No Matter How Small, Your Business Needs An SEO Checklist
Make Your Site Secure
Look at the URL for your business website. Does it start in http or https? If it says http, your site isn’t secure and it’s hurting your ranking. Google has been using https as a ranking algorithm since 2014, and currently identifies sites without an SSL certificate as not secure.
An SSL certificate provides a secure connection and encryption that keeps hackers from tracking or stealing users’ activity when they visit your site. It also protects data corruption during file transfer. Very soon Users will opt out of entering information on sites that aren’t secure. Correct that by having an SSL certificate installed. If your web designer hasn’t suggested this already, you might look into finding someone new, because this has been important for a while!
Prioritize Mobile
In the first quarter of 2019 more than 62 percent of searches originated from a mobile device. Statisti that number will to continue to rise. That's a big part of the reason that Google mobile indexing is focused so heavily on mobile friendly content.
Speed Things Up
Page speed has a massive impact on the user’s experience. Your bounce rates will be high if a User has to wait more than a few seconds to view content. SEO best practices for 2019 say your pages should load in two seconds or less on a mobile device. They should also offer the same type and quality of content as users find on your desktop site.
Create Quality Content
How do you let Google and users know what queries your site is relevant for? With great content. SEO best practices involve optimizing your content for users and bots so both can find you.
Every section on each page should have hierarchal headings that include keywords and relatable phrases. These aid readability by dividing up content. Images should be optimized for quick load times and include "alt tags" for accessibility and search.
Know SEO Best Practices for Content Length
Content length often correlates with page position. Posts should be at least 300 words. Pages with more than 2,000 words are more likely to be in the top ten results than pages with significantly fewer words. Google expects higher content word counts to be more thorough and informative. That doesn't mean you should ramble on until you reach a base number goal. You don’t have to make every piece of content that long. SEO best practices involve always thinking about your audience and topic.
Prepare for Voice Search
Voice assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Home are becoming more popular, so people aren’t just using a keyboard to search. When you optimize your content, think how people actually talk. Relevant keyword terms known as "long-tail phrases" are becoming increasingly important to SEO rankings.
How can you optimize for voice search? It helps to put a question and answer in your content. Most voice searches are question based. When they are, Google usually chooses a page that has both the question and an answer.
Build on Pillars
When you create posts, pages and other content, analyze the keywords for which your website already ranks highest. Then build out from there.
Think of each of your main keywords as a pillar, with cluster topics connected. Use your linking structure to connect topic clusters and boost your search signal.
Hire an SEO Expert
If you’re running a small business, you probably don’t have time to do keyword research, write thousands of words for pages and posts relevant to those keywords, carefully select and optimize images and all the other tasks it takes to stay ahead. AUDIVELO can either do that for you, or advise you on one of our SEO experts that we partner with.