SEO
Search Engine Optimization:
Useful Free Tools From Google
Google Analytics
Free Tools from Google
Google Analytics tracks and reports on the traffic your website is getting. It will help you to determine where your traffic is coming from. and what pages are getting the most amount traffic, what’s the bounce rate, and more very useful metrics. The application is free, and has options to purchase some add-ons. Google Analytics 360 Suite service is available for business analytics needs.
Resources:
Google Analytics (base): https://www.google.com/analytics/#?modal_active=none
Google Analytics 360 Suite:
https://www.google.com/analytics/360-suite/#?modal_active=none
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free web service provided by Google for webmasters. It helps you to be able to check the indexing status of your website pages, giving you information and feedback how your website is performing on Google search. It also will help you to optimize your website’s visibility.
Resources:
Google Search Console: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/search-analytics
Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager manages JavaScript and HTML tags. Tags such as these are used to perform analytical analysis and data tracking for websites. With Google Tag manager you will be able to add and manage tabs to tracking codes to your website without needing to edit the site’s code each time.
Resources:
Google Tag Manager: https://developers.google.com/tag-manager/
Other Tools
Yoast
Are you using WordPress? Install one of several Yoast SEO plugins! Plugins will provide overall optimization to your WordPress site or cms website, or you can install more specific plugins. Yoast can help you with your video content, pump up your local visibility, get new content from Google News, and improve your website e-commerce platform performance.
Resources:
Yoast: https://yoast.com
Yoast SEO: https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
Yoast WordPress Plugins: https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/
SEO Training: https://yoast.com/academy/courses/
More Tasks
Keyword Research
People who use Google use keywords and phrases to find websites that match their needs. Know and understand your keywords, this will help you increase your search engine results and bring traffic to your website.
Resources:
Google AdWords:
https://adwords.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/#?modal_active=none
KWFinder: https://kwfinder.com
SEMrush: https://www.semrush.com
WordStream SEO Keywords: https://www.wordstream.com/seo-keyword
Place Keywords in URLs
When creating unique content try to place the appropriate keywords in the page URL. However, keep such usage to a minimum — one or two per URL, for example, Stuffing a URL with keywords can backfire — analytical examinations of search engine rankings shows that a short URL might place higher in the results page than longer URLs. In addition, try not to change a URL that has been already been indexed by search engines, it may impact page ranking! Do Not Stuff Keywords
Resources:
Moz Blog (in depth examination of URLs): https://moz.com/learn/seo/url
Add Compelling Keywords to Title Tags
While keywords in the URL can help with search engine results, it’s not enough. You need to create a unique title tag so people will want to go to your site. The more visitors who go to your site, the higher the clickthrough rate and the higher your rating in search engine results.
Add Keywords to Meta Descriptions
A meta descriptions is an HTML tag of up to 300 characters that summarizes your page’s content. If a phrase that has been entered into the search engine matches your meta information, then your page description will be show up on the search engine results page.
Make sure to Add Keywords to Your Headers
Make sure you have an H1 tag on ever page, and that it appears before any other heading tag. Place one primary keyword in your H1 tag. You can place keywords in H2-H6 tags, but the value of this is questionable. Use your keyword three times per page — if possible — and have at least 100 words per page (but 500 or more is ideal). In addition, don’t create new content for your site unless you have at least 100 words of content to upload. Must be unique content.
Try using Synonyms
Google, and other search engines, try using synonyms ranking system to display the relevant content from your website. In addition, Google’s Hummingbird search algorithm looks not only at the word itself, but intent and usage. By using synonyms on your site means you can get search hits that aren’t exact matches, but still are relevant to your site’s content and purpose.
Use Latent Semantic Indexing in Your Site Content
Latent semantic indexing, also known as Latent semantic indexing (or LSI), is a mathematical formula used to determine relationships between words. Including keywords that are synonyms can help the search engines better understand your web page content.
Add Descriptive ALT Tags and Filenames Your Site Content
Search engines can’t “see” images and other files uploaded to your site. In order for them to collate your relevant content, if you want to add ALT tags to image and file names. Be descriptive, not cryptic, with your ALT tags — descriptive tags will register better with search engines and will help your site appear in relevant searches.
Use Content-relevant Keywords In Your Anchor Text
When creating internal links to content within your site, make sure the text used in the hyperlink contains relevant keywords relating to the link’s destination. Google looks at the language used in hyperlinks and having descriptive links helps determine what the linked content is about.
Going Forward
Technical SEO Checklist
Using Google Search Console you can check your site for crawl errors, duplicate content errors, missing titles, and other such issues. It will also allow you to see data showing your search rankings, site visibility, click-through rate, and more. Once you have found any such errors, correct them immediately.
Resources:
Google Search Console: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/search-analytics
Identify Bad Redirects
Check Your Site For Broken Links, Errors, And Crawl Problems
No matter your site’s size, any of these factors is an issue. And, the larger the site, the larger the issue will be. Broken links, errors in text (be it links, headers, and metadata) and other crawl errors make it harder for search engines to find the relevant content in your site, index it, make it available for searches, and direct traffic to you.
Test Your Web Site’s Speed
Now a days visitors have no patience for a slow web site. Web sites that load slow have very high bounce rates, as visitors /customers lose patience with the slow loading process and leave.
Resources:
GiftOfSpeed: https://www.giftofspeed.com
GTmetrix: https://gtmetrix.com
PageSpeed: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Pingdom: https://tools.pingdom.com
Make sure Your Web Site is Mobile Friendly
More and more web traffic comes from mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablets). You must have a web site that is responsive, so it can adapt to different screen sizes and devices. Otherwise, your site will not work or look good on mobile devices and this will have a bad impact on searches and visits from mobile device users.
Resources:
Bing’s Mobile Friendly Test: https://www.bing.com/webmaster/tools/mobile-friendliness
BrowserStack: https://www.browserstack.com/responsive
Google’s Mobile Friendly Test: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
Create XML Sitemap-Must Have
An XML sitemap allows search engines to understand the underlying structure of your site. It also allows search engines to find all of the pages on your site that you want (or need) indexed. Once you have created the XML sitemap, submit it to Google Search Console. You can make a free site map from our web hosting control panel see the demo.
Create A Robots.txt File
A robots.txt file will determines what a web robot (also known as a crawler, spider, or wanderer) is allowed to do with regards to each page on your site. Install a robots.txt file in the top-level directory will you control how SE crawlers and indexes your web site. You can even set up a wide range of different protocols for search engines.
Other Things
Claim Your Brand Name On Social Media And Networking Sites
Your brand name needs to belong to you. Your domain and social media profiles all need to reflect your brand name. If you’re a new company or website, staking your claim early means you can own all of the results on the first page of any search about your or your brand.
Resources:
Namechk: https://www.namecheck.com
Use an SEO Audit Tool
Use automated SEO audit tools to speed up the process of examining your site for errors. This will simplify the process of performing an audit, allowing you to spend more time working on content and marketing strategy.
Setup Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing is what Microsoft uses as their search engine. It is the default search engine used with Microsoft’s browsers Internet Explorer and Edge. Want to tap into Bing?, you need to install Bing’s webmaster tools. Its Free just like Google Bing is now together with Yahoo so one tool for both search engines.
Resources:
Bing Webmaster Tools: https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
Glossary
Backlink: A hyperlink that links from a webpage back to your website or a specific page in your site.
CTR: Click-through Rate
LSI: Latent Semantic Indexing
SEO: Search Engine Results
SERP: Search Engine Results Page