5 Things You Can Do Right This Second To Improve Your Rankings
No, I'm not talking about your WA rankings, sorry to disappoint you :)
For those of you struggling with your Google rankings though, read on.
One of the most frustrating parts of playing the Google game is that we really don't have much control over it. We write our content, we wait, we write some more, we wait. We check our Amazon accounts, we wait.
Lot's of waiting!
However...there are some things about SEO and ranking in SERPS that you have 100% total control over.
On Page SEO
There's not enough emphasis on your On page SEO in the core training here. I'm not sure why, but probably because K + C don't want beginners getting it wrong.
This is perhaps a slight mistake, since On page SEO is arguably THE most important part of everything you do with your content.
It's not enough to just stick a keyword in your title and first paragraph, it helps, but it's not enough.
I just wrote a 2,000 word article on the very topic at my website, so I'm not going to write it all out again, but I can give you 5 very actionable tasks here to look at.
Think you know On page SEO? The vast majority of websites I've looked at from WA members are not quite getting it, so I'm going to assume you don't quite know it all.
Proof it works:
I had a WA member I was helping in the past, and her website was struggling a little. She had content, she had site age, but she didn't have rankings. I told her to make some changes to her content, add this here, do that there, and a few DAYS later she had her first page 1 ranking.
On Page SEO. Write that down.
I want you to go over all of your content and do these tasks with me. Don't think "I might do that, it sounds good". This is high priority stuff, and will set your content apart from millions of other websites that also get it wrong.
1.) Check your keyword density.
Yes, you know the idea is to write the keyword in the title and the first paragraph, but have you checked the whole page?
Have you got the keyword somewhere in your sidebar? in your website name? in your URL? in your footer? If you've got more than 6 mentions on any given page, you could be in trouble, so try to reduce it slightly.
2.) Check your internal linking.
Every single page you write should have 2-3 links to other pages/posts on your site. You want your site structure to be strong. Solid. A well woven web. When Google crawls your site, you want it to follow links to the rest of your site. Nom nom nom gobble up my content Mr Spider.
It's not just a spidering thing, it's a quality thing.
Do you want Google to say "hey, you've written 700 words, cool. I have no real idea if it is quality or not though. I mean..I can read your headings and image tags and get a rough idea of what it's about, but is it quality? beats me!!"
Or...do you want Google to say "Wow, this looks like a pretty good resource, it's got citations and links to learn more and other factors which Dom will explain below"?
You've got to demonstrate that your content is a great resource, and internally linking to other relevant parts of your site is the #1 way to do this.
3.) Check your external linking.
This is not about backlinks or G+ posts that link TO your site. This is about YOUR content linking OUT to other sites.
When you link out to another relevant, high authority source from your own article, you are not promoting the competition or leaking your link juice. You are reinforcing your content and telling Google that your article is a great resource.
Look at the top 10 results in the SERPS for any given keyword, they all do this.
Ideas for who to link out to:
- High authority sites like Wikipedia, CNN, BBC and so on. I often link to Wikipedia for definitions and CNN/BBC if there's a good article about the topic.
- Relevant authority sites in your niche. Don't want to link to a competitor? Smart move. You can still link to them but just link to a page you're not directly competing with, like their "about" page or something else. Maybe they'll link back to you ;)
- People you hope to garner a return link from.
4.) Check how you present your information and use media
Google can't read images, but it can see that they are there. While it's great to include an image or two (don't overdo this), it's also great to make sure Google can read your content.
If you're presenting some information in an infographic or on an image, change it and display it in a Table instead (use Tablepress, it's a cinch). Google can read Tables.
It will say "Ooh, using a table, very good. Nice resource you've got there" and it will also be able to read the content. Win Win.
Some media you can include:
- Images (You gotta have one or two present)
- Tables (see above)
- Videos
- Table of contents for very long posts (Use TOC+ plugin)
5.) Break Up Your Text
3-4 lines per paragraph, maximum. Nobody wants to read a wall of text, and they won't.
Google knows this too.
When Google made Panda back in whatever year it was (2010 I guess), one thing they did was to get a lot of people to view thousands of websites and grade them. The algorithm watched this grading and picked up on patterns for what makes a good website.
Therefore it KNOWS what good resources look like. It doesn't read your words and say "Well written piece, I like your humor". It just looks at the resource itself and gets a good idea of how well it is presented, and that ladies and gentleman is a MASSIVE part of its ranking.
For every Facebook like you get, somebody out there with superb on page SEO and 0 likes is moving above you.
This is something you can 100% control yourself, and will get you immediately noticeable ranking improvements, so get it right now, and rejoice later.
Behind keyword research, this is the #1 thing to focus on. Get them both right, and everything else is just a matter of time.
As requested, here is the link to the post on my site: http://www.humanproofdesigns.com/ultimate-guide-to-on-page-seo/
Recent Comments
93
Thank you Dom. Some of it I already knew, some of it I learned from here, so thank you very much.
I have wondered about this SEO stuff. Because here and there I read contradictory advices. Some say, it is a must. Then others: Don't bother about it.
Questions:
1. What do you mean about "keyword somewhere in a sidebar?" Is it the Tag box in Wordpress? or did you mean something else?
2. What do you mean about "keyword somewhere in a footer?"
3. Do you put every single image into a table? Or at least majority of the images into tables?
4. Usually How-to tutorials require screenshots and then there are usually more than 2-3 images. You know, you follow the images and explanations until to the end. If you put keyword into the name of the image and also Alt-text, is it ok? Or let's say you have 6 images, all have keywords in their respective names and alt-texts. It makes already 12 usage of that keywords. Plus the ones in the title, url, 1st paragraph, etc.
Is it OK to use keyword in the name of the images and alt-text?
And lastly, you live in HK, right? If you have time sometimes, you want to visit us? My family and I are staying currently in Kendari, SE-Sulawesi, Indonesia. So if you want to come, welcome :)
Hey some very good questions there!
1. Let's say your keyword is "How to use keywords" and the article is titled "the ultimate guide on how to use keywords". Maybe you also have a category or another post with something like "using keywords, my how to" or similar, and if you're using a sidebar widget that displays those keywords, it could count as too many.
2. Same as above, using a footer widget that might contain the keywords, like a comment widget, category widget, or custom menu.
3. I only use tables for comparisons or summaries of products, but some people like to make an image or infographic that has like "5 tips for xyz topic" and it's all an image. In this case my advice to them is to use a table or bullet points instead.
4. Having plenty of images in a tutorial is fine, but don't make it too image heavy, throw some text in too. For the alt-tags, mix them up! Give each image a description, an alt tag, and a name that is relevant to the topic, but is unique.
Let's say your article is about Monkeys that like to drink milk (I'd love to read it by the way), and you have an image of a monkey drinking milk, the image name could be "monkey milk 1.jpg" or whatever, the description could be "this is a monkey in Japan drinking soy milk" and the alt tag could be "monkey drinking milk"..hope that helps!
P.S I don't often bother with the description.
P.P.S Image alt tags, descriptions, and names DO contribute towards keyword density count yes. It's OK to use them, but remember the 6 max rule.
5. I live in Taiwan not HK, but if I ever pop to Indonesia I'll look you up :)
Fantastic post Dom. This really needs to be linked to from the certification courses. Easy, actionable steps that will yield huge results. Thank you for contributing!
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This is great advice! I will be checking it out. Would you mind linking your article so we can read it all?
http://www.humanproofdesigns.com/ultimate-guide-to-on-page-seo/ I'll add it to the bottom of the post as well.