SEO secrets revealed
SEO is interesting, the rules are always changing and search engines like Google never reveal how exactly their algorithms (how they rank websites) actually work.
One thing I will advise, is to never cheat, don’t try any quick fixes or tricks to get your website to the top of Google, because Google knows.
Organic is the way. An active blog and social media accounts are what you need. You will only be number 1 on Google if that is where you should be – Google wants to be useful and give accurate information to its users.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is about marketing your website, and we must play by the rules. To win, you must first learn those rules – here are a few SEO secrets that “SEOers” employ while promoting your website.
SEO Plugins
SEOers will install SEO plugins on your website (such as Yoast SEO for WordPress). These plugins allow easy modification of title and description tags, and will give a traffic-light indication to how well a page is doing in regards to SEO.
Updating your content
A quick method employed by SEOers is to update your existing content. Rewriting it will show search engines that your website is still active and needs reindexing. This will begin to make search engines visit your website more often, so the text and images may be tweaked on a regular basis.
Listicals
Listicals or Listicles are blog posts which are broken down into “top 5” or “10 facts” etc. They are easier to read and more appealing when shared on social media*. It has long been known that visitors to websites will ignore large blocks of text – so breaking them down is essential. SEOers will make your cotnent more appealing by adding sub headings and images, too.
*Be careful not to clickbait.
Backlinks
A Backlink is a link to your website from another. SEO companies will try to use authoraitive websites to put backlinks on. Many SEOers still use websites like Hubpages to write articles about your business and sneak in links to your homepage. Another method is creating microsites (websites which focus on a niche area of your business, and link back to your main site). These efforts sometimes get results, but having a link to your website from your local news website in a press release will work much better.
Adding videos
When visitors to your website start watching videos, they are less likely to click away. A 1 minute long video that gets your visitors’ attention will force them to stay on your page for at least that amount of time. This increases the overall time that visitors are spending on your website and will show Google that your content is relevant. This is a simple, measurable SEO trick which will increase the “average session duration” of your website.
Speeding up your site
Website load time is essential for SEO. An SEOer will go through your content and compress image sizes, and will update background images to CSS. CSS3 allows web designers to create gradients and drop-shadows, as well as other effects, purely in code – which increases the load time of your website.
Many website which appear to look very graphical, often have no images at all. Even social icons are created using special fonts.