6 Actionable SEO Tips to get better rankings in Search

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Here are six simple, actionable tips to help your site's SEO efforts. Even if you don't have time to do a complete site audit and SEO driven overhaul of all content, you should focus on getting these simple ways to instantly improve your SEO driven rankings on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

1. Include all your most important page links on your home page

Your home page is the most important page for search engines and it attracts more links than any other page on your site. You should include links to your most important products (or the ones that you most want to rank) in the body of the home page. If you don’t have product or category pages, then feature articles and landing pages in the body. Creating clear, prominent links on your home page is useful from a user experience standpoint as well, because it ensures people can easily find your most important content quickly.

2. Leverage microsites, articles, posts, videos not on your site

Over time, you probably have created microsites, videos on YouTube, blog posts, and content on other sites that are not present on your own website. You won't get any SEO benefit unless all that content has links back to relevant pages on your own site. From a SEO stand point, it's best to have all content on your owned site, but when you don't, ensure as much as you can that all other sites, posts, social content etc link back to your site.

3. Optimize the design of your site – stop using large images

Being in the advertising business, I often have to chastise our creative folks for using large images on websites they design. Designers often don’t consider the file size or resolution of an image before adding it to a page. They don't reduce an image to the maximum size needed on the page, save it at an appropriate resolution.

A huge image can substantially slow down the time it takes for the page to load, hurting both rankings and the user experience (and consequently, the site’s conversion rate). And images should be named and alt-tagged properly. Images help SEO. It  easy to optimize that image to a more reasonable size and then re-upload it. This is a quick fix from a SEO perspective.

4. Use forums and social media to keep track of valuable keywords

Stay ahead of the competition in the game by following what's happening in the news around your brand or product categories. Promptly use a valuable keyword before any one else by monitoring conversations in social media and in forums within your niche. Notice a recurring mention or a recurring question? Find a way to work it into your site’s content. Having that content first, before your competitors, can give you an advantage, not only in thought leadership, but in ranking and traffic as well.

5. Use snippets in your SEO descriptions

Rich, properly written snippets really help your SEO, as well as provide a great way to get your mention on a Search page to get clicked on. Rich snippets help you stand out from the crowd ≠ specially in combination with an enticing meta description and title tag. Snippets may not directly affect your rankings, but they help in driving more visits to your pages.

6. Kill those 404 dead links

Identify URLs that show a 404 message on your site and have external links pointed at them. Google Search Console gives you the ability to check the 404 pages on your site and see whether they are being linked to (and from where). If you have a externally linked page which returns a 404, prioritize fixing it ASAP, as you are squandering link authority every minute that remains unfixed. Recovering that link equity and/or traffic is a very easy “quick win.”

Update your site frequently. Sites with dynamic content often rank higher than those with static content, and follow the simple tips above.

That in a nutshell is how to make some simple effective steps towards Search Engine Optimization or SEO on your website or blog. That's the basics. And that's Digital Marketing Strategies 101.

Now read these posts on SEO:

7 Things you need to bullet proof your SEO

Search made Simple: Understanding SEO and SEM in 2016

6 Ways to Be There in Today's Search Driven World