Search engine optimization is slow work. Getting to the top with a more difficult keyword can take a very long time. Once you’ve done that, however, it is most certainly very profitable.
A way to constantly move forward is to do something every day; to keep on going. Accordingly, we’ve put together a list of 31 tips that you can easily complete at the rate of one per day. So, here you go: a month’s worth of search engine optimization, in one easy presentation.
This article was first published in 2014, but we liked it so much that we decided it was time for an update. The tips are still relevant, but some names have changed; Webmaster Tools, for example, is now known as the Search Console.
31 SEO-Tips
Go through your titles. The maximum number of characters, including spaces, needs to be somewhere between 55 and 61 for Google to include everything in the search results. This really depends on the width of the pixels you should have with the Google fonts (512 is max). Screaming Frog can help.
Find the pages with the highest bounce rate. Open Google Analytics and find the pages that have the highest bounce rate for search traffic. Identify the problems; what is it on these pages that doesn’t let visitors do more on your site? Sometimes it is about technical problems, such as the time it takes to load a page; sometimes it is about the content not matching the intent of the person who did the search. Here you may need to try different things until you find the right tactic.
Read through your text and correct mis-spellings and any grammatical errors. Of course, if you have a big site, this may not be achievable in one day, but text is extremely important for search engine optimization. Start with the most important pieces of text, read them through again and make sure that everything is correct.
Find and eliminate the 404s. Unless it’s a very special set of circumstances, you don’t want to serve 404-responses to Google, or anyone else for that matter. Use the Search Console to find any 404s and turn them into something useful.
Find more Long Tail. With the help of the Search Console and the Google Keyword planner, you can get suggestions for more words and phrases. Find 3 to 4-word combinations and build content for these, whilst always, of course, remembering Panda as part of the process.
Write a robust buyers’ guide on any given product, suggesting what any potential customer should consider when buying. Buyers’ guides are a great way to find customers who are in the market for a product, but who haven’t yet made a final decision.
Tag your products or articles. By using tags to sort similar items and products, you can gain a lot of relevance within the site. Make sure that similar articles link to each other as often as possible.
Create and upload an updated XML sitemap to Webmaster Tools. Doing this regularly makes indexing easier for Google.
Improve and market your old material. Don’t let old articles or products languish unseen at the bottom of your categories. Improve the pages, fill them with content and make them visible again.
Remove unnecessary links from navigation. Less is more when it comes to search engine optimization, at least as far as navigation is concerned. Have a re-think about your navigation; are there any links you can do without?
Put yourself in the shoes of a competitor. Use Sistrix (now that our previous recommendation, SEOlytics, no longer exists) to identify which keywords a competitor might consider important and consider imitating them.
Write, write and write again, just like I’m doing here and now. If one of Sweden’s best paid search engine optimizers sits and writes long blog posts, there must be something to it, right?
Get to know an important blogger. Actually, I think you should do this every day. Links are the life-blood of the internet, and it’s no wonder that Google ranks links as the single most important factor in the algorithm. Make sure you get to know all the people that might one day consider linking to you.
Measure your positions, using a good tool. We would offer Advanced Web Ranking as our tip, though SEOlytics or Gserp also work.
Check the size of your images. If they are too large or too small, this is no good. Check that the pictures are at least of the size that they appear on the page. There is often much to gain here, because Google seems to prioritize speed more and more. By working actively with compression and size, you can be rewarded with much-improved positioning.
Speed up the site. Cache-solutions, minimizing CSS and so on. There is a lot you can do to speed up a site, and speed really counts for a great deal as far as search engine optimization is concerned. Slow sites are pushed down in the search results, and fast sites are just more user-friendly all round.
Make sure to include keywords in your main headings. This trick is overlooked surprisingly often, not so frequently among web shops, but on other sites. A catchy slogan as H1 is all well and good, but will not be help conversion rates. Tell the reader what the page is about and make sure the appropriate keyword is included.
Go through your descriptions. Google has recently changed the font in the search results, so your Meta-descriptions might no longer be properly visible. Check them and make sure to include the keyword of the page at the same time. Screaming Frog can help here as well.
Make sure that no one is copying your content. Pick out some sentences from your text and do a search in Google using quotes. Sometimes the content will have been copied, and this can create problems. Although resolution can prove difficult, an email can often solve more than you might think possible. Additionally, if your competitor is higher in the rankings than you, you may want to re-write your text.
Locate any 302s. Some CMS creates 302-redirects or other strange redirects. Find any possible 302 and change them to 301. Screaming Frog can save you a lot of time when doing this.
Sign up for Places for Business. By putting your business on the map, you can bring in some more customers.
Add a video. For some segments, video works very well. Try adding a video to a page to see the results.
Get a good link. Nowadays, a really good link can make a huge difference. Locate any resource within your segment on the net and make sure to put a link there.
Pay attention to people who link to you. By so doing, you show the world that you regard this as important and that you are willing to give credit to these people. It is a signal worth sending.
Write a press release. Google has argued that press releases aren’t worthwhile anymore, but we say that they’re wrong. A well-written press release with a decent link to your site will improve your search engine optimization.
Be sure to have correct and search engine-friendly search paths. To have the keyword in the search path still matters; there is no reason to have anything other than proper static search paths.
Watch your anchor texts. Take a look in MajesticSEO to check your anchor texts on incoming links. If you have worked with search engine optimization for a while, there is a risk that it might look a little too aggressive. Remove all aggressive anchor texts.
Hooray for anchor texts. Check through your internal anchor texts, where you can afford to be more aggressive, but not too much so. Make sure to link to pages using the keywords they should be visible on.
Remove irrelevant information. If, for instance, you used to have a blog or a forum which are no longer active on the site, clear them off. If you previously had a more sprawling site, possibly because you sold a bit of this and a bit of that, or if there is content which for some reason is not on topic, take it all away. Decide whether any particular content really belongs on the site.
Make sure that all your images have Alt and Title. Tagging your images is just common courtesy. It is not only good for the visually impaired, but also for search engines that might otherwise have a hard time understanding pictures.
Use synonyms. Make sure to add synonyms to the keyword you want a page to be visible on. Do not hesitate to add more text to include important synonyms, inflected forms or other variations on the words.
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