Top Search Engine Optimization SEO Tips 2018
In this day and age, if you rank anything past the first page on Google you will barely get any traffic so you need to work on your SEO Search Engine Optimization game if you’re serious about your online presence.
I’ve been doing SEO for the last 5 years, and throughout those years, I’ve tried to consume all the information about SEO that I could get my hands on. This blog post is all that information plus new ranking techniques that work in 2018, condensed.
I guarantee that even if you’re experienced with SEO, you will find a trick or two in this post that will help your blog or wordpress site climb higher on Google.
Google has many different methods of deciding the Organic ranking of websites. Use the below SEO tips 2018 which will increase your organic ranking.
These are some of the steps used to get my website webclare.com onto the front page in google for my keyword term – “Web Design Clare” and I have successfully used these SEO tips to increase the ranking on a number of my client’s websites.
SEO Tips 2018 Website Changes
Optimise Homepage
Ensure your homepage is optimised for your keyword term. Using Yoast or All in one SEO plugins will help ensure that you will rank for your key term. Use each keyword/phrase once on your website and that each page has an unique keyword/phrase otherwise you are competing against your own pages for ranking.
Image & Alt Image names
All images names and Alt Image text should include the keyword/phrase that you wish to rank for. Images need to be suitably sized and use a website such as tinypng to compress the images.
Page URLs
When you post news updates or create new pages on your website, ensure to use the keyword/phrase in your page URL or “slug”. If you wish to change existing ones, you will need to put redirection in place as you will get pinned if search engines encounter page not found errors.
Title & Meta Tags
Page Title and Meta Tags need to be filled out including the keyword/phrase you wish to rank for. Yoast provides a handy tool for this for those that don’t want to edit website code. Google has recently doubled the amount of text it is showing in the meta description and you need to adjust your Meta Description content to reflect this.
Top Search Engine Optimization SEO Tips 2018
Headings & SubHeadings
Ensure your headings and subheadings are optimised using only one Heading1 tag per page and using Heading2-6 for sub headings
Internal Links
Use internal links between all your pages. Link you blog posts to other pages/posts on your website to help search engine robots to search your website. Encourage visitors to stay on your website for longer with these links
Footer
This is one area a lot of people don’t realise is worth its weight in gold for SEO. Here you have sub-menus links to key content that is available throughout your website providing you with a lot of internal links which will promote those pages on the search engine ranking.
Longer Keyword/phrases
With the increased use of voice searches through Siri, Amazon Echo and Google longer keyword phrases will be increasing in 2018.
External SEO Tips 2018
Links to your website
Links from other high ranking websites is one of the key ways to get up the google ranking. Write good articles where people want to link and share the content. There are a number of free websites that you can register your website to get started; goldenpages.ie, yelp.ie yourlocal.ie. Furthermore don’t buy links from anyone as search engines are aware of that tactic which will result in your ranking being penalised.
Claim your Business
Register your business on Google My Business and claim your business place on Google Maps. Google Maps will help with local searches in your area and will show you on the map even though you may not be ranking on the first page organically.
Keyword Searches
Use keywords/phrases that are being searched for as it is no use ranking for a term nobody is looking for. There are many different websites which list the number of monthly searches for the keyword/phrase.
Competitor Ranking
Find out what your competitors are ranking for and where their links are coming from. Check their sitemaps to see what keywords you find in their links.
Website Page Speed
Check your website page speed on Google PageSpeed Insights. You should be aiming for a score over 70 on both mobile and Desktop, otherwise Search Engines may penalise your website for a slow loading time.
Local SEO
If you have a local business, ensure that your address features on the website and in Google My Business as this will give you added credit when a search is preformed locally for your keyword/phrases.
Sitemaps
For new or updated websites ensure that you check the sitemaps.xml that it is showing all the correct pages/tags/categories and then submit them to Google and Bing search engines
Follow the above SEO tips 2018 to increase your organic (not paid) ranking on search engines.
