How to Improve SEO: 3 Rules That Work

Wildebeest
Aug 31, 2018 · 8 min read

Perfect SEO is a bit of a moving target, but you don’t have to be blindfolded. Google’s search algorithm changes daily with major adjustments coming every few months so the only real way to find what works is to try and fail, then try again. These recommendations are based on our team’s experience building over one hundred sites for clients and watching some explode while others fizzled out over time.

Following these three rules will help your site keep moving up in search results and better compete in a crowded marketplace:

  1. Research the keywords people are searching for and use them
  • The first step is to define your target audience. I get it, you want everyone to visit your site, but once you identify your tip-top target, the others will follow. It’s hard to accept, but it’s true. Start at the top of the food chain.
  • Imagine what those target users would type into a search engine when you want to be found. Are they searching for a service provider? Are they looking for insight? If your target search is “who are the best web designers in los angeles”, your keywords should embrace “web designers” (Los Angeles will automatically be associated with you if you’re listed on Google My Business and the other words are only used for context).
  • Find additional keywords associated with your target keywords. Once you have some additional related words, make sure they’re all integrated into your site content. Stacking your page with the same keywords over and over is no longer a benefit and will actually work against you. When you include your keyword a handful of times AS WELL AS several associated words, search engines will see that your article not only has the right content, but it also has context. Our recommendation is again a Google product (hey, when it’s their game, play by their rules), Keyword Planner to get to find additional keyword ideas. Once you get results, sort by the volume of searches, then starting from the top, choose those most relevant to you and thoughtfully integrate them into your content.
Top keyword ideas for “florist” sorted by “Avg monthly searches”
  • The title you give your page is one of the most important elements for making it visible to search engines. While creative titles with clever puns may get clicks on social media, those titles lacking specific keywords won’t resonate as well with search engine robots. Instead, title your content literally with your important keywords near the beginning and phrased similarly to how a human might structure a search. For example, if you’re writing content for a travel website, a headline like “Cruises: 3 Things You Must Pack” will likely perform much better in search than “Forget to Bring This One Item and Your Voyage will be Ruined”.
  • Meta titles are what search engines are primarily looking for and ultimately what will appear in search results. Ensure your target keyword is near the beginning of your meta title and phrased in a way a human would search it. Bonus points if you can get an associated keyword into the title. Ensure that your meta titles, page title, page URL, and page content are all in line with one another. You may get dinged if your URL doesn’t match your title or if your title and page content aren’t consistent enough.
  • While Google rewards content that answers a question, that doesn’t mean your titles and headlines should include question marks, after all, you aren’t using question marks in your search queries, right? Instead if you want to be found as the best article about SEO for Youtube, try a title like “YouTube SEO the Ultimate Guide”. It’s also a good practice to answer your own question early in your content. This could potentially lead to a Google Answer box and even results from voice search–all of which will drive more users to your brand.

2. Link the best content within your site and play nice with others

  • A few links on a page can do wonders for your site circulation. You should have a mix of links to other pages of your site as well as external sources, however, don’t overdo it. Depending on your content’s length, it’s typically a good practice to have a link every 2–3 paragraphs and don’t get out of balance between internal links and external. Having only external links won’t work against you, but you’re also not doing yourself any favors. Enhance your content and success by thoughtful linking to the best sources as you’re writing.
  • If your content is an original thought, you’re much more likely to be linked as a source from other content creators. Do some research to find high ranking sources in your industry and do your best to create content they would find useful. While a cold pitch doesn’t always work, it’s worth a try to build your links. Those referrals from high ranking sources will do wonders for your SEO.
  • Find questions about your industry that you‘re knowledgable about on sites like Quora, create a profile, link your site, and start answering. Be careful about being overly self-promotional, but a thoughtful response with a link to your site on a large message board can give you a solid SEO boost. Also look around for industry directories to add your site, but prepare to also see the volume of solicitors increase, too. >,<

3. Design your site for humans, then build it for robots

  • While this seems to be a feature that’s becoming less important to Google, it’s still a good practice to make sure each page on your site has only one <H1> header tag. This is used in HTML and CSS to style (similar to selecting “Heading 1” in Google Docs text styles). This <H1> tells search engines what you think your page is about, then it decides how well your content matches your heading and how highly it should rank for various search queries. Use <H2> when you want to start a new section on a page. Think of <H2> as the chapters and <H1> as the title. Likely in the future, heading tags will be less relied on in favor of how large or bold content visually appears on a page. Use H1’s and H2’s, style them appropriately and you’re winning now and will still be winning in the future.
  • Session Duration has always been a key feature in user experience design and it’s become increasingly important for SEO. Google calls their search algorithm that now integrates time spent on site, RankBrain. An example of this in action would be if the first result yields an average of 15-seconds on site before users go back to search and click into the second result…which yields three minutes on site, those results will likely soon change positions in favor of the result where users are spending the most time.
  • As a site owner, you should be measuring everything and there’s currently no better way to do it than with Google Analytics. Look at your top pages, make sure those top pages are linking to other great content on your site. Keep an eye on Session Duration and Bounce Rate to ensure both of those continue to improve over time. If they’re not improving, make thoughtful adjustments to your user experience. Also very important to know your split between desktop and mobile users. Google’s search traffic is approximately 60% mobile and as such, they’ve now prioritized the mobile experience over the desktop–meaning your mobile/responsive site needs to load very quickly. We typically use GTmetrix to audit sites’ performance.
  • Once Google Analytics is installed, it’s even easier to register your site with Google Search Console. On Console, you’ll be able to upload your sitemap and eliminate any crawl errors or broken links. Be sure to fetch your site as Google and keep an eye on what queries users as typing to find you. If they’re what you’re looking for, keep up the good work. If not, consider adjusting your site’s content and keywords.
Ensure the pages you want the world to see are indexed
  • It’s very important for your SEO to ensure all images are optimized for the Web. If your images are straight from a camera, screenshots, or only using Save for Web from Photoshop, you’re wasting bandwidth, delaying load time, and losing users. Optimizing and resizing images is no longer something you should spend time on when automated solutions like Tinybeest exist. Full disclosure: my team created Tinybeest and we use it every day. It started as a Chrome Extension then as a free Mac App to reduce the file size of images to the very brink of being able to recognize any loss in quality. Once images are properly optimized for the Web, more best practices include adding alt tags and image dimensions, but between you and me, that’s not going to make a recognizable difference unless you’re running an incredibly image-heavy site.
I reduced the file size of this image from 2.2 MB to 120 KB (95%) using Tinybeest
  • Don’t forget to add a 404 page! It’s easy to forget and is almost as bad as creating duplicate content. The style of your 404 isn’t going to matter technically, but make sure it’s configured correctly for search engines as the SEO gods hate nothing more than sites with no rules.

Did you find these tips helpful? We’d love to hear from you and of course, follow us here or on Twitter for more tips about SEO and Web design/development. To see our team’s latest work, check out our portfolio here.

Ran Craycraft, Cofounder of Wildebeest

Wildebeest

Written by

A product studio in LA that builds custom software for brands.

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