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Ways to improve your Site’s Ranking (SEO)

Website RankingFor a great number of people Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of concealed tricks and procedures that are only known by the “SEO gurus” who recognizes the mysteries of Google. A few years ago SEO was easier, as it was enough to create a landing page and submit content in articles directories, use multiple keywords and get some links in order to achieve high rankings. But, after the Penguin, Panda and Humming Bird updates the SEO has become a way difficult and requires a much technical and in-depth understanding of “Search Engine Ranking Factors”.

Today’s SEO requires several different aspects to be optimized on the website. Some of the most important aspects are discussed here:

1. Keyword Research

Keywords is the first and most critical part of an SEO campaign because if you choose wrong keywords, then you would not be able to get better results and will have no return on investment. With a keywords research you try to find the most potential keywords and phrases that are people searching to find your website and product and services. After keyword research, you decide the keywords to be targeted in your SEO campaign.

Focus on high volume and low competition:Keyword Research

Ideally, the keywords with the higher potential are the ones with a high search volume, but with a low competition. Unfortunately, as usual also the competitors are doing a similar research, these keywords are limited and there are not enough to support a full SEO campaign.

Add long tail keywords:

One keyword searches are very generic in nature and do not offer the better leads and conversions. It is suggested to target “long tail” keywords because now the more searched are long containing two, three or even four keywords. Long tail keywords are more focused and offer potential clicks. Every individual search may have a low search volume, but usually the competition is lower, so it is easier to rank among the first positions.

Perform a competitive analysis:

Competitive analysis is the most important thing to be done. Analyze your competitor website, offered product and services, targeted keywords and phrase

2. Technical Optimization

Search engines use special software to collect the data from websites that are called “Crawlers”. These crawlers sometimes are also name as “Bots” and “Spiders”.

If a website is not technically perfect, then these crawlers would not be able to read website’s text and code. The websites that are not properly coded and crawlers are unable to access normally rank low in the search engine result pages (SERPs). It is important that the following technical elements are checked.search-engine-optimization

URL structure:

SEO friendly practice for URLs is to keep them below 100 characters long. It is better to used dashes instead of using underscores and avoid special character in the URL. Try to keep the URLs neat and clean.

Title tags:

Title tag plays an important role in SERPs ranking and every page should have a unique “Title” tag that should be less than 70 characters and even in some cases Google shows the title of less than 65 characters. It is also important that the basic keywords exist in the beginning of the title. The title should be meaningful and it’s better if the most potential keyword or phrase is used at the starting of title.

Meta description tags:

Meta description tag should be used on every page and a unique and inspiring description should be placed.  The length of Meta description should be less than 156 characters and closing Meta description on some “call to action” is best practice, e.g. Call Now, Order Now, Call +1 888 888 888 etc. Ending Meta description at “call to action” increases the chances that user will do what you have asked.

Heading tags:

Headings are the most imperative part to display the important data. These are part of the HTML of a web page and are visible to the visitors. There are six different heading, from H1 to H6. Every page should have only one, unique H1 heading tag.

Duplicate content:

Duplicate content means the same content under two URLs or on the different pages. Duplicate content can have a negative effect on SERP rankings because it confuses the search engines to decide which one is original. It is recommended to removing the duplicate content either by putting the fresh and different content on all pages or redirecting the less important to most important.

Structured data:

With the help of structured data, you can add special markup to your content to make search engines understand type of data in a better way. This can potentially help to achieve higher rankings. Structured data provides rich snippets in the search engine result pages, making it more prominent for the page it has been used.
In http://www.schema.org, you can find different schemas for different types of content, like articles, products, events, movies, persons of organizations and use them in your website.

Sitemaps:

Search engines use the XML sitemap protocol, so it is critical that your website contains an XML sitemap. After its creation, it has to be submitted in Google Webmaster Tools, so that all of the website’s content it’s crawled. It also has to be updated and re-submitted every time new content is added in the website.

Rich media:

Every image should have a related tag. This is an HTML tag that allows to briefly describing the content of the image, so that search images can understand it. It is also helpful to use related keywords for the filename, instead of random letters and numbers.For videos, you can add the transcription text and add a video sitemap in your website.