Basic and unchanging principles of website promotion
Printed 2011-05-20
Whenever you need something - a product, information, a contact number - what do you usually do first? You open Yandex or Google and enter your request. Google processes over 3.5 billion search queries every day. Therefore, it is not surprising that so many companies invest money and time in search engine optimization (SEO), which helps the site to rise to the top of the search ranking for queries related to their business, products or services.
The average SEO often seems complicated, intimidating and full of technical details. This is so ... but not quite so. Everyone who decides to order a site development must ensure that the following simple principles of SEO preparation are implemented.
Here Seven quick and easy ways to increase website traffic by making it more visible to search engines:
1. Optimize each page
This is probably the most difficult item on this list, but it is fundamental. Without this, it will be difficult to improve search engine visibility.
All pages of the site, especially the main list (main, contacts, etc.) must contain short, high-quality written text content. Ideally, this content should be optimized for specific targeted keywords and phrases (no frills: the text should not look unnatural). If you have pages with no content, do not let Google and Yandex index them using the noindex attribute.
2. Unique headers and meta tags
H1 tags are used to highlight page titles, Title - to highlight the results of search engine results on pages, and Description - for the main part of the snippet. These tags not only inform Yandex and Google about the content and purpose of each of the pages on the site, but also determine how they appear in the search results.
Thus, they serve a twofold purpose: increase the ranking of the site's pages and increase the clickability of your site on the search results pages.
3. Remove 404 errors.
404 errors annoy users and can affect the number of pages that a search engine can index. By themselves, they are unlikely to hurt your positions, but still it's usually worthwhile to install a redirect 301 or restore a page if you notice a 404 error where it should not be.
The Google Search Console has a great tool for checking: see the "Crawl Errors" section. If your site is powered by Wordpress, you can download one of several plugins designed to automatically convert 404 pages to something more interesting and useful, or to automatically redirect through 301 redirects to another page (for example, to the main one).
4. Social Media Connections
This is a simple action, and if you haven't already done so, you probably just missed the time. On the blog page, add repost buttons to social networks so that users can easily and actively share content. Social promotions contribute directly to ranking and can make your site more visible.
It is confirmed that this advantage is one of the two main ranking factors in the Google algorithm. If your site is built on Wordpress, there are a number of plugins that can automatically add social media buttons to your site.
5. Optimize Images
You may be using images in your content, but are you optimizing them well? It does not take long to bring your images in the best shape for the search engines; all you have to do is name the images exactly; write a keyword rich description and add alt tags.
If the optimization is done correctly, your image will be indexed and searchable in Google Image Search - an indirect but valuable way to get to your site.
6. Website loading speed
Website speed is not a decisive factor for search engine visibility, but it is certainly important. In addition, a faster site usually leads to better user behavior, which means, among other benefits, better behavioral factors.
You can increase download speed by optimizing images, using a good caching plugin, removing unnecessary metadata, and using only those plugins that you really need.
7. Use micro-markup
Implementing micro-markup is not always easy, but it is an effective (and more or less simple) way to make your site more visible in search engines. You may have noticed that sometimes a separate response to your query appears above or next to typical results; in addition, in the results of the issuance (in snippets) of some sites there is an indication of the address, phone number and other details.
If you want this to be the case in your case, you need to enable structured micro-markup for the various types of content on your site. Schema.org is the standard, and they have some great guides on this.
Do not think that these seven tricks are fully relevant to SEO. In fact, they barely touch the surface of what SEO is, and they don't even take into account external SEO. These tactics also will not bring you significant difference overnight, but they are simple to implement and can provide a significant increase in the visibility of your site on search.
Use them and remember that although SEO is a fairly sophisticated tool, it can also be studied by every interested marketer.