I have written a good deal about the SEO optimization methods that every website should use. On my website submission page I suggested a variety of techniques that can be beneficial to your site ranking.
These include:
- Keyword optimized page titles that are unique for each page with regional specificity
- Keyword optimized page descriptions (metatag) that is kept to two or three sentences
- The use of Heading tags for all titles within the pages
- Easily indexable navigation with keyword-rich titles
- ADA Accessibility tags for images and text links
- Primary services overview text on the home page that includes your targeted keywords
- Helpful resources and benefits to your visitors
- Linking to your social media pages
This blog post is not about those however since they should be familiar to most of you, especially if you’ve read my earlier SEO posts. I wanted to write today about the less common SEO methods that websites in competitive markets need to consider using. The first thing to understand is that the changes needed in SEO are mostly in response to the increase in the use of mobile devices to view web pages. Google judges a website, in part, on its ability to be indexed quickly, and a primary consideration is that the site be mobile friendly (responsive) which necessitates that it load quickly. If you utilize Google Analytics you may have noted the link under “Behavior” titled “Site Speed”. Within this area is the link to “Speed Suggestions” which will analyze your website and provide a grade for both desktop/laptop and mobile phone loading. This is good information, but it also lets us know that Google is judging a website on its ability to be easily viewed in mobile phones, which was not an SEO consideration in previous years.
To start I wanted to briefly cover some of the lesser known (or less often used) SEO optimization methods that will help a site rank better:
Incorporate YouTube Video in your pages:
If you have videos about your company, services, or products it is a good idea to embed these in your web pages. Let’s face it, people like to be entertained, and watching a video (especially a fun one) is a preferred option for many, and it can result in social sharing, which in turn can provide inbound links to your website. There are local and online businesses that provide reasonably affordable video production services; and at the very least you could create a slideshow of fun/informative images and add music, voice-over, etc. Popular videos uploaded to YouTube are often ranked highly in search results.
Note: Search engines rank websites based upon the number of visitors, repeat visits, number of pages visited, and duration of time on the pages.
Use Keywords in image file names:
I have written about this in the past, yet most of my clients provide me images, or upload their own images, with file names that have no SEO value. Always title a file name (image, pdf, etc) to clearly indicate what the content is about, and use dashes between words. Just remember that Google’s image search is one way a prospective visitor may find your website.
Use internal links to primary pages:
Most websites will have pages (services, products, etc) that you want your visitors to view and the search engines to fully index. A common practice in profession web design is to include links to the important pages on the home page, in sidebars, footers, etc. This helps to bring awareness to these pages for visitors, and since search engines follow links it will help ensure that these pages are well indexed. This is another common SEO suggestion, yet one many people don’t utilize.
Use social media to generate traffic to your website:
I have written about this before so I will keep this brief. Social media is best utilized when it is used to generate traffic to your website. Much like using a blog, the social media site needs to provide content that is useful and entertaining, … and where possible provide incentives (contests and promotions) that require the visitor to visit your website to fill out the form, click a link, etc. In short, the purpose of social media is to encourage visitors to share a link that will bring them to your website.
Ensure that there is ample text above the fold:
I write about this a lot (maybe you’re sick of reading about it?), but I wanted to touch upon this again since it is so important and often under-utilized. It is important to understand that the search engines will index the top part of the website more readily that content below. If you look at your web page in the 1024×768 resolution (the resolution most web pages are designed for) this will give you a good idea of what is being indexed, which for many sites isn’t much. It is important to ensure that you have identified what your website is about and that the most commonly queried keywords/phrases are included in this overview description.
Text overlay on slider images:
Most modern websites will include a image slideshow of some type. The better ones will allow for HTML text to overlay the image (which can be read by the search engines), or for text to be adjacent to the cycling images. Indexable content in the sliders is important since this text is high up on the page (above-the-fold) so more likely to be saved by a search engine bot.
Include content in top-level navigation links:
Many websites include a drop-down menu (sub-menu links). In many cases the top-level link is set not to function since you want your visitors to view the pages in the drop-down only. Instead of disabling the hyperlink (href=”#”) it is a better idea to use the top-level menu link page to includes the name of each link that follows, with a description, and the hyperlink to that specific page. In some WordPress layouts you can create this top-level page with text yet have it set to not display (my website has this in place).
Fix/remove broken links:
If you have a blog with many links, or you’ve moved your site to a new web host, you will likely find broken links. Broken links can hurt a site’s SEO value so of course these need to be fixed. If you have a WordPress site there are plugins that will check your links for you.
When writing blog posts include at least 1000 words and always check spelling and grammar:
Having ample text content is important since it conveys to the visitor that you are knowledgeable on the subject. And it is known that the search engines have a similar view as well, and rate pages with more content higher than those with less. As for spelling and grammar, well, there is nothing worse that going to a web page and seeing varied examples of poor spelling, grammar, and punctuation. The search engines feel that spelling and grammar matter as well and will ding your SEO rating if you do a poor job at proofing.
Encourage clients to write reviews:
I trust that you know the importance of review sites such as Yelp, Google+ Reviews, and Yahoo Local. Review sites can generate a lot of traffic, and for many industries prospective clients will check reviews before contacting them. My suggestion is to find a creative (non-obtrusive) way to encourage your clients to take the time to do this.
Consider a rating system in your blog posts:
Many people are familiar with product ratings, yet it is becoming popular to allow visitors to rate blog posts as well. Remember that social media is about engagement and allowing a visitor to leave a review is in essence asking their opinion (don’t we all love that?).
Include ‘Share-This” social links for blog posts:
Adding some form of social sharing is fundamental to having a blog. You have likely seen the “share this” icon at the bottom of blog posts that will link to all common social options. The other option is to just include social icon links to the popular social platforms that you feel best suite your content and industry (what we have done). There are plugins that can provide this type of functionality in WordPress.
Cross-link everything and don’t duplicate content:
It is important to remember that you need to cross-link everywhere possible. Your website should link to your blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Your blog should link to your website and social properties. And your social properties should link to each other, blog, and website. Also, remember that duplicated content is seen as spamming, so while it is a great idea to provide the same link on your blog, and social media pages, it is best if you write up something unique about each (don’t use an automated system to add your tweets to Facebook, etc).
Don’t over utilize plugins and scripts:
Not too long back JavaScript was replaced in large part by JQuery (compiled JavaScript libraries). The reason was to reduce the loading time of pages since the rendering speed is important (yep, people are impatient). Whether a site is static (no database) or dynamic (like WordPress) it includes a variety of scripts to provide the advanced functionality. One of the strengths of WordPress are its plugins, and while they can provide lots of great features, if you have too many of them you can expect a slow down. My suggestion, keep the plugins you want installed on WordPress just “deactivate” them. When you need them again, activate.
Okay, so as I noted above the search engines will rank a site in part on how fast it loads. And beyond the ranking boosts or loss, websites that take too long to load can lose mobile visitors, or desktop visitors on a slower connection. The following suggestions are ways to improve your website’s speed, and should be considered for websites with a large quantity of images, and ones that use lots of plugins. Most refer to CMS websites (such as WordPress), yet image optimization is important on static websites as well.
Optimize your database:
A database that is optimized will run faster, so retrieve content quicker. You can do this by removing spam and unapproved comments, cleaning up trash posts and comments, and by the removal of trackbacks and pingbacks, etc. There are a few good plugins that can automate this process.
Utilize browser caching:
A good caching plugin will tell your browser to load previously downloaded resources from your local disk rather than redownloading them. This can drastically increase the load time of a page. There are plugins that provide this functionality for WordPress, and this can be done for static website as well. You can learn more about this at: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/LeverageBrowserCaching
Reduce server response time:
There are many factors that can slow down the speed that a page is loaded.
You can read Google’s improvement recommendations at: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/Server
Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content:
Typically JavaScript and CSS is added within the head portion of a website’s source code which can force the server to load these scripts before the page. The recommendation is to use asynchronous scripts. You can learn more at:
https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/BlockingJS and https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/UseAsync
Optimize CSS Delivery:
CSS delivery goes back to the previous suggestion, which is to eliminate CSS that delays the time for the page to be displayed. You can learn more at: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/OptimizeCSSDelivery
Optimize Images:
I’ve talked a good deal about optimizing images, and while this can be done before upload by using a good graphic design program that optimizes for web at 72dpi, many images can still be reduced in size by properly formatting and compressing them (losslessly compressing). Learn more at: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/OptimizeImages
Minify JavaScript and CSS code:
Compacting JavaScript code can drastically speed up downloading, parsing, and execution time. Compacting CSS code will also speed up the server execution time. You can learn more at:
https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/MinifyResources
Minify HTML:
Compacting HTML code, including any inline JavaScript and CSS contained in it, is another good way to speed up download and parse time. You can learn more at: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/MinifyResources
Note: There are free resources online that will compact “minify” your code for you, … JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. For WordPress sites there are a few good plugins that will minify JavaScript and CSS. Since WordPress themes are templated they HTML can’t be minified though the better themes are coded carefully to prevent bloating.
Avoid Landing Page Redirects:
This is sometimes unavoidable with a mobile only (m.) version of a website, yet it is important to check the DNS settings to ensure that your site load doesn’t redirects unnecessarily. A common problem is a site where https://site.com is set as primary and then is redirected to https://www.site.com. You can learn more at: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/AvoidRedirects
Enable Compression:
Enabling Gzip compression will increase the load time of pages. You can learn more at: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/EnableCompression
Prioritize Visible Content:
In short, it is important to ensure that your page content does not take too long to load in the “above-the-fold” portion of your web pages. You can learn more at: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/PrioritizeVisibleContent
As a final note on SEO ideas, I came across this site recently and found it of value: https://backlinko.com/seo-techniques
If you have questions I am always glad to give free advice. Please feel free to leave a comment, email, or call me.
