The best place to find the latest SEO tips and tricks in 2017? The internet, of course! While it can be difficult to sift through all the conflicting information online, there are plenty of solid articles out there that will help you improve your search engine ranking (or at least give you some interesting material to read). Use these 10 SEO hacks to make your website appear in the top of any relevant Google search results.
1) Link Building
Link building is one of SEO’s oldest strategies, but it’s a good one that doesn’t get old. Link building requires you to create external links to your website, increasing its search visibility and overall authority in Google’s eyes. There are lots of ways to do link building—everything from submitting your site to directories to getting press coverage.
2) Optimising Meta Data
Meta tags and their keywords play a big role in search engine optimisation (SEO). Meta tags have to be short, but they should contain all of your key terms so search engines can effectively index them.
3) Optimising Keywords on Page Title, URL, Headings and Body
The meta data of your page plays a very important role in search engine optimisation. By including keywords in your page title, URL and heading tags you are making it easier for search engines to categorise your content and rank you based on relevance.
4) Choosing the Right Platform
If you are creating a website, your next step will be to choose a content management system (CMS). Search Engine Optimisation is simple enough with any of these systems: WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, and even Prestashop all offer some degree of flexibility. The choice really comes down to how your website looks and feels – there’s no real difference in their ability to boost your rankings.
5) Selecting the Correct Categories
When you’re creating an SEO-focused post or page, it’s important to select categories that will help your content show up in search engine results. Use general terms that searchers might use when looking for posts about your topic, as well as more specific terms that may be a bit more niche-focused. A mix of both is generally a good idea.
6) Creating Useful, Interesting and Informative Content
Producing useful, interesting and informative content is your number one job in terms of improving your search engine optimisation. It is all about creating quality content that entices people to link to it and share it. Focus on ensuring you offer something which doesn’t currently exist online or anywhere else on the internet. This will ensure you are offering a solution that others would want to link to.
7) Guest Posting on Relevant Sites
It’s a common misconception that guest posting is all about getting a link back to your website. While that can be part of it, it’s not just about getting backlinks—it’s about helping others as well, improving your audience’s knowledge and earning some love from other sites in your niche. The best way to win their respect? Leave insightful comments and participate in discussions on their blogs regularly.
8) Use Social Media to Promote Your Blog Posts
One of my favorite free tricks is to schedule all of your new posts on Facebook and Google+ in advance. If you schedule your posts, they will auto-publish at exactly 12 a.m., 6 p.m., and 1 a.m. every day — which means that you can instantly share your content with multiple groups of people who already follow you and are interested in what you have to say!
9) Create Awesome Images For Tweets or Instagram Posts
There’s no better way to attract visitors to your website than by posting awesome images for social media. These images need not be professionally shot—your smartphone will do just fine, and you can use simple editing tools like Canva or PicMonkey to make them even more appealing. The end result: more traffic (and hopefully sales) on your site. Try This!
10) Use Google Analytics to Keep Track of Search Queries, Bounce Rates, Time Spent On Page, etc.
Use Google Analytics to keep track of search queries, bounce rates, time spent on page, etc. With your data in hand, you can optimize page title tags and meta descriptions for every page on your site. This is critical for ranking highly in search engines as these elements are used by them when ranking pages from websites. You can also use schema markups to improve SERP listings that have reviews or contact info to ensure they show up higher in Google searches.
