Optimizing your website for search engines can be the single most important thing to do after writing quality content.
It can form the backbone of your content that keeps the website rigid.
But the importance of SEO ends there! People and companies spend a lot
of time, effort and money on SEO. Some ever over-optimize
their website. Well, if there's one rule to SEO, it's this; if it's not
right, it's wrong. Few people realize that proper SEO can be so simple
as to be learnt in under 10 minutes. They spend hours and days
researching. If only they looked in the right place fro the start!
Google recently uploaded some videos teaching some basics of SEO.
And yesterday, the added another one to their quick guides, summing up
everything you need to know about SEO in under 10 minutes.
This
information applies to small websites that have like less than 50 pages
or so. Larger sites can benefit too. But websites like news agencies
or eCommerce website might need to spend more time and effort, probably
some money as well into SEO, because optimizing a website with thousands
of pages and even more keywords might be a daunting task.
1. Use Webmaster Tools and their email forwarding
The first thing to do, if you haven't already done so, is to verify your site ownership with Google Webmaster Tools.
It is a very useful service, or rather a group of services. Google
Webmaster Tools provide you a lot of features. One very useful one is
email forwarding. If you enable it, Google will send you emails
informing you of any problems it found on your site, such as site
inaccessibility, malicious content, malware (virus), crawl errors, and a
large number of 404s (not found errors, or broken links). Having this
kind of information can be extremely useful, so that you can
troubleshoot and correct any errors that might harm your website's
reputation.
2. Run background checks on your domain
If you bought your domain from someone, then you should always run
background checks on your domain to see if it's clean. One good way to
do this is, go to Webmaster Tools, and look for the keywords listed
there for your domain. They might cause harm if they are irrelevant to
your domain name or niche.
You can also run a site search on Google. To do this, go to Google and
search "site:www.YourDomain.com". Replace 'YourDomain' with your own
domain name. This should bring up some pages that are, or were present
on your domain. Another way to look into past information is to go to DomainTools and look up your domain. You'll see thumbnails of your domain from the past.
This step is important because if your domain was previously held by
spammers or scammers who hosted malicious content, then your website
won't rank well in Google. If you find such a case, you can take a look
at Webmaster Guidelines, or file a reconsideration request about this.
3. Use some Analytics program
It is always good to have some sort of statistical data for your website. It is advisable that you set up some Analytics program, preferably Google Analytics. Even if you don't need this information for now, you'll need it for later. So why not start now?
4. Fetch As GoogleBot
Fetch as GoogleBot is another great feature provided by Google Webmaster
Tools (GWTs from now on!). You can submit a URL to GWTs, and it will
tell you whether it was redirected appropriately, and what information
it downloaded. That way, you can see what information Google looks for.
You can also tell Google to not just crawl, but also submit to index
or that URL. That way, whenever you update your site, you can trigger
that entire process to happen by Google, and have it available to
searchers even faster.
5. A user-friendly site design
A great site design is the key to your success. First impressions always
last, so make them count. The best way to do so is, think from the
point of view of a reader, and ask yourself these questions. Can you
navigate easily enough? Can you figure out easily where you are, and how
to get to your desired content? These are crucial questions that must
be answered. Another question is, are the pages focused? Sometimes,
people merge topics into a single page to save time. This might save
yours, but wastes the readers'. So avoid this practice. Don't create
very long content which the reader must scroll a long way through. Split
your content if necessary.
6. Relevant calls to action
Calls to action will help you increase your conversion rate. But don't
take them for granted. For the best conversion possible, you need to
have multiple and different, but relevant calls to action on various
pages. For example, you could urge users to subscribe for email
newsletters on one page, share your service on another, buy your product
on yet another, and so on. Since there are different types of
customers, that way, you can target them all according to their needs.
Not all will buy your products, for example. Nor will everyone share
your services or subscribe for newsletters. So keep all these calls to
action, and keep them on separate pages, so readers might not feel
swamped.
7. Titles and descriptions
every page should have a unique topic, a search engine friendly title, and a unique meta description about what that page is about.
Always use keywords in your file names. Let's say you add an image about
SEO. You should rename it something like seo_tips.jpg or 'SEO Tips.jpg.
Never use something which is meaningless such as image0001.jpg etc. Another
best SEO practice is to use meaningful anchor text for your links.
Never use meaningless words as anchor texts, for example 'click here'.
8.
8. Don't participate in link building schemes
Never, ever purchase backlinks
from link building schemes. They are always spam. They are cheap
backlinks that will harm your site more than they'll help you. And even
if they did start out as quality links, they won't be once other people
start buying links from the same source.
9. Don't hire a rogue SEO.
They will promise you immediate search engine rankings. And if they
do,don't trust them. They're probably too good to be true. And even if
they do improve your rankings, it might be due to black-hat SEO, or
other unfair means, which Google will eventually stamp out, hence
ruining your website's ranking.
10. Site load time
Now, I've been meaning to come around to this point.
Site load time
is a very talked-about subject. And many people insist that it is the
most important point. Even Google says that they aim for times under
half a second. Well, we have an entirely different perspective on the
debate, and we
beg to differ on some level. Here'sour reasoning.
First of all, let me remind you
that it's all about user experience. What good is a fast loading site if
users can't figure out how to navigate through it? Attractive
navigation bars and widgets can make it very easy for the users to
browse through your site. But they come at a price; the site load time.
Is it worth it though? We believe yes, and no. Google says they aim for
half a second. That's almost impossible for most people, especially
bloggers who need to have widgets to make their sites look great, and
also host memory-intensive ads to make a living for themselves. So no
for websites, but yes for blogs. Blogs can't compromise on the
user-friendliness.
Generally, a load time in the
range of 5-10 seconds in considered fine.No more than 10, but anywhere
under 10. If it crosses 5, then don't worry. Just provide a great user
experience in other forms. If you can manage that, and still go under 5,
then you are in an ideal condition. But don't think about it too much
though. Of course it is important, but not so much that you should kill
the visuals for it. Tell me in the comments below, what would you rather
have? A blog that loads under 10 seconds, and has a great navigation
and user interface, or a blog that loads in one second, but has a shoddy
interface, so much so that you can't figure out where you are?
The
second most important condition is that your blog must be getting
enough traffic. Google is not approving blogs for Adsense with low
traffic. Google don’t want their advertisers to face loss by approving
accounts for blogs with less traffic and it took around 6 months for any
blog to get its position in the blogosphere and get enough traffic.
