Hitting that #1 natural result spot in Google for a high traffic, nicely converting search term is seen as the path to Website success. Sadly, there can only be one number one, while there is always an increasing amount of competitor websites.
Following these top 20 SEO tips will give you the advantage over most of your online competition and may even get you onto that sought after 1st page:
1. Do proper keyword research - get as much input as possible from colleagues, competitor sites, focus groups or random strangers. The idea is to get inside your potential site visitors' heads and find out what they would type into a search box to find your site-pages.
2. Page Titles - Each page on your site should have a unique page title, with a consistent structure along the lines of: "Main page Keyword - call to action - site/brand name" - all within 66 characters.
3. Clean up your site code - Messy code might mean the search crawlers can't even read your page, let alone index it in their results. Make sure that as much JavaScript and CSS is referenced from external files, that your HTML and other on-page code doesn't contain errors, and then your pages will be properly crawled by search engines.
4. Page Headlines H1 tags - Each page should have 'one' unique page headline, that contains a main relevant keyword, you can then use H2 and H3 tags multiple times for sub-headers containing other relevant terms.
5. Use Alt and Title elements - Search engines still mainly view your website in terms of text, so make sure that any non-text items like images, video, flash etc. have proper text descriptions in the Alt or Title elements. These should primarily be descriptive, but can also contain key phrases.
6. Internal Site Link Structure - Search crawlers navigate around your site through your navigation and internal links, so make sure your most important pages have the most internal links pointing to them, and that no individual page is orphaned (stuck without any internal links pointing to it!)
7. Meta Description tag - Even though this tag isn't used for finding your site, it can be the difference between a searcher clicking on your result or not. Make sure you use 155 characters to get a unique two-line description of your site page. This is your Search results' marketing message that will make your results stand out from the crowd.
8. Use Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml files - The robots.txt file is really to tell the search crawler (robot) where not to go on your site, this would include code directories, pdf directories or even terms & conditions and legal pages, in fact any page you would prefer not to appear in the search results. A sitemap.xml file is the opposite, here you are listing all those pages you want the search engines to index, and can even add other information like page importance or update rate. Google points out that this doesn't guarantee that they will index your page but at least they know about them.
9. Use Web Master Tools - Webmaster Tools tells you what Google already knows about your site, and tells you about any crawl issues it might have with it. The information they give you is very valuable to making your site as search friendly as possible.
10. Use Analytics - Having proper information about your site is essential, so long as you can get to it and actually act on it. Proper analytics will highlight any technical problems with your site, can improve conversion by testing page variations, and basically will make your site perform better and be more relevant and useful to your target audience.
11. Engage with your visitors- allowing user interaction and comments on your site not only gives you constantly updated content, but also gives your site visitor greater connectivity with your site by being able to comment on it. Obviously, this needs to be monitored, but the benefits of an engaged audience outweigh the odd negative comment you should be acting on. Search engines love updated content on web-pages, and this is an easy way to achieve that on a regular basis.
12. Are you Social?- If possible and relevant then get a social media strategy and become part of the online conversation,create a Facebook group, widget or game; get on forums and blogs, get organised and get commented on. With Search engines including real-time search results, having a social media presence will increase your chances of appearing higher in the search results.
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