Quick SEO tips: What can you do to rank in Google?

You have good and relevant content on your website. But if you type in a certain search term on Google, you are untraceable. Or even worse: your competitor is at the top! SEO (search engine optimization) is no longer the exclusive domain of technically proficient colleagues, but a task of the marketing department. Aren't we busy enough already? Google has different requirements for your website when it comes to ranking in search engines. For example, a website must load quickly and be mobile-friendly. Moreover, the structure of your website (the underlying code) must be neatly formatted.

But.... We can't directly do anything with this ourselves. (Those tasks you have turned over to your web designer)

What can you do to score higher in Google?

Here is a list of SEO tips you can apply today.

SEO tips for keywords & content

Without content, Google cannot determine the content of your site. So content actually encompasses "everything. With the SEO tips below, I addresswritten content and how you can quickly and easily optimize your keywords for Google.

• If you write text, preferably optimize it for one relevant keyword. This makes it easy for Google to determine what the content on the page is about. Use relevant keywords in links, alt-text of images and preferably also your domain name.
• Don't take keywords too literally.For example, the plural/single of words has no impact, because Google also looks for consistency, and even synonyms.
• Don't stuff your text with keywords. Search engines look at how often a search term appears in your text. If it is abnormally high, they will judge you on this very fact.
• Avoid complicated jargon that no one understands, and Google pays attention to spelling mistakes and grammar. So pay due attention to these as well.
• If possible, make sure keywords appear in the URL of a page.
• Reinforce your text with other types of content such as photos, videos, statistics and resources.
• Are you using an H1 tag? Is there a relevant search term in the H1 tag? Are you using an H2, H3, H4 tag?
• Does yourmeta description tag contain 155 characters or less? If your meta description is too long, the text will be truncated (see the example below). This is not a bad thing, but make sure your main message is within those 155 characters.
  
  

  

  
  
  
• Google sees a Web site that regularly features new, fresh content as a site that is paying attention. So you can republish old articles and enjoy them - even years after the initial publication date!
• Provide as little duplicate content on your own website as possible. This is content that can be found on multiple pages within your website. Search engines often show certain content only once in search engine results. So they have to choose among the pages on your site which one is most relevant. If necessary, create a 301 redirect from the "duplicate" page to the original page.
• The rule that an article must be longer than 300 words to be indexed by Google is outdated according to many SEO experts. Therefore, my advice is: focus on quality first, then quantity.
  
  
  
  

SEO tips for links

Links also play an important role in how Google reads and rates your site. The following SEO tips address this.

• Avoid non-working links and 404 error pages on your site. Check your links once in a while.
• Think about internal links, too! In the anchor text, describe the link you are linking to. So if you write about inbound marketing and want to link to another page about inbound marketing, place the link not on click here, but on inbound marketing.
• Text around the link (URL) in question may also contain keywords. Therefore, surround the link with descriptive content.
• The location of a link is also important. If you put a link in the sidebar, footer or in the author section under a blog, they will not count as much.
• Links from pages that have little connection to your Web site are hardly counted in the ranking. However, links from the same niche are viewed very positively by Google. So if you are a car dealer and link to a website that is also about cars, this will be appreciated.

SEO tips for link building

Link building still works great for SEO, provided you do it right. Site A linking to site B acts like a voice; site B thinks you have valuable content on your site. In this regard, pay attention to the Trust/authority Rank that the website in question has, because a backlink from one authorized website counts more heavily than ten bad websites.

• Do others write about your business regularly? Ask them to link to your site. You can also link to your own site in guest blogs yourself (provided the other party agrees).
• Link building without links is also possible! These are called implied links. If your company name is mentioned on another site without a clickable link, Google can also recognize this.
  
  
  
  

General SEO tips

Finally, a few general SEO tips that you can get started with right away.

• For Google, a user-friendly website is a good website. Therefore, always provide contact information and, if applicable, privacy & terms & conditions. A good menu navigation is also important.
• SEO is useless if there is no, or no clear call to action on the page.
• Where does the information come from? Google appreciates source attribution.
• Providing photos and images with descriptive text (alt text) can increase the findability of your site.
• Have you created social media accounts and do you reference your company website on social media? (Don't forget Google+, as Google considers Google+ important.)
• To make indexing pages easy for Google, you would do well to have a sitemap. If you are worried about duplicate content, place the page you want indexed in Google in the sitemap.

Create relevant content for your target audience

Perhaps the most important of all the SEO tips from this blog. If the entire site provides a pleasant experience for the end user, they will automatically stay longer on your site and the conversion rate is also higher.

Therefore, always try to make sure that you answer your potential customer's questions and solve problems with unique and relevant content, tailored to the target audience andstage in the buying process. This will certainly not go unnoticed by Google and you will soon notice that this also has an effect on your ranking in the search engine.

SEO & inbound marketing

Paying attention to SEO is part of a solid inbound marketing strategy. Read more about the methodology that moves your organization's communication from push to pull - and gets you more traffic, leads and customers.