Whether you are feeling confident, second-guessing yourself, or somewhere in between; you should always utilize the tools of SEO and Analytics to make your site great.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of ensuring your website or webpage ranks high in search visibility. There is no set method of making this happen. In fact, search engines change their algorithms on a regular basis. Therefore, the best practice is to keep your site up-to-date, accurate, valuable, honest and helpful. Staying true to yourself and your viewers will give you the best possibility of high search rankings in the end.
Also, be consistent and follow these tips for a better search ranking:
Use the right tags and pay extra attention to the Title Tag which should be placed in the head portion of your HTML.
Ensure accessibility.
Ensure security by using SSL.
Validate your code and keep it separate from your content. Some notable tools are Woorank, Hubspot Marketing Grader, UpCity SEO Report Card, W3C Code Validator, BuiltWith and Google trends. Make sure to track and validate it regularly.
Add features that allow sharing.
Post great content that includes text, videos and images and avoid duplicating content.
Post regularly: blogging is a great way to achieve this.
Identify and use keywords that are unique to what your site is about.
Understand how to share your content to where your audience is.
Engage with followers.
Share your content with social media. Using Facebook’s Open Graph and Twitter’s Twitter Cards you can specify key details of each page before it gets shared.
Bring people back to the site with fresh, relevant content.
Ensure your page is optimized and running smoothly to ensure the fastest page loading time. You can check speed through tools like Pingdom.
Utilize open multiple platforms and listen to feedback.
Stay updated on the latest in search and SEO.
If using WordPress consider using the Yoast SEO plugin and create a reusable import file once you have initially configured your settings.
If using WordPress consider using installing both AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP plugins. This will help restrict things on your website that slow it down for mobile. To view any website as an AMP page simply add “/amp” to the end of any URL.
DO NOT use dishonest Black Hat SEO tactics of naming your website something popular and filling it with unrelated content or hiding text in hopes a search engine will think it is more than it really is. These type of tactics will give you a bad reputation and potential banning and/or legal problems. Spam is another item you do not want to include in your website since most search engines penalize your ranking if you do.
To get a good idea of what works and what changes may be needed on your webpages, there are tools designed to track and analyze how users spend time on your website. One of the most widely used tools is Google Analytics. This free tool provides the following four main components:
Data Collection: collects data related to how users engage with your site through JavaScript code that you place on every page of your website. You can identify things such as device used, how long viewed, and source that referred to your site.
Configuration: makes it easier to configure your Google Analytics account to include things like one or multiple domains with subdomains, site search setup, 404 error page tracking, event tracking, setting up goals and tracking Facebook page and referrers.
Data Processing: Google will organize your information to categorize users by whether they are new or returning, how long they stayed, pages viewed and order viewed, applies configuration settings you preset and stores processed data in a database.
Reporting: this is where you are able to interact with all your data.
With all this free power, there is no reason to delay starting. It is as easy as going to https://www.google.com/analytics and setting up an account. Google offers wonderful support documentation to help you fine-tune settings for your needs. If Google Analytics is not for you, there are many other choices available.
I hope this blog encourages you to make your site even more amazing than it already is by utilizing the tools and tips I have outlined. In closing, I am providing links to helpful links related to SEO and Analytics. Have fun while finding the right tools for your needs.
