SEO is one of the most powerful technologies to drive traffic to a website. The top search engine in the world is Google with over 3 billion searches occurring daily. There are other search engines such as Bing, Baidu, Yandex, YouTube, and more. However, Google is the most popular and considered the best. Search engines rank websites by various criteria which determines where a URL appears on a Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Why is this important? According to Optinmonster.com, a #1 ranking means that when people search for a particular term, your web page is the first result (apart from promoted results, featured snippets, and answer boxes). According to Moz, the first page of Google captures 71% of search traffic clicks. Consequently, it is vital and necessary in today’s digital landscape to have a site that is SEO optimized. There are SEO tools and technologies that I believe a business should allow professionals to handle. However, there are ’10 Things you Can Do’ yourself with little effort.
The following represents 10 ways you can better position your site’s rank:
1. Add a title for each page, description of the page, and add the last part of the URL (or slug) for each page of the Site. Go to the Website’s SEO settings to make these additions.
2. Add keywords relevant to your site and content and incorporate them into your meta tags. A more in depth understanding of key word search is critical to SEO success.
3. Ensure the site’s load time is no more than 1 to 2 seconds. There are many platforms available to determine a site’s load time. Tools.pingdom.com is an affordable resource that offers a free trial and additional SEO services for a monthly low payment.
4. Check to see if the site has a built-in content delivery network. Many sites have this included with the site. If not, inquire as to how this may be added to your site.
5. A reliable host is important to a site’s rank. Check with the site’s host to determine their uptime percentage. Ideally, a 99% rate is what is required for optimal ranking.
6. Make sure the site is secured. This is usually included with your site’s hosting service.
7. Optimize images for the site by using images that are between 1500 to 2500 pixels wide.
8. Minimize the number of plugins for your site. Some plugins improve the functionality of a site; however, to many will reduce the speed of a site, increase security breaches, cause site crashes, and poor performance.
9. Get a free Google My Business Account, to have your business listed in their online business directory to increase visibility on Google which also a crucial element of SEO.
10. Get a Google Ads Account to advertise on Google to increase traffic to your website.
SEO is really in control of ranking websites to determine if the content is preferably for its audience. It is, therefore, essential to have a better understanding of SEO as well invest into ensuring your site is SEO optimized. It is one of the top ways to increase your site’s digital performance.
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