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Search Engine Optimization
So you have just finished setting up your new website and have made your business pages on Facebook, Twitter, Google + and every other social media platform you could think of. You seem to have done all the basics right and now want to have a commendable internet visibility.
Wouldn’t it be amazing to ensure that every time anyone googles anything related to your business or industry, yours is one of the first results, that too free of cost?
Read on to find out the steps that will help you achieve that coveted ranking. Remember, you DO NOT need to perform all the steps. Some may not even be applicable to you. From those that do, only do as many as you can.
Set up Gmail Have filters for your new site, or configure a new email address
- Install Google Analytics
- Install Google Search Console
- Install Bing Webmaster Tools
- If you’re using WordPress, install Google Analytics by Yoast and Yoast SEO.
- Check Google’s Search Console for 404 / 500 errors, duplicate content, missing titles and other technical errors that Google has found.
- Keep checking the messages Google sends
- Check for more errors using browseo Pay special attention to 302 redirects that should be 301 redirects.
- Use Screaming Frog to find broken links, errors, and crawl problems
- Use Google’s Keyword Planner. Here, make sure you consider searcher intent and difficulty, pick 1 keyword per page, and preferably start with lower-volume keywords first.
- Check link profiles of competitors. Understand the anchor text they are using, and how and where they use their links. Take help from the SEO Toolbox, ahrefs, Link Diagnosis, Open Site Explorer, or Majestic
- Incorporate a primary keyword into your page URL
- Ensure your title tags are 65 characters or less as anything over this will be truncated in results
- Ensure your meta description tags are 155 characters or less. Like title tags, any spillover will be truncated in results
- Think about your H1 tag – its usage, the presence of your keyword in the tag, its placement with respect to any other (H2, H3, H4..) tags, number of H1 tags
- Ensure you have an abundance of search engine-friendly content on your site. Having at least 100 words of text would give the engines enough opportunities to understand your topic. Anything below 100 might skip you from certain searches. Absolutely refrain from putting inconsequential text.
- Use synonyms in your copy.
- Put apt descriptive ALT tags and filenames on your images as search engines use these to read images
- Link to your internal pages in an SEO-friendly way and describe the linked page well enough for the users and search engine to know what the page is about
- Do not use anchor text in your global navigation. Place in-content links instead.
- Perform off-page optimization and build inks. Use ClickMinded Link Building Strategy Guide to get started.
- Use 301 redirects, canonical tags or use Google Webmaster Tools to fix any duplicate content that might be indexing and penalizing your site
- Use absolute URLs in your code? Some CMS platforms give you the option. Use absolute URLs instead of relative ones.
- Check your site speed with Google PageSpeed Tools
- Create an XML sitemap and submit it to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools? Use XML-Sitemaps.com or the Google XML Sitemaps WordPress Plugin.
- Create a Robots.txt file and submit it in Google and Bing Webmaster Tools
- Claim your business / website username on other major networks for reputation management reasons. This is to ensure your account name belongs only to you. This will also lead to you “owning” all the results on the first page of a search for your brand if you’re a new website or company.
- Check if your website is mobile friendly. Use BrowserStack for that
- Once you have set up your social media accounts, add Authorship Markup to your site. Authorship markup search snippet images are gone, but you may still want to add it to your site. Use the Authorship Markup Walkthrough.
- Use an SEO Audit Toolto double-check everything once you’re live
- Review all of the free SEO tools at your disposal before completing this audit. If you don’t understand some of the high-level concepts, review the Beginner’s Guide to SEO.
Once you have checked the steps that apply to your page, you should see the results soon!
Wish you the best!
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