In my 12 year SEO career I have made many changes to my SEO campaigns and some worked better than others. What I will explain below is what I think are the most important SEO changes you can do now for faster and better results.<\/p>\n
Finally and before getting into the changes, do not forget that SEO is about a lot of small things that need to work together in order to produce good results. In other words making only one or few of the changes may not generate the same results as making all the changes together.<\/p>\n
Change #1: Let\u2019s go mobile!<\/h2>\n
There is absolutely no excuse for any website (small or big) not to offer a mobile friendly version. 2014 is not only the year of the mobile but we are actually living the era of mobile. Everything is mobile, everyone is using a mobile and mobile friendly websites are a must.<\/p>\n
Google recommends responsive design<\/b><\/a> as the best way to offer your users a mobile version and by adopting a responsive design you have a number of advantages like:<\/p>\n See below monthly statistics from one of our websites which shows exactly the importance of having a responsive website.<\/p>\n How do you go mobile?<\/b> Unfortunately it\u2019s not as easy as following a list of steps because you need to have technical skills and knowledge of CSS and javascript but the good news is that almost any website can become responsive at a relatively low cost.<\/p>\n We have started an initiative to help webmasters make their websites responsive<\/b><\/a> at a low cost so get in touch today for more details.<\/p>\n Search engines love content and you want to increase the number of your indexed pages and the only way to do that is to add more content that meets the criteria below:<\/p>\n A blog is a great way (even for businesses<\/b><\/a>) to add to more relevant content to a website and it can work if you learn how to choose your blog post titles<\/b><\/a> carefully.<\/p>\n Let me give you a couple of examples on how to increase your content:<\/p>\n Don\u2019t forget that there are also ways to get users generate the content for you by setting up a forum or encouraging user commenting.<\/p>\n How is this useful? You can spot which keywords have a low CTR, then find out which pages rank for the particular keywords and optimize their titles and descriptions to make them more attractive to searches.<\/p>\n Once you do the changes it may take a couple of days (or more) for Google to them into account and you can then compare the results before and after the changes.<\/p>\n You can use the reports in Google webmaster tools (search queries) and Google Analytics (Acquisition -> Search Engine Optimization -> Queries) to find out which keywords bring you traffic and the ranking position of you website for the different keywords. Look at these reports and try to identify which keywords bring you some traffic but they are not on page 1 of Google. These are definite \u2018winners\u2019 and the keywords you should concentrate on since an increase in their ranking position will also increase your organic traffic.<\/p>\n How can you improve the position of a keyword? There is no magic solution but some actions towards the right direction are:<\/p>\n This is directly related with point 3 above as there are many studies that show that the presence of the author image in the search results increases CTR.<\/p>\n Of course this is not the only reason you should implement Google authorship and publisher but you should also do it because it\u2019s a nice way to:<\/p>\n As a clarification, google authorship is for individuals and google publisher is for companies or websites.<\/p>\n To find out more about google authorship click here<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n To find out more about google publisher click here<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n Besides improving CTR and Google trust, there are many more reasons to become an active user on Google+.<\/p>\n For starters and although Google officially does not accept it, there are many studies that show correlations between google +1s and higher search rankings<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n In addition, Google+ is a great social network which in some cases can generate traffic and sales as well.<\/p>\n If you are on Google+ you can follow me here:<\/p>\n A faster website means more visits, more sales and more conversions. Web site load speed is a ranking factor and makes a website friendlier for the user.<\/p>\n The first step for tackling the speed issue is to run a couple of tests to find out how many seconds it takes to load your website from different locations and also get suggestions on how to improve the page load time. You can use the following free tools:<\/p>\n Page speed insights<\/a><\/b> \u2013 This is a tool from Google which gives you recommendations on what to improve on a website to make it load faster. It works for both desktop and mobile websites. For each version you will get a rating (out of 100) and a list of recommendations. While every website is different you should aim for a score above 90% for the desktop.<\/p>\n Webpage test.org<\/a><\/b> \u2013 With web page test you can test how long it takes for your website to load from various locations. This is very useful especially in the cases that you do not live in the same country as your users. \u00a0Besides the time it takes for your website to load for the first time and repeating time, you also get a view with details about each and every component on your page which makes it very easy to identify what is slowing down the site and how to improve it.<\/p>\n Unfortunately improving the page speed is a technical issue and if you don\u2019t have the skills it will be difficult to tackle with success. In such cases the best solution is to get help from experts (contact us<\/b><\/a> for more information).<\/p>\n This is perhaps the number 1 SEO mistake<\/b><\/a> most people do i.e. forget about internal link building and I would say that it\u2019s one of most important as well. By linking your pages together it\u2019s like creating your own small web and this has a number of advantages like:<\/p>\n You can read my previous post on internal linking best practices<\/b><\/a> for examples on how Google and Wikipedia are using internal links to build authority but as a general rule of thumb use the following guidelines:<\/p>\n When was the last time that you did a health check on your website? If the answer is \u2018never\u2019, don\u2019t worry you are not alone. Nevertheless that does not mean that you should not do it.<\/p>\n If a website has problems, most probably this will also affect both rankings but also the user experience with the site which is equally important for long term success.<\/p>\n On a typical website health check you can perform the following tests:<\/p>\n Besides doing the health check explained above, it is also highly recommended to perform an SEO Audit<\/b><\/a> of your website at least once per year. The audit report will help you identify areas that need to be fixed and areas that can be improved to generate more traffic and visits to your website.<\/p>\n A good SEO Audit will touch on social media, on page SEO<\/b><\/a>, off page SEO<\/b><\/a> and generally all aspects of digital marketing.<\/p>\n Local SEO is particularly important for small businesses that need to find customers in their local area. As explained in a previous post<\/b><\/a>, local SEO is different from \u2018global\u2019 SEO and for the majority of businesses this is all they have to do in terms of SEO.<\/p>\n Run your website against the local seo checklist and make all the changes needed to optimize your website for local searches.<\/p>\n Everybody understands the importance of SEO for online success but when it comes to budgeting some businesses still consider SEO as an expense and not an investment. This is not the correct approach and if you are still not convinced, go ahead and read about the benefits of SEO for small businesses<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n A typical SEO budget will be in the range of 500 \u2013 3000 (USD) per month depending on the size and type of a business. This money if spend correctly can generate a constant amount of website traffic that can help a business fulfil its goals in both the short and long term.<\/p>\n This is not an SEO change but rather an attribute change. SEO takes time and those that are patient enough always win at the end.<\/p>\n When you make any of the changes mentioned above you need to be patient and monitor your rankings for a number of weeks to see if what you did works or not. If you lose your patience and choose to follow any of the magic packages you find on the web then chances are that you will get a penalty by Google and lose your money without archiving anything online.<\/p>\n\n
Change #2: Add more content<\/h2>\n
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Change #3: Work on your CTR<\/h2>\n
![\"search-queries\"](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/search-queries.png\")
This is one of the oldest SEO tips<\/b><\/a> but one that not many people use. The Click Through Rate is the percentage of people who click on your web site listing from the search results. If you go to Search Queries<\/b> in webmaster tools, you will notice that for each keyword your website appeared in search, google gives you the CTR.<\/p>\nChange #4: Make your strong keywords, stronger!<\/h2>\n
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Change #5: Implement Google authorship and publisher<\/h2>\n
![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/google-authorsthip-in-results.png\")
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Change #6: Become an active Google+ user<\/h2>\n
Change #7: Make your website faster<\/h2>\n
Change #8: Link your content together<\/h2>\n
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Change #9: Check your website for errors<\/h2>\n
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Change #9: Perform an SEO Audit<\/h2>\n
Change #10: Don\u2019t forget about local SEO<\/h2>\n
Change #11: Increase your SEO budgets<\/h2>\n
Change #12: Be patient \u2013 don\u2019t try anything st@p@d!<\/h2>\n