5 SEO Techniques You're Doing All Wrong

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5 SEO Techniques You're Doing All Wrong
SEO simply "translates" your website into
language that's easily understood by search
engines -- so users see your pages when they go
hunting for offers, products, services,
information or answers to specific questions. The
"how" is SEO, and even a beginners guide can
seem overwhelming. The exact formula used by
Google and Bing is subject to debate. RankBrain,
content and links that point to your site are
three of the biggest ranking signals. But other
factors play their role, too. Ive seen
businesses make the same mistakes over and over
again. Here are the three most frequent
offenders. 1. Keywords-
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Keywords used to be ... well, key. But then
content became king. You still need keywords. Two
mistakes that novices and experts alike
continue to make? Stuffing keywords and
targeting the wrong words. Stuffing aims to trick
the engines by using an exact keyword phrase in
an unnatural frequency. Observe Our car polish
is the best car polish on the car polish market.
If youre looking for the best car polish, then
look no further than our best car polish. Its
the best car polish money can buy! Horrible. Do
that, and the engines will penalize you. It
sounds stilted, it offers nothing of value and
its obviously meant to game the system. Google
uses Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) to analyze
your page's intent and determine keyword
variations. Trust it. Use naturally occurring
synonyms and alternatives instead of
word-for-word repetition. Have a keyword focus,
but dont force it. Include the keyword and its
variations in the title, opening paragraph,
meta-description and throughout the body of the
text (within reason). Use the Keyword Planner to
identify words that pop in searches, but resist
the automatic urge to go after those with the
largest search volume. Instead, find the relevant
long tail keywords (three- to four-word phrases
that make up the bulk of searches) with a decent
volume. Use Trends to determine whats popular
and whats so last year. A little homework goes
a long way.
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2. Anchor text-
You want your page links to point toward other
content on your site as well as relevant
material on external sites. Businesses used to
get away with exact-match or keyword-rich anchor
text. Not anymore. Just dont rely on anchor
text as your anchor text in a piece about anchor
text. 3. Image optimization-
We love visuals, and they increase engagement.
Visually charged content gets more clicks, likes
and shares.
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But there's a problem Search engines cant see
images. Engines need textual explanations to
understand what the image represents and how it
connects to your topic. Include a highly relevant
file name, alt-description (a description of the
image, as if you were telling a friend what the
image depicts), caption, and image title. Some
studies found captions are read 300 percent more
than body text. Consider a compression tool such
as PunyPNG or JPEGmini to reduce file size and
load time, with very little loss of quality.
Faster page better SEO.
4. Link strategy-
Backlinks matter. In the 2016 State of Link
Building Survey, 90 percent of respondents
reported they use content publication/promotion
and guest posting as part of their link-
building strategy. And 78 percent of survey
participants believe it's the most effective SEO-
boosting strategy. It's still a case of quality
over quantity. You run the risk of Google's wrath
if you include links from penalized sites or
those with a domain authority less than 20.
Populating with too many backlinks, too quickly,
also could have negative effects.
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Spammy guest-blogging or link directories will
hurt you. Instead, write high-quality content.
Share it with influencers in your niche, and
promote it on social media. Establish
relationships with influential sites so you can
pitch useful ideas that fit with their subject
and theme to offer real benefit to their
readers. Yes, it will take longer. But three to
four relevant, high-authority/high-quality
backlinks are infinitely better than 100
backlinks from questionable sources. Commit
yourself to playing the long game. 5. Fans and
followers-
Social media is fantastic, but your number of
fans is irrelevant. Its about engagement How
are you connecting and interacting with people,
and how are they engaging with you? Googles
Webmaster Trends Analyst, John Mueller, would
tell you that your social-media following has no
direct affect on your SEO. All the same, an
active community of members who share your
content and link back to your site can spread
your brand awareness and authority. In turn, this
increases your site traffic. Social activity
signals to Google that people are interested in
your site and spreading its message. Remember
this mantra It's not about numbers, it's about
activity -- the actions you generate and the
engagement your audience takes forward.
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Mistakes are bound to happen. SEO is a
complicated beast, after all. Avoiding these
common pitfalls will help you play it smart and
pay off in the long-term.