No fluff, no drama, just 25 actionable things you can do to make your site rank on Google.
25. What if your client gives you awkward, unnatural sounding keywords and insists you use them? Because it happens. There are a few ways to deal with these.
1) Use punctuation. Google doesn’t take punctuation into account, so you can use commas or full stops. I.e. changing ‘best mechanic Christchurch’ to ‘If you’re looking for the best mechanic, Christchurch has a few great options’.
2) Use stop words. While they shouldn’t be in title tags, in content, they are fine. These are words like ‘a’, ‘in’, and ‘on’. Basically, those joining-up words. Suddenly, ‘best mechanic in Christchurch’ is much easier.
In general though, #ditchthedumbkeywords cos content is all about user readability.
24. If the first page of Google results is the holy grail, a featured snippet is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
A featured snippet (or, ‘answer box) is the text in a box that pops up at the top of a page in Google results when you ask a question. And they get TONS of hits. MOZ tells us that ‘Ben Goodsell reports that the click-through rate (CTR) on a featured page increased from two percent to eight percent once it’s placed in an answer box, with revenue from organic traffic increasing by 677%.’
So if you can get it… amazing. How? Do great keyword research, and find a ‘question’ keyword. Also those ‘suggested questions’ that Google offers are a good start too. Then, use the question keyword as a subheading in your content, and answer the question concisely with facts and numbers (within 90~ words, most are 45 words long). Have a great featured image. Optimise your page and do some backlinking.
As with everything else, I’ve overly simplified the process, but…. This is the basics.
23. How long should your blogs/ articles be? Apparently, the way to go is long-form articles. This is anything between 1000- 2000 words. Certainly, anything below 300 words on a page probably isn’t enough for SEO. But do you need such long articles? Really?
According to a study by WordStream, ‘the ideal blog post takes seven minutes to read and is around 1,600 words long’. It increases the length of time people spend on site, and that helps your SEO.
For me, I think this is less about how long something is, and more about the human component of SEO. Those long-form articles provide lots of value. Those articles deep-dive into your topic and give lots of valuable information to your reader. And rather than writing 1600 words of drivel, you should aim to write 1600 words of amazing insightful experiences, information, and value.
22. Skyscraper articles. Basically, these are super targeted articles that are better than everything else on the internet. Brian Dean from Backlinko came up with this and it works (and he’s got the stats to prove it). Basically, decide on a relevant topic. Google it. Find all the top ranking articles about it and make your article better. They have 10 tips? Give 20! They have five recommendations? Provide 25!
Then, once you’ve written this super-uber-amazing-awesome article, backlink the HECK out of it.
Backlinking is an off-site SEO technique which means you basically get that article linked from every other site possible. And once you have this amazing article, that’s what you need to do with it.
If you do want some keywords then I quite like SpyFu. Search for competitors domains and which keywords they have chased. Saves you a bit of trial and error. There are, of course, a zillion other tools but this is a good start.Assuming, of course, that your competitor is any good…
20. Conversions matter. You need to write awesome copy because it keeps people on the page for longer (bounce rate decreases) and inspires them to convert. Those click-throughs and lower bounce rates help with SEO. Google loves it, because it shows that people landing on that site are getting what they wanted.
Great copy = conversions
Conversions = happy Google
19. Voice search keywords are the Next Big Thing, apparently. More and more people are using Alexa and Siri to ask questions. Apparently, 50% of searches will be voice by 2020, and these searches are more likely to be local-based. People are asking Siri things like ‘best plumber in Christchurch’.
What does this mean for you? It’s hard to know. If you’re doing great, topical posts with good keywords, then you’re probably doing OK. But, if you’re a local business (hairdresser, sparky, real estate agent) then you might want to start writing your blogs with voice-type searches. Luckily, these are way easier to fit in than other keywords because they are sentences than people say.
Still, keywords suck. Approach with caution.
18. Keywords. These are not the bane of my existence, but close.
Back to rule #1: Write for people, not algorithms. This means those fiddly, hard-to-insert super awkward keywords that stand out like dogs balls? Nope. While you’re aiming for exact match or even a snippet feature, losing potential customers who see ‘dentist Auckland best’ in the copy isn’t worth it.
This isn’t a cat in a box. If it doesn’t fit, leave it out.
17. UX /UI is something that is talked about a lot, but it’s an art that most people don’t understand. Basically, it’s making your site as easy to navigate as possible, with no weird forms that are counter-intuitive to use, or horrible coloured backgrounds that are impossible to read.
In terms of UI in content writing, I tend to think of this as making it as easy as possible to perform the action you need. It’s having a call-to-action in the text. Or, making space in the first paragraph for a bright green button. If you’re giving people multiple options of where to go to next, make it really clear what they are doing or where they are going.
Don’t limit your reader, don’t assume anything about them, but make it super easy for them to do what you want them to do.
16. Don’t be tempted to go all black-hat. When SEO was first a ‘thing’, SEO people were a special breed, experienced in ‘the grey area’. A few black-hat techniques developed, but Google’s algorithms are always getting smarter. For instead, keyword stuffing, as per yesterday. Don’t do it. Dumb strategies, like having your keyword 50 times on the page but in white text on a white background. Don’t do it. Google knows, and you’ll get banished to 1,793,794th place.
15. Don’t go completely overboard with keywords. By the time you’ve chucked them in your main (H1) and subheadings (H2), your meta description, image alt-name, peppered through your text and hyperlink, that’s ENOUGH. STOP. Google understands this is what spam does, so if you go overboard, it thinks you’re a spammy site and it kicks you further down the list.
How do you know when you’ve gone overboard? When your writing sounds ridiculous when you’re reading it aloud. If you find yourself reading the same phrase again and again, you’re probably spam.
14. Loading speed for your page should be quick. Lightning fast. In fact, more than 50% of people will leave a page if it takes more than three seconds to load. THREE SECONDS – you people are all very impatient! Google may also rank you lower if your site takes a while to load.
Make your page load faster by optimising images so they are small, get rid of unnecessary back-end processes (like extra plug-ins), and if you are super tricky you can present images as part of the background via external CSS stylesheets. Basically, it means the site will load the text first (giving your reader something to do instead of abandoning you) and then your images, which matter less, load.
Also get rid of all moving things, animated things, flashing lights, or non-functional elements.
13. If this SEO stuff seems a bit hard, if you are a DIY WordPress site, then install the Yoast plug-in. While it’s formulaic, it does make you fill out all the meta-things and hyperlink things and help you allow crawlers to access your site easily (crawlers, while sounding like spiders, are bots that ‘crawl’ your site and index all the pages.
12. Domain authority (DA) is a website ‘score’ that MOZ created the predicts how well a website will rank on Google. Page Authority (PA) measures the strength of individual pages. It’s based on complex calculations like linking root domains and overall link numbers.
You should be looking to link to sites that are relevant, and that have a better DA score than you.
You can check the DA of potential linking partners at a number of places, including MOZ itself, or even here https://www.seoweather.com/domain-authority-checker/
11. Every page on your site should have a call to action (CTA). This is what you want the reader to do, whether it’s join a mailing list, send you an email, book an appointment or buy something. You need to make it super easy for people to do what you want them to do. Give them the opportunity to buy/ book/ join by adding a sentence like ‘join our mailing list to get these great deals delivered to your inbox!’
10. Anchor text is the clickable hyperlink text. You want it to be relevant to the page you’re linking to. For example, if you were writing about cat memes, your link shouldn’t be ‘click here’, but it might read ‘find the best cat memes on the internet’. And of course you can use your keyword as the anchor text.
People also call this link labelling or link title.
9. Meta descriptions are a small (155 characters) piece of text that displays in Google search results. It should have your keyword in it, and be interesting enough to draw the reader in and convince them to click through to your website.
8. If your content writer knows what they’re doing, they should provide you with a meta title and meta description with each blog/ article.
A meta title/ title tag is what users see when your site pops up in search results. Google uses it as part of their SEO, and potential customers see it and may or may not click through based on what you say.
It needs to include your keyword/s or at least relevant words so that people know what they will find on that page.
It needs to draw the reader in. This is really all about copywriting, getting your message across in 60 characters (including spaces).
7. Don’t have images of words if you can avoid it. Those words are far better used to help your SEO than turned into a pretty image that Google can’t ‘see’.
6. Once you have appropriate images that you haven’t stolen from the internet, name them properly – both the file name and the alt text. It should be something useful, like a keyword. For the alt text, this is what the sight impaired will ‘see’ when they view your blog, so make it descriptive but short: Squirrel eating nut (and you can use keywords/ blog title here too, if it works for you).
5. Putting images in your blogs can be fraught but the first rule is don’t steal photos randomly off the internet. Pexels offer royalty-free pics, among others. The outcome of ‘borrowing’ images from online could be thousands of dollars of lawyers fees and damages.
4. As well as two internal links in articles, I aim to have two external links too. And not just any old external links, but relevant content to sites with good domain authority (basically, just super legit sites).
3. On every page on your website, have two internal links. Google loves organised content, so I structure series of blogs to be like a cartwheel; a hub generic overview in the middle, and then in-depth articles around it. These internal links connect the articles.
2. While keywords can be great, they can also be… not great. Technically you should have keywords in your H1 and H2 titles, but I find as long as you have something useful, it doesn’t have to be an exact keyword.
So, instead of a title that simply says ‘Why?’, it should be ‘Why should I travel to India?’
- The biggest thing to remember is that you’re writing for people. Not machines. Google scans for readability, so a bunch of keywords is shooting yourself in the foot with them as well as alienating potential customers.
When all else fails, write for your target audience, it’s that simple.