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There’s a lot to SEO optimization and reaching that sweet #1 spot can take years. It can seem like extremely daunting times, and it can be true for beginners. Once you know what you actually need to do though, it’s not actually that hard. Tedious, sure, but not very hard.
You will need SEO reporting tools at all times during your SEO campaign. Linkio’s got an entire list of such tools, and according to research they conducted, some of them are more functional and much easier to learn than even the beastly Google Analytics.
And even though there are thousands of things that come into play when your site’s rankings are determined, some have much more weight than others.
So, today we will be discussing the three biggest factors that you need to pay special attention to with your SEO.
And the first is, of course, compatibility with all devices, browsers, and screen resolutions.
It’s no secret that most people use their smartphones to browse the web. Now more than ever, and their number keeps growing. It’s already past 50% at this point!
WARC estimates that around 2 billion people currently access the internet via only their smartphone, which equates to 51 percent of the global base of 3.9 mobile users.
~ cnbc.com
So, in order to not lose more than half of your potential audience, you need to ensure perfect mobile optimization. No respectable resource comes without a fully responsive interface.
Another thing is site speed. It needs to be quick, or you’re risking to get tons of click-offs. But there’s more to this than just the fact that people don’t like to wait too long.
Both mobile optimization and site speed are actually ranking factors, and Google takes note of those things every time its bots crawl through your site.
The easiest way of getting a fully responsive site is purchasing a pre-designed template, which is cheaper and faster than making your site from scratch anyway.
As to site speed, make use of PageSpeed Insights to see how well your pages perform. It will also provide you with feedback and some tips on how to make it run faster if need be.
Inexperienced SEOs will go for the #1 keyword in their niche or choose only the three highest-ranking ones.
And while those are the most popular and people search for those the most, it is not the way to good SEO visibility. Also, there’s a ton of competition you will have to face if you decide to do that.
What you should do instead, is take advantage of a rank tracking tool and evaluate each keyword in your niche. Ahrefs has a pretty neat rank tracker which also allows you to see which keywords your competition is ranking for.
Then, implement as many of them into your content as you can to cover the topic fully. But take care not to cram them into your pages too often since if more than 2.5% of your text consists of straight keywords, you risk being viewed as spammy and could actually receive a penalty from Google itself.
Also, monitor keywords that are steadily rising in popularity. If used correctly, those have all the potential of overtaking the #1 spot.
Interlinking your own pages serves two purposes. Firstly, it helps guide your readers through your content. Secondly, it helps guide Google’s crawlers through your pages during indexing. And you want all of your pages to get indexed properly.
Also, if you haven’t created a sitemap yet, you really should. It’s basically a file that tells crawl bots exactly which pages they should index and when. There’s a neat little plugin for WordPress called Yoast SEO, and it can do it for you automatically.
As for external links, you’re probably already aware of their benefits. The more links you have pointing to your site from other resources, the bigger the traffic boost you will get from them.
The amount of backlinks and referring domains also has an enormous impact on your site’s SEO.
There is so much to SEO that your resource is never really perfectly optimized. Besides, Google often updates its algorithms and your competition never sleeps either.
So, it is extremely important to re-evaluate your (and your competition’s) site often. Run in-depth audits and the data you get is very indicative of which areas of your resource are performing well and which ones need improvement. If you’re not in a position to do these things yourself, hiring an SEO agency like OutreachMama and similar, who operates in field of outreach, on-page, off-page activities will help your brand/company growth a lot.
So, keep grinding and adapting to this perpetually changing environment and I wish you the best of luck!