SEO is a big, complicated topic that’s constantly evolving. However, once you understand its fundamentals, you can make sense of the more complex and advanced SEO strategies being used by companies today. Below Mi Canna Marketing are ten unconventional pieces of knowledge that you won’t learn in books.
1. Keywords
Why You Should Care About Keywords: Related to (but not the same as) the importance of keywords, it’s also worth knowing about their frequency. Too few keywords in your account could give users the impression that none of your content is relevant, which will hurt your ability to rank for keywords.
Too many, however, and users may think that you don’t have enough stuff up there already. Even though it may be counterintuitive, a large number of keywords in your account can also hurt you because they’re far from mobile-friendly and can cause unnecessary delays from a search engine when someone does a Google search for you on their phone or tablet.
2. Backlinks
Backlinks are important because they’re one of the main ways search engines evaluate and rank your website. However, quality is more important than quantity. This means that you shouldn’t just go out there and buy as many backlinks as you can.
Focus on creating high-quality backlinks and worry about the rest later on, especially when there are still sites with no backlink profile at all floating around out there in the world waiting to be discovered.
3. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a powerful tool for measuring and understanding traffic on your site. However, you’ll need to be careful with how you use it. In particular, avoid setting up Google Analytics to measure AdWords traffic and external sources of traffic.
This will only confuse you in the long run, especially once you start learning which keywords are valuable to your company and which aren’t.
4. Google Trends
Google Trends is an excellent way of seeing how some terms are trending over time, but it’s not a good tool for discovering new ways to optimize your site for specific keywords or phrases. Below are a few things you should keep in mind about Google Trends:
Don’t Use Keywords On Your Site That Google Trends Is Tracking Right Now. The risk of using old keywords in your site’s content is that you’ll be unlikely to see any gain when those terms move up in the rankings. Whenever possible, try to avoid using those old words or phrases on the pages that they relate to because they could go offline without warning.
The risk of using old keywords in your site’s content is that you’ll be unlikely to see any gain when those terms move up in the rankings. Whenever possible, try to avoid using those old words or phrases on the pages that they relate to because they could go offline without warning. Use Google Trends As A Guide, Not An Exact Science.
Although it can be helpful for finding new trends in the industry, make sure that you don’t use Google Trends as a surefire way of getting your site ranked on search engines. For example, if you see a lot of data from Google Trends on how many people are searching for ‘gluten-free muffins’ in New York City and you’re located somewhere else in the country (such as Kansas), don’t just go ahead and start optimizing your site based on this data.
5. Keyword Suggestion Boxes
Keyword suggestion boxes are little boxes on your website where Google will suggest keywords that you may be missing. They’re often shown as a paid feature in your Google analytics, but they’re not all that expensive to have available, so don’t worry about the cost.
What Matters About Keyword Suggestion Boxes: The most important thing about keyword suggestion boxes is that they’re a great way to generate new ideas for keywords. That said, you should be careful to avoid ranking for the exact match keyword suggestions (e.g. “muffin”) if you want to rank consistently in Google.
6.Internal Linking Within Content
Internal linking within your own website is one of the best ways of improving your site’s search engine optimization because it’s a great way to add context and meaning to your content. It helps users find your content much more easily, and it’s also a great way to improve user engagement.
There are two types of internal links that you can use: text links and anchor text links. Text Links: Text links are just plain text. They’re generally much more useful than the other type of internal link because they let users share your content on social media platforms and save it to their own computers as well.
7. Mobile-Friendly Content
Although mobile usability is an important factor, it’s far from the be all or end all when it comes to optimizing your site for search engines. That said, you should be aware that if your content isn’t mobile-friendly, search engines will get confused when someone performs a search on their phone. Mobile-friendliness also directly impacts the user experience of your site because mobile devices can access more content than desktop computers at extremely fast speeds.
8. Meta Tags And Your Content
Meta Tags are special tags that let search engines know about the type of content on your website. They’re not as important as they used to be, but you should still use them if you can. Who Cares About Meta Tags: Although Google has forgotten about meta tags, lots of other search engines have not.
It’s worth mentioning too that even though Google doesn’t care about meta tags any longer, it still cares quite a lot about its own Chrome browser because it doesn’t want to show its users the websites that don’t have meta tags handy.
9. Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions tell users what your website is about and how they can use it to their own advantage. They’re a powerful way of converting search engine users into customers because they show up above the search results when someone searches for a particular phrase.
This means that you should always make sure that your meta description is optimized for each page in order to maximize the conversion rate for any given user. Keep in mind however that optimizing your meta description isn’t as important as optimizing your content, so don’t forget about creating valuable content in order to increase your rankings too.
10. Off-Page SEO Factors
Off-Page SEO factors are all of the variables that affect your website rankings that aren’t directly within your control. For example, off-page SEO factors can be things like how your site is being linked to by other sites, the number of links you have, how relevant your site is for certain terms, and lots more.
