While search engine optimization has been around since 1997, it’s never too late to adopt one or two of the best practices into your plan for the upcoming year. Below you’ll see some of the easy SEO tactics to try, the more technical or less thought of strategies to implement, and how to use Marketpath CMS to make your content the best it can be.
Disclaimer: Yes, I’m going to say write more content. That’s one of the best ways to improve page rankings. Start by adding 1 more blog post monthly. If your site features project galleries, case studies, or client testimonials, aim to add one per quarter. Just be sure to be realistic with your goal.
Be An Expert - Google values “Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T).” By creating new blog posts about your company, industry, or customers, you signal search engines that you and your company are experts, authoritative, and reliable.
Be Transparent - As part of E-A-T, Google also evaluates your site for transparency. The following items are listed as indicators Google uses. Start by performing a site audit and add anything that might be lacking to your plan.
Trim Zombie Pages - Backlinko’s phrasing really resonates here. As your website grows, you’ll begin to have outdated blog posts, pages, and old blog tags. Having a few of these pages is fine. More than a few? Get out your chainsaw and start recompiling your content. If you have pages that keep saying the same thing, make a category page or create one long blog posts. Don’t forget to add the redirects.
Online Videos - According to Cisco, online video will make up 80% of all online traffic by 2021. If your business lends itself to videos, which most businesses do, then take advantage of this trend. Start a YouTube channel, optimize your video for SEO, provide a transcript, and don’t forget to embed your video somewhere on your site. All-around, you’ll reap the benefits of search, especially since YouTube is the second largest search engine.
Featured Snippets - We all want to rank #1. To rank as a Featured Snippet, a.k.a. #0, you must first find opportunities and then format your content to like other snippets. Don't rule out targeting for List or Table snippets.
Meta Descriptions - Go through all your pages to ensure you have meta tags. A quick way to do this is through export and import. Here’s a short video to show you how.
Alt tags - with the rise of visual search, thanks to Google Lens and Pinterest, we cannot stress how important it is to make sure your image Alt tags are optimized. Optimization shouldn’t only be about keywords - these descriptions should be easy to understand. Screen readers read these words for the visually impaired. Here’s a video on how to see what images need to be updated and then how to update the images.
Planning is easy. Staying on track is hard. Create SMART goals to be successful with your best year for search engine optimization will be creating SMART goals. Check back every month - the first, the fifteenth, or the end of every month. Whatever works best for you.
Sources:
Backlinko: The Definitive Guide To SEO In 2020
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