”nofollow”>
On SquareSpace, Weebly, and Wix you can enter in a block that allows you to put Short code. If you do this, and copy and paste the above code and put NOTHING ELSE, it will show up as a link to google with the attribute of NoFollow.
It is good to have a mix of DoFollow and NoFollow links.
Let’s say that you're super successful and have a great product or website that has generated meaningful traffic even though you have not really focused on SEO.
Good for you.
Now lets say you were creating a blog post about Pigs that Fly, and some kid who is a science wiz talks about the technical physics behind how this is possible on his website. Maybe the kid’s website sort of sucks cause he made it for a 4th grade science project, and you don’t want Google to be like “Hey, looks like you hang out with people with bad websites”. But you want to offer your users the benefit of the knowledge the kid is providing.
Well poor kid, he should increase his SEO efforts. But you can still help your website users by directing them to that information, but not tell Google that you’re associated with it. More specifically, Google won’t associate the link between your website for the main ranking purposes.
And note, the kid’s website will still benefit from a higher degree of users on his website. He just won’t benefit from someone backlinking to his website, and someone specifically of great success.
Developing a comprehensive linking profile for each webpage is an extremely beneficial thing you can do to for SEO.
Definitely start with internal and external links. Separately, start finding people in your industry to create relationships with, and then you’ll be able to eventually build your backlink profile. This will give you a pretty good SEO boost once that comes.
Make sure you have a mix of DoFollow and NoFollow links on your web page. Definitely do as much research as you can about how to implement this if you aren’t using WordPress.
I recommend creating a web page that you don’t make public on your website and practice adding it, and making sure that it shows up correctly when you view a “preview” of the web page.
Okay, onwards to the next, and last, tip.
Tip #6 Your URL
Believe it or not, there are things you can do to your URL that will help with SEO. Specifically, they’ll help with user experience, telling Google what your website is about.
Case in point: Consider the URL. www.colinhj.com/fsdafk65-jklas=?wj3k/. What is that? No one knows.
But you’ll see websites that use this kind of URL sometimes. It’s not good.
The reasons there are websites like this sometimes is because most URLs are auto generated. But now, CMSs try and tame URLs so they make more sense.
Additionally, URLs can be further edited to your desire on all CMSs.
Consider this: www.colinhj.com/marketing-blog/easy-things-you-can-do-to-improve-seo/.
While this URL is still a bit on the long side, it tells both Google and Users what the website is about. In fact, it actually contains the majority of my keyword I am using and developing this blog’s content about.
So it is imperative that you do the following things to your URL:
Make sure you include most or some of the keyword in the URL. At least allude to it
Make sure you separate parts of your URL with dashes “-” and nothing else. It’s easy on the eyes since your eyes literally follow the dashes. With CMSs, the “/” slashes will be incorporated automatically where they normally are, and they don't impede on the readability of the URL.
Make sure it’s not too long. My example is a little on the long side, but its not too long. You definitely
No crazy numbers, random letters or any calculus equations in your URL (i.e. www.example.com/4x+3^2jklsjkl;jk=asd;lkj332k) it just is not good.
This is a powerful set of things you can do that will help with your SEO effort in general.
The Final Word
Well you made it this far. You now know 6 things you can do to Improve your Website SEO.
But believe me when I tell you this is the tip of the iceberg. If you don’t have the budget to hire someone to do your SEO, this will at least help you stay competitive.
If you intend on learning SEO yourself, there are so many resources online, including this blog. My blog will focus on SEO tips moving forward. I hope you'll stay tuned.
But my blog aside, the number of resources is enormous and if you truly are ready to take on SEO, I suggest you learn a little bit about HTML, The Internet, and Search Engines as well as this will help you contextualize everything you learn about SEO.
The other thing about SEO is that algorithms are constantly changing, literally to tiny degrees every single day. Sometimes they release much larger scale changes, while other days its just tightening the nuts and screws. So be sure to keep track of SEO trends in your online journey.
If you are looking to hire a freelancer, I invite you to my SEO Services Page where you can get an idea of what SEO freelancers offer. Google, of course, is also a great resource. Lastly, try Upwork for freelancers and some agencies that will charge you decent prices.
Thanks for reading.
SEO