9 minute read

 

Get 13 of the most powerful, yet simple, organic SEO tips that have been proven to increase search rankings and traffic to your website. View our slideshare presentation, check out our image & coding examples, and clickthrough some quick links. We discuss everything from keywords, to HTML tags, to becoming mobile friendly, to link building, social sharing, to sitemaps and wrapping it all up.

 

 

TIP 1 – Keyword Research

Effective keyword research is increasingly important to your search engines rankings and to improving your targeted organic traffic. Not only do you need to know how to develop a solid keyword list for SEO, but smart content strategies use keyword research to find out what topics they should blog about and what phrases they should use in their articles.

Keywords or short phrases for web pages and topics or long tail keywords for blog articles. Here is how we develop a great keyword list:

  1. Create a seed list of industry terms and terms your customers use.
  2. Expand your list using professional keyword tools including Google’s Free Keyword Planner.
  3. Weed out the junk that isn’t relative and refine your list with competitive research.

 

TIP 2 – Meta Tags

Meta tags such as title and description tags are very important snippets of code that explains what the page will be discussing. Users will not see these meta tags on the page itself. The title will be at the top of the browser and the descriptions will only show up in the search engines results. Here are some key points to keep in mind:

  • Put the keyword(s) close to the beginning of each tag, the closer the better as long as it makes sense.
  • Title meta tags should be between 50-70 characters long and spaces do count. The optimal title length is 60 character, but remember to put least important words towards the end.
  • Description tags should be between 150-160 characters long and again spacing counts.

Code Samples of Important Meta Tags:

<head>

<meta name=”title” content=”Examples of Meta Title | Also Displays in Browser Address Bar.”>

<meta name=”description” content=”This is an example of a meta description. This will often show up in search results.”>

</head>

 

TIP 3 – Keyword Modifiers

Add modifiers to your chosen keywords to create a long tail phrase. Modifiers are a combination of words that are relative to your core keyword and helps focus on a tighter target audience. Some examples include:

  • Add the year, such as “2017” – SEO trends in 2017.
  • Add user’s impression such as “Top” or “Best” – The best tacos in Chicago.
  • Add areas such as a city or state – Marketing companies in Chicago.

 

TIP 4 – Page Titles & Subheads

Every web page, blog article, movie, book, etc has a chosen title that explains or hints to what you are about watch or read. This is considered the page title or page heading in the SEO world.

  • Wrap the title of your page in an <h1></h1> tag.
  • Note, there can only be one H1 tag per page.

Subheads are kinda like chapters in a book where you try and divide up your text into sections so it’s easier for the reader to follow.

  • Wrap the sub headers in <h2></h2> tags. And sub headers of that section into H3, H4, H5 tags.
  • Think of this as a flow or article outline.
  • There can be multiples subheads, not limited to one per page like H1 is.

There is a Perfect Example Within This Very Article for a Content Heading Structure:

example-of-page-structure-for-seo.jpg

 

TIP 5 – Visuals

Visuals such as images, videos, charts, etc increase time spent on your site and reduce bounce rates. Visuals are also fun to share and will extend your audience and reach. Now a technical, yet easy SEO tip:

  • Use alt tags to help Google know what this image is about. Every images should have one.
  • Google can not read images, they can only read text, and these image alt tags can help with that.
  • Also, the file name will help Google index your visual, just like the URL of a webpage does.

Code Sample of a Great Alt Tags and How to Properly Name Images for SEO:

<img src=”organic-seo-tips-infographic.jpg” alt=”4 Tips to Improve Your Organic SEO Infographic”>

If you want to see the actual My Super Effective Organic SEO Technique Infographic, you can see it live here.

 

TIP 6 – First 100 Words

Put your keyword within the first sentence, if possible. The closer to the beginning the better, but if it doesn’t make sense, don’t force it. You can just drop it within the first 100 words and it will still be okay, since most likely some part of the first paragraph will be displayed in search results anyways.

 

TIP 7 – Mobile Friendly

Google started penalizing websites that are not mobile friendly back in 2015. With mobile searches growing at a rapid pace, go mobile or get left behind.

Mobile friendly is the minimum you can do to help your organic SEO rankings. Make your website responsive or develop a dedicated independent mobile site for optimal results.

Check Out Some Mind Boggling Stats About Mobile Searches:

  • Users are 5x more likely to leave a site that is not mobile friendly.
  • 48% of consumers start mobile research from search engines.
  • 53% of mobile pages are abandoned if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
  • 62% of B2B marketers and 51% of B2C marketers have optimized their blogs for mobile devices in order to improve their organic SEO ranking.
  • More than 1/2 of all web traffic comes from smartphone or tablet.

 

google-mobile-friendly-test

 

TIP 8 – Building Links

Linkbuilding is a highly effective organic SEO strategy, don’t skip this tip! Also spelled link building, this is the process of getting other websites to link to your web pages (inbound links or backlinks) and for you to link back to their relative web page (outbound links or external links).

There are also internal links that are within your own website that link to other pages or posts with related information to educated viewers further on what they are seeking. The longer they are on your site, the better the chance it will lead to a sale.

  • Web pages with outbound links outrank pages that don’t have any.
  • Make sure to add 2 or 3 internal links to each blog post so people will be able to find more relevant info quickly. This also reduces bounce rates.
  • Don’t buy links or get caught up in a link building scheme, it’s considered black hat SEO and it will destroy your online presence when (correct not if but when) Google catches you.
  • If you want to buy high-quality links without getting penalized by search engines, Yext is definitely worth it. They are partnered with Google and these 70+ profiles are directories are allowed.
  • Make sure you are connecting to and getting a link back from sites at your level or ranked higher. Links are ranked on a 1 to 10 scale, ten being the best.
  • List posts on average get 74% more backlinks than any other content type. Infographics received 62% more backlinks.

 

TIP 9 – LSI Keywords

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. These keywords determine intent & contextual meaning related to a users root search.

Pretty much this is saying you don’t always have to use the exact keyword or phrase. You can use synonyms, plurals, & relative phrases as well to help Google determine page relevancy and keep your content flowing naturally.

Here’s a Few Examples of LSI Keywords for a Travel Site:

  • Travel
  • Traveling
  • Vacation
  • Vacations
  • Flights
  • Hotels
  • Tourism
  • Trips

 

TIP 10 – Social Sharing

Social sharing is the practice of sharing content from a website on a social media site or app. Some of the top social sharing platforms are Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn.

Blog posts and landing pages should definitely have share buttons on them to help spread the word about it. This is a great, free method of reaching a larger target audience.

Here Are a Few Free Share Button Tools and Statistics That Will Get You Moving:

  • Beginners can enable share buttons across their website with a simple-to-install code. Check out ShareThis or AddThis buttons. They are both pretty good for starters.
  • Users spend 20% of their online activity sharing content.
  • Infographics are 3X more likely to get shared than any other content type.
  • Over 15% of tweet mentions originate from the tweet button on a website.
  • 27 Million pieces of content are shared every single day.

 

share-button-examples-300661-edited

 

TIP 11 – Sitemaps

There are 2 types of sitemaps, HTML which are for the viewers and XML which are for search engines. HTML sitemaps help the user find what they are looking for faster. XML sitemaps help search engines like Google crawl and index your web pages. Both of these help organically, but XML sitemaps are more important for ranking purposes.

Benefits of XML Sitemaps and a Fantastic Tool For It:

  • A study showed that the average time for a Google search bot to visit a new post with a sitemap was 14 minutes.
  • When no sitemap was submitted, it took Google bots 23 hours to crawl the post.
  • This free XML sitemap generator is great, not only will it crawl your entire website and automatically do all it’s calculations, but it will also submit your sitemap to Google, Bing and a bunch of other engines within minutes.

 

sitemap-example-tag-marketing-seo-tips

 

TIP 12 – Redirects

301 redirects permanently move a page URL to another place, either within the same site or on a different domain. These are also used when you change the page extension, lets say from .html to .php or a WordPress site which ends in a trailing slash (/).

There are several ways to go about this, but it all depends what you are trying to accomplish.

  • Permanent 301 redirects, when done properly, will pass about 90% to 99% of its ranking juice to the new page URL.
  • This free 301 redirect generator is great for a few redirected URLs. This tool explains where to put your redirect code and provides several options from PHP redirect to HTML to htaccess 301s.

 

TIP 13 – Hire An Expert

If you prefer to fast track your success and hire a local SEO expert give us try today. Just fill out this short form found here or feel free to contact Tag Marketing at 773-680-6952. We have the knowledge and experience to maximize your investment and reach your goals.

 

Wrapping Things Up

Following these 13 basic, yet powerful, organic SEO tips will improve your search rankings and traffic. Keep in mind that search engine optimization is a long-term marketing strategy for your website, but when done correctly, well worth it.

If you are interested in learning more about Getting Found Online Through Search Engine Optimization, check out our FREE eBook below.

 

Getting Found Online Through SEO Ebook