Quick & Actionable SEO Tips Part 1

on Sunday 8 October 2017
Many SEO tactics just don’t work anymore. If you’re using outdated tactics, it’s time to rethink your approach to SEO.

1. Do not use “#” in URLs. Googlebot does not support index URLs with “#” listed.

2. With the new mobile-first index, use Google Search Console’s Fetch and Render tool to test how Google’s mobile search agent views your mobile pages vs. your desktop pages.

3. Do not use AJAX-Crawling scheme on new websites. Migrate any sites that are currently using AJAX-Crawling. Remember: remove “meta fragment.”

4. If you’re donating to charities and nonprofits for a backlink, this is against Google’s webmaster guidelines.

5. While your sitemaps are limited to 50,000 URLs per Sitemap, you now have the ability to have a compressed version of 50MB, compared to the previous 10 MB.

6. Google will show emojis in search results. Emojis can play a big role in local search. Just check out how you can search for a pizza place nearby using an emoji.

7. Content is king, backlinks are queen, and video may be the spawn of the two. Google integrates video into Google Maps listings. So, if you don’t have a video strategy, start developing one soon.

8. If you’re a brick-and-mortar store, utilize Google AdWords distance and store visit reports to optimize what geographic regions and user locations are driving the most in-store purchases.

9. When conducting keyword research, incorporate queries that are more relevant to voice search. Now that Google voice search is available in 30 new languages, it is available to more than 1 billion people worldwide. Voice search will continue to become more important with Google Answers and the mobile-first index.

10. Ever since Penguin is now real-time, it’s important to monitor your backlinks in Google Search Console (Search Traffic > Links to Your Site) and disavow them once a month.

11. To help prep for the mobile-first index, increase mobile search traffic, launch Google AMP or Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). Google will serve up your AMP pages or PWAs in the mobile-first index if you don’t have a mobile site, so you’ll want to make sure your primary content and links list on the AMP pages or PWAs.

12. Keep your link building white hat. If Google detects mass manipulation, it will devalue all of your links, not just the bad.

13. Many SEO marketers feel unlinked citations offer no value. However, Gary Illyes hinted in an interview that there might be a future in unlinked citations. So, any mention is a good mention.

14. Stop building a mass amount of links on directories. Stick with directories that are of higher quality (Yelp, Yellow Pages, Google+, etc.) and add relevance to your brand.

15. Stop using widget links as a link building tactic. If you’re going to use widgets, use them as a brand awareness strategy and UX experience.

16. Make sure you have a clear linking structure within your website. For example, if you’re counting on your footer links to drive your internal linking strategy, think again. Footer and header links do not hold a lot of weight. Therefore, internally linking within your body copy will allow Google to navigate your website better.

17. When migrating your site from HTTP to HTTPS, do not make any other changes to your website. Google is assuming that nothing else has changed on your website. If you change more than one thing, Google may have a hard time acknowledging all the changes.

18. Canonical tags do not save crawl budget. Search engines must also crawl the duplicates to determine they are, in fact, duplicates.

19. Keep site speed to 2-3 seconds for the user. You can use tools like WebPageTest to find your site speed.

20. Swap out your Twitter URL for Twitter Cards.

21. Same goes for Facebook; you want to add Open Graph markup to optimize how your posts are viewed on Facebook.

22. If you’re an e-commerce brand and you’re not using Instagram, now is the time to start. Based on Instagram’s early success with shopping features, they are starting to roll out to thousands of businesses that sell apparel, jewelry, or beauty products.

23. With Google Home, Amazon Echo, and more digital assistants rising, facts and local guides will become extremely beneficial for brands looking to land in the first result.

24. Google launched a trip planning feature in their Knowledge Graph so if you’re a local business or travel company, creating travel guides might work to your advantage.

25. Invest in customer service on Facebook. You can sell and purchase through Facebook Messenger. Everlane is an excellent example of a brand doing this well.

26. Test and experiment with LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn allows you to track conversions for how many users from your sponsored content and ads are converting.

27. Create “Shop the look” ads in Google AdWords to convert more mobile searchers.

28. Try creating a 360-degree video for Facebook. Now, you can live stream 360-video on Facebook.

29. Get featured in Google’s Search Live carousel results by having AMP pages, structured data markup, and an Atom XML feed. Then, complete this form.

30. Reddit is the ninth largest website in the U.S. This is somewhere you want your brand to be, and you can start by testing with their sponsored content ads.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Leave a Reply