SEO Best Practices: On-Page SEO Checklist
Search engine optimization or “SEO” is the process of designing your website and developing a marketing strategy to get high quality, unpaid and targeted traffic from search engines to your website.
Several years ago, the term “SEO” evoked an image of a shady technique to trick the search engine to get better website ranking – but those days are long gone.
Today, paid links to your site, the hidden content, keyword stuffing or deceptive practices, which are known as black-hat SEO techniques are much more likely to hurt your site.
In this article, we will discuss the basic SEO best practices that will help increase the authority of your site, and as a result, will increase the value and visibility of your business.
Incorporate your Target Keyword into your Domain Name URL
The best domain name for your site is to name it the same as your website name or your business name. Keywords on domain names are important to help you get high ranking on the search engines.
You can have hyphenated domain names too. However, The disadvantages using this kind of domain names are that people don’t remember it easily.
But the search engine will easily distinguish your keywords and place your website in better position than your competitors.
Include an Optimized Title Meta Tag
Meta Tags are one of the important aspects for your website’s visibility in search engines. META tags were developed and made an HTML standard for addressing specific information about your web page that does not affect the way your page actually looks.
Important tip’s for using title tags
- Title tag length should be no longer than 70 characters or 8 words.
- Title tag should be meaning full and visitors should understand what your page is about.
- Use one to two keywords in title tag.
- Use plurals & concentrate on keyword phrases rather than just one keyword.
- Make sure that title tag is grammatically correct, or the page will not rank well.
Tips for using description Tag
- Make sure that you use description tag immediately after title tag.
- Make sure that the first paragraph or the heading of the page contains 2 to 3 important keyword phrase related to your web page.
- If possible, you should target keyword phrase in text links to get a boost.
- Other important things to remember while using Meta tags.
- Meta tags should reflect the content the page. And avoid put your company/business name in each title.
- Do not try to target more than two keyword phrases per page.
- If your web page has a long content try to include your important keyword phrases in h1 to h6 tag.
- Include your important keyword phrases in bold tag.
- Your web page will also get a boost if you include your important keyword phrases in anchor tag. However, remember to only link to the relevant content.
- Always include your important keyword phrases in first paragraph of your web page.
- If you use images in your web page use alt tag to for each image.
- Make sure that title and description are crafted smartly and engage both visitors and search engines.
Make your Site Mobile Friendly
Even if a business has an effective SEO strategy, most of them have not yet optimized themselves with a mobile friendly platform. Is your business website mobile friendly?
If it is not mobile friendly, you could be locking out your chances of increasing mobile traffic to your site. Many people nowadays are using tablets and smart phones more often than their personal computers.
This means your site should also be accessed on these devices. You should plan to optimize and come up with SEO strategies that will work for mobile searches.
Develop a Mobile Application
A mobile app, short for mobile application, or just app, is a software application designed to run on smartphones, tablet computers and other hand-held devices.
This is a trend that is gaining roots and will play a big part in coming years. Many Internet users are getting more concerned with mobile apps and if your company has none, then its time that you devise a plan and launch your own business app.
The main advantage of having a business app is that it gives people an easier way to access your products and services.
Harnessing the Power of Social Media
Social media is quickly growing and becoming one of the most used ways to communicate on the Internet and is vital to any SEO campaign in just about any niche market.
It helps to get your specific brand out to the public. It’s no secret that, at the moment, social media platform such as Facebook and Twitter plays a crucial role in the dynamic realm of marketing.
However, is SEO related to social media marketing? Certainly. Social media and SEO are two strategies that are definitely connected to each other.
And it makes sense since search engines too emphasize on providing its user with a positive searching experience.
We hope you understand the huge importance of all above tips in improving your SEO approach. Everything this article cover can be narrowed down to one fundamental, crucial principle.
That is if you offer your audience or prospects the best experience, you will imminently benefit from a definite growth in Google’s searches.
