We’ve heard so many people talk about the best ways to optimize a website for SEO but have found that people often omit the most basic of tips. Those are the ones we’ll be focusing on in this article. We will be helping you learnabout the baby steps to improve website traffic rather than the big strides which we will be covering in later articles. Read on to discover our favourite SEO Tips for beginners.
SEO Tip: Write readable content
We’ve been seeing a new trend towards making the content more share worthy or viral. However what people miss out on is that the core of any such content is the readability. It should be something people want to read. We believe that such content transcends any trends and has a better chance of ranking higher in the rankings especially if they contain the relevant SEO keywords.
SEO Tip: Guest Blogging
For a new website it is essential to get the word out that you exist. However, even with social media playing a prominent role, it is tough to reach the right audience to come visit. This is where guest blogging works like a charm. Relevant blogs can offer double benefits. They share your content to their audience which brings in a bit of traffic. Also the links to your website/page which is dofollow, lends credibility to your website and helps increase your Domain Authority.
SEO Tip: Comments
A lot of people underestimate the power of commenting. Every comment you leave on someone else’s website links it back to your own website. A meaningful comment can help kickstart a discussion and if fruitful leads the author of the article as well as other readers back to your website. Plus ever link back to the website even as a comment does pass a bit of link juice propelling your DA (Domain Authority) up a bit.
Check your Domain Authority here.
SEO Tip: Email Lists
In this age of instant gratification, a lot of bloggers starts building their email lists too late, losing out on a lot of potential traffic which could’ve been generated through regular email newsletters which can be easily automated to include anything from a customized message to a RSS feed of your most popular stories. Email lists work to remind your readers of your existence and is also a great way to tell them about your new stories. Engagement is key to keep loyal readers and email is a great place to start if you’ve got your social media bases covered.
SEO Tip: Speed Up
Last but not the least is speeding up your website. Every new bloggers wants their blog to be the best and most non tech savvy bloggers often opt for a range of plugins to do stuff which would only take a couple of lines of code. Some, including us, opt for flashy themes which are often bloated and have higher load times than lean themes which might not have as many customizable options. Hosting platforms also have a big effect on the loading time with some platforms more equal (and hence expensive) than the others. However the best place to start with would be getting some professional help to fine tune your website so that all conditions remaining fixed, your website is still as SEO optimized and lean as possible. That could mean changing img tags, resizing images, changing header title to reflect a keyword, removing dead links and unused plugins and more.
We recently opted for a Startup Optimization Package by Fat Panda Design, who also offers SEO Consulting services, which covered the following for us:
- Backup of site
- Updated all plugins
- Cleared null plugins
- Smushed/optimized images
- Caching plugin installed/configured (for performance)
- Database optimized (cleared junk data, etc.)
- SEO on homepage (and few other pages) worked on
- Before & After Website Audit Report to show the results
The work gained us about 1.5 seconds which is quite the improvement given that bigger factors likes theme and host remained the same. We’ve not seen much of a drop in the bounce rate as we had expected but we’re fine with it. We believe it was a worthwhile investment because if we were to do it ourselves, it would take us more time, would probably have to be staggered across a few days and hence end up being postponed indefinitely even if we knew what we had to do and how important it is for our website.
Read: How to Optimise Images for SEO
However none of the above tips, which are all very obvious, are a substitute for good content. A good SEO strategy can only give you exposure, whether people like to read it or share it depends a lot on the content itself.
Do let us know if you found the tips useful and/or if you have tips which could be useful for people starting their SEO journey.
In our next series of SEO posts, we will be covering how to find keywords for SEO, How to use Yoast SEO, Free SEO Tools, SEO Best Practises etc.