21 SEO Secrets – Your Organic Traffic Will Never Be The Same

Have you ever heard anyone say that ranking on Google is hard work  — and there just aren’t any SEO secrets that can help you boost your ranking?

Well, that’s not true.  And we have some search engine optimization secrets for you.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is about delivering relevant search results to users based on their online searches. The most relevant pages related to that search query will rank higher on the search engine results page.

Digital marketing professionals understand the importance of SEO and the need to implement a proper strategy. However, only defining what those keywords are isn’t enough to improve your website’s search engine ranking.

To increase your website’s visibility across search engines, it’s important to follow these basic SEO guidelines. In fact, we have 21 SEO secrets that are sure to have an impact on your website’s visibility.

1. Understand Google’s Ranking Algorithm

It’s no secret that Google is constantly changing its algorithm. They don’t always announce when a change is made; therefore it remains a bit of a mystery. This is still the biggest obstacle to SEO success. Moz has a Google Algorithm Change History that will help you research the changes. The Google Webmaster Central tool is also a good reference.

2. SSL Encryption

An SSL encryption is a small but mighty SEO secrets tool to consider. Google introduced it in 2014, and it has grown in popularity ever since. The SSL encryption — or “HTTPS” — boosts the security of your website. It’s great for SEO and will keep your visitors’ data safe when they land on your website. Consider activating an SSL encryption if you have an eCommerce website that requires users to enter a username, a password and credit card information to complete a transaction. Your website visitors might not know your site is encrypted with SSL, but you and the search engines crawling your website will. It doesn’t take long to implement, either. All you have to do is call your hosting provider.

SSL can be either a single domain, wildcard SSL, or multi domain SSL. A site owner should understand the requirement and choose the SSL certificate, for example, if a site is running on unlimited subdomains then a low priced or cheap wildcard SSL will do a good job here. On the other side, a single domain site needs a single domain SSL certificate, which would be less costly.

3. Structured Data

The thing in our SEO secrets list is structured data. It helps Google decide what search results will appear. This is also referred to as Schema. A combination of ratings, images and locations will improve your site’s ranking and increase its chance of appearing above its competitors.

4. Title Tags

Does each and every page on your website have a title tag? If it does, take a closer look. Title tags should be under 55 characters. The title tag tells Google and other search engines what content is on your website. The keywords should match the content that’s on the webpage. The better the keyword selection, the higher the chance your website will appear when someone searches for what’s on your site. This is one of the main SEO secrets that you need to know!

5. Meta Descriptions

Let’s take a look at some basic SEO for website- Meta descriptions. similar to title tags, set an expectation for what information a person will see when they reach your page. It can improve click-through-rates, which will also improve keyword rankings. A meta description should be no longer than 160 characters.

The language should be compelling with a call-to-action that will entice visitors to visit your website over a competitor’s.

6. Use H1 Headings Properly

The H1 tag isn’t just a piece of bold website text that creates a heading. It is the most important of our SEO secrets list.  It sets an expectation for the content that follows. H1 headings should be used at the top of web pages to introduce content and should also include a keyword relevant to your website. This is just basic seo for website that you need to have. 

7. Include Canonical Tags

Canonical tags should be used in the header of your coding and is another good tip from our search engine optimization secrets list. This will essentially tell Google that this is the truest version of a respective web page. It makes it harder for a code to be scrapped and eliminates competition from a neighboring website with the same coding. In other words, it helps you avoid having duplicate content on your website.

8. Name All Images and Alt Tags

You need images not only to improve a user’s experience on your website but also because they have a positive impact on your SEO. It’s not enough to simply have images on a website, though. To help with your Google search ranking, come up with creative file names and alt tags which describe what the image is. This content will help Google and other search engines identify what the picture is. The more relevant it is to the search query, the more likely your website will show up.

9. Inspect Your Website for URL 404 Error Code Pages

Your SEO strategy might include links to other websites or pages within your own website. Sometimes pages are no longer available and content is permanently removed from a website. When that happens, website visitors land on a 404 error page.  Double-check the links on your website to ensure pages haven’t been taken down without your knowledge.

• If you’ve included links to other blog posts or websites in your content, double-check those as well.
• Simply change the link to another reliable source if the pages have been taken down.
• If your own website has an error page, customize it to match your website’s design.

It’s better to have a custom 404 error code page than to have an empty page — it doesn’t send a good message to search engines or site visitors.

10. Don’t Forget About a Sitemap

Your website needs to be indexed in order for it to show up in search results. A robots.txt file helps you identify which pages you want to have indexed and crawled by search engines. Without this, there might be pages appearing in search engines that are internal, password protected, or not ready to go live. A sitemap tells search engines what pages are where, making it easier for your website to appear properly in search engines. The more detailed your sitemap is, the easier it is for crawling and indexing to occur automatically.

11. Evaluate Your URL Structure

A URL is more important than you may think it is. Your website’s URL structure is like a math formula — when followed properly it will give you the right answer. It’s important to eliminate any of the following characters from your existing URLs:

• Underscores
• Capital letters
• Special characters

Your URLs should also be short and sweet. People say that long URLs are better for long tail searches related to your topic, but be careful. While this is actually true, you’re still missing out on a bigger optimization opportunity. Short URLs that are focused on the main keyword you want to rank for will drastically improve your online ranking.

12. Evaluate Your Site Speed

User experience is incredibly important, and search engines will also notice if your website takes a long time to load. They won’t be able to crawl or index your pages, and, as a result, your pages might be virtually inexistent online.

Your website should be designed with your visitor in mind. Nobody wants to wait a long time for a page to load, and slow site speeds will tempt visitors to visit a competitor’s page. Your website’s load time should be under two seconds on a desktop and under one second on mobile. If your website has a load time of four seconds or longer, it could cause a significant loss in web traffic, and lower your Google ranking at the same time.

13. Go mobile

Having a mobile design for any website is a necessity today. Most people use handheld devices to access the Internet, and the chances are high that your website visitors are doing the same. Google is focusing its SEO efforts on mobile; it’s recently launched the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) program, which helps the search engine deliver quality websites with an almost instantaneous load time.

By delivering high-quality web pages via mobile searches, Google is aiming to improve the overall user experience. Websites that have the AMP markup are more likely to appear in search results on mobile. If your website isn’t one of these, it will hurt your SEO efforts.

14. Do the Right Kind of Keyword Research to Increase Organic Traffic

Find out what keywords are already bringing traffic to your website. A SERP scan can identify these keywords for you. SERP keywords will show you what is driving traffic to your website, which will help you improve your overall keyword research strategy.

Your website should also rank for commercial keywords, as informational keywords will only take you so far. Informational keywords like ‘free download’ or ‘how to install’ aren’t always effective. Using a phrase like ‘top products for’ will help you better target your audience and drive more visitors to your website.

15. Use Long Tail Keywords

Implement long tail keywords into your content marketing strategy. Broad phrases about the product or service you want to promote won’t necessarily generate high amounts of traffic to your website — simply because of the high competition. However, an SEO strategy that uses long tail keywords will. Such keywords aren’t heavily used by online marketers. Nevertheless, when such keywords are properly optimized in content, they will bring less overall traffic, but more qualified leads to your website.

16. Quality Over Quantity

The content on your website must be unique and creative. It has to be relevant to your readers, and not published just for SEO purposes. To create relevant content, research the latest trends and write blog posts that are engaging. Teach your audience how to do something, and always update old content.

17. Build Relationships, Not Links

Link building is the most relevant of all SEO secrets that refers to building credibility on your website by having your links appear on other web pages. What SEO specialists and strategists should be doing, instead of link building, is establishing relationships with local influencers and businesses. By connecting your content with real people and real websites, you’ll develop more valuable relationships in the long-term and better link engagement.

18. Identify What’s Working and What Isn’t

Building linking relationships with local influencers and businesses is a great way to boost your website’s SEO. However, a proper analysis will provide the insight you really need. Tracking your SEO metrics is important to understand what aspects of your SEO linking strategy are working — i.e., which links drive the most traffic to your website.

The more data you have, the better decisions you can make to leverage your SEO strategy and capitalize on your efforts.There are inexpensive programs you can start using right away. For example, Google Analytics is free, is easy to set up, and will soon identify how your SEO strategy is performing once you’ve set up your dashboard.

19. Over-optimization Exists

Over-optimization is proof that there can sometimes be too much of a good thing. Improving your ranking for certain online keywords is ideal, but mutilating your content by stuffing keywords into everything you write, or building way too many links with the same anchor text will not only look unnatural but also hurt your SEO strategy.

20. Avoid SEO Attacks

SEO marketers find that negative SEO attacks are becoming more prevalent as they continue working on a strategy. Yes, competitors might try to penalize your website and get your website removed from Google. These types of negative attacks occur when competitors build thousands of low-quality backlinks to your site. To prevent this from happening to your website (and your SEO strategy), keep an eye on the backlinks your site is receiving. The SEO tool Linkody sends you an alert if another website links to yours, so you’ll be able to identify an SEO attack and divert it before it’s too late.

21. Don’t Forget Your Audience

Blogging for SEO has two sides: It does help with SEO, but it also exists to engage your audience and convince them to continue coming to your website. Think about what you as a reader would want to get out of your website upon visiting it. When you think about writing from an SEO perspective, all you’ll think about is writing for a higher ranking, and you will thus end up over-optimizing the content. By focusing on what the purpose of your blog really is, you’ll strike a positive balance between these two approaches.  

Now it’s your turn!

How many of these SEO secrets are missing from your current strategy?

It’s never too late to improve your strategy, so you should use all of these SEO secrets. 

Follow this useful guide to SEO secrets in order to enhance your website’s search engine ranking.

Even just a few changes will have a significant impact on your website’s ranking. Don’t forget – it will still take time to see your hard work come to fruition!

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This post was created by Justin Cook. He is a digital marketing strategist who specializes in SEO and content marketing. When not at work optimizing blogs, he is an active video gamer.