Optimizing your website involves more than choosing the right keywords or finding the best headline for your post. Whether you hire a digital marketing agency or not, you need to know the various aspects of SEO. Here are other ways you can boost traffic to your page and ensure that your page ranks high on search results pages.
Ensure Image Optimization
Images make a website inviting and appealing to readers. They also provide more information on products and services. Images are crucial to UX, so you need to optimize them as well. One of the first things you need to do is resize images to a maximum pixel resolution of 1920×1080. Keep images to under one megabyte each—any more would strain your bandwidth—and use JPEG, WEBP, and other fast-loading image formats.
Also, ensure that your images have the right alt text, a phrase of 125 characters or less describing the image. Alt text helps Google and other search engines categorize photos. A content management system like WordPress usually has fields for alt attributes, so you can easily type image keywords.
Keep Your Page Load Time Short
People do not wait around for web pages to load. They will leave your website if it takes more than three seconds to load—according to Google, the higher your load time, the more likely people will leave. You can check your site speed using Google tools like PageSpeed Insights and Test My Site. There are also other tools like Pingdom and WP-Rocket which could improve your page’s performance.
Be Mindful of Meta Descriptions
Your post’s meta description, a small paragraph in your page’s HTML code, should explain the page’s purpose briefly and concisely. A good meta description is 155 characters or less and contains the main keyword of the post. When writing your meta description, use simple words. You want it to entice readers to click on your URL.
If you want to edit your meta description without dealing with code, you can use a plugin that lets you do that on your CMS. Many systems also have a field where you can type a meta description yourself. If you want to be more efficient, consider hiring content writing services.
Apply SEO Tactics on Your URLs
Search engines also look at keywords in URLs, not just ones in the paragraphs. Do you use dynamic URLs, ones that have numbered pages? A dynamic URL will look like this:
http://samplewebsite.com/blog/detail?id=9105
The number represents a unique post on the blog. This URL is not optimized—it does not contain any of the keywords in the article. Instead of using a dynamic URL, opt for a static one that incorporates keywords in the address. For example, you can have:
http://samplewebsite.com/blog/seo-tips-for-beginners
Google considers this format more informative since it shows readers what the post is about. Note that when using static URLs, you need to provide enough information while keeping it short enough. Using “seo-tips-for-beginners” is alright, but “seo-tips-for-beginner-business-website-owners” is a little too much. Also, break up the words in the URL with hyphens instead of cramming them together.
Implement Internal Linking
Google considers backlinks as a significant ranking signal. Also known as inbound or incoming links, you gain backlinks when an external website puts one of your page URLs on their site. You cannot control how many backlinks you earn, but you can establish relationships with other websites and hope they come your way.
What you have direct control over, though, is your internal linking structure. Study which topics lead to each other. If you have a page introducing pay-per-click advertising, you can link to another discussing keyword research for PPC campaigns. Including the phrase “PPC keyword research” in your article gives you anchor text for the link.
Remember to use internal links sparingly—putting nothing but links on a paragraph won’t make your text readable. Also, do link maintenance. If you have broken links, you could get penalized. Scan your website for broken links using Dead Link Checker or similar sites.
Conclusion
Search engine optimization takes a lot of time. It also involves more than just putting keywords in paragraphs. If you want your page to rise in search engine results pages, you need to put in time and effort. Hiring a digital marketing agency will cut down the time it takes to put up a site and start getting the traffic and data you need.
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