SEO is long-term strategy and to achieve good results it is necessary to invest a lot of work and time in it. If you are persistent, every investment in this type of marketing will be paid off many times and you will get good ROI (Return of investments).
In past, many strategies were used for this area including tactics like keyword stuffing in every single element of the page (title, meta description, heading elements, image alt tag, top menu, sidebar and footer), but now we have a different situation.
Welcome to 2015 year in which rules are totally changed. In this year you should check if your keyword is overly used, if so you could get negative penalties.
There is a large number of different SEO strategies and tactics which you can use to improve your site, but here we will suggest 5 basic tactics that even absolute beginners can apply.
Google Hummingbird algorithm has changed search forever
With Hummingbird algorithm Google has showed that he can understand content of the page, its thematic, uniqueness and writing quality and with that classic keyword usage is over.
Mechanical entering of keywords with goal of deception of Google algorithm is not good tactic anymore. Google now appreciate when the content is naturally written which is directed to user’s needs and intent.
On basis of this algorithm we suggest to adjust your site to new functioning way of search engines. Here is what you can do:
Avoid meta keywords
Meta tag for keywords in past was one of factors for ranking, but because of its improper use, Google has removed it from list of factors for ranking and declared it as potential signal of spamming.
Because this tag doesn’t have influence on ranking and may be interpreted as spam, we suggest to stop using it.
Don’t stuff your content with keywords
If we put ourselves in place of the end user, there is nothing worse then content that is full of keywords which are strategically positioned on page. This type of content could be considered as spam and it can influence on increasing bounce rate.
So keyword density is not important anymore and it will not provide a better positioning for your content in the search results.
Educate about new concept which are important for writing content like TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency). Generally, TD-IDF means that you should engage different phases in the content, and some of them should appear more often than rest.
We strongly recommend to read article from Moz, which has described this concept of keyword targeting in details.
Advices for optimizing content both for users and ranking:
- Find specific topic that you want to target.
- Do a detailed research on targeted area (research on user’s needs for that type of content).
- Write content that have unique value for targeted users
- Content length should be at least 400 words.
- Organize content in short paragraphs of few sentences or make a list.
- Every part of content should have its titles which will tell what is content about.
- Enhance content with inner links to related content (remember, goal is to keep visitors on the site as much as it is possible).
- Make sure that titles and meta description tags are well written, so visitors will choose your site
- Every page on your site should be easy to share on social networks
- Adjust your site to users on mobile devices
Meta description is important and it shouldn’t be ignored…
Description tag is often being ignored. Some site owners don’t use it at all, while some use plugins or tools for its automatic generating, which is even worse option.
Why is meta description so important?
Answer is simple – meta description affects conversation through CTR (click through rate).
Make sure to describe content of the page and call users to come and see content, in 160 characters which are available.
We suggest to adjust this tag for all important pages on the site and to do the same for social networks using Open Graph and Twitter cards techniques.
Use formats for markup content like Schema, RDF, JSON-LD
Surely you’ve noticed sites in search results which have additional information and types of the content (price, review, address, etc.). That information is showing because HTML code of the page contains certain markups which crawlers can read and show in search results. Statistic shows that results which have additional information in SERP have 25% increased CTR compared to classic results.
We suggest to do a research on types of micro data which you can use on your site. Markup logos, addresses, images, phone numbers, business name, business type, prices, reviews and everything else that could be of use for your visitors.
Priceless resource which will make easier to choose and implement micro formats on your site is on this link.
Link earning instead of link building
Inbound links are still important factor which has a great influence on site ranking in search engines, but methods of gaining links are significantly changed compared to the earlier period. Instead of focusing on mechanical link building, we suggest to attract links and shares from relevant sites by creating quality content. This is much better way for gaining links than classic link building and it will provide more visits and your brand exposure.
Conclusion
These tactics are only basics, but if you apply them we are sure that you will have much better results for ranking your site. Story doesn’t end here, this is just the beginning. Only constant work on site and its improvement could bring you long-term good results.
Like you already concluded, complete strategy of online presentation is based on quality of the content with users in the first place, while respecting the rules of search engines.
