When most people think about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) they think about their keywords. Don’t get me wrong, keywords are a very important part of SEO but they’re not the only part. There are a lot of different factors that search engines look for when deciding where you rank.
But let’s start with the basics:
Are you properly using keywords?
Keywords aren’t magic words that make your site show up in search engines. There must be a strategy in place that makes your keywords, website, and search engines all work together for SEO to be successful. A common tactic many websites use is known as “keyword stuffing”. This is bad and does more harm than good to your SEO. Keyword stuffing is when you focus all of your writing around your keywords in an obvious manner. Here is an example:
Search engines will pick up on this and they will penalize your website for using unethical tactics. That being said, there are websites that do the exact opposite; they don’t use their keywords enough (or at all) for search engines to pick up on them. The goal is to find a happy medium.
But as we said, there is more to SEO than keywords. Here are six other things that affect your SEO.
Metadata
There are three parts to your metadata: description, title, and keywords. When results show up in a search engine, readers will see the meta description and title but not the keywords.
Metadata is important because it lets readers and search engines know what the web page is about. The meta description is 150 characters to summarize what is on the particular page. The meta title is 50 characters to get the reader’s attention. By making sure your metadata is filled out and correct, you’re enhancing your keywords and SEO.
Link Building
Link building consists of having backlinks to your site from trustworthy and authority sites. By having links on other reputable sites, your site will be noticed more and will become trusted by search engines. Additionally, it is important to have links on your site to outside trusted sources. The internet is all about building relationships so make sure to help the people who help you. You can also have internal links to other pages on your site as well as to other sites you own.
URL Use
The URLs of your site and all the pages within your site are very important. They need to be clean and understandable. They should not contain numbers, symbols, or random letters that are not a part of a word. This is seen as a red flag to search engines.
Social Media
If your company is not on social media, you’re making a huge internet marketing mistake and hurting your SEO. Having posted on social media sites, especially Google+, will help your page rank. Additionally, when people share your website’s content across social media, you’re boosting your SEO. The more your web content is shared, liked, commented on, and endorsed, the more trusted your site becomes.
Website Design
Is your site user-friendly? Is your site mobile-friendly? Are any of your pages broken? All of these things affect your SEO. If your site still uses Flash or JavaScript, it’s time for an update. HTML5 is much more user-friendly, loads faster, and the search engines like it. Additionally, poor design and broken pages make your site look unprofessional and search engines will react negatively.
Content Marketing
Content marketing will help everything from SEO to website performance to internet marketing. Content marketing is the core of it all. Quality content is what keeps readers and consumers coming back to your site and it is what is shared most across social media. If you do not use content marketing and don’t update your website regularly with new content, search engines will see nothing new when they crawl your site and nothing will change for you. Start a blog and publish on the same day every two weeks and you’ll start to see a difference.
There is no easy way to go about SEO. It takes hard work and making sure your website is in good standing across the web. Make sure to keep up with all SEO factors and not just your keywords. We know it’s a lot, that’s why we’re here to help! If you need help with SEO, web design, or social media, give us a call.
