ORGANIC SEO DO’S & DON’TS

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ORGANIC SEO DO’S & DON’TS

No matter how much you’re investing in your PPC advertising budget, you’re losing leads if you’ve neglected your site’s basic search engine optimization needs. SEO not only helps you improve your organic (unpaid) search results, but it can also boost the cost-effectiveness of your paid campaign by improving the relevance of your ads’ landing pages.

Here are just a few of the things you can do to help your site climb search results pages.

DO:

  • Create original content that people are searching for.

  • Update often.

  • Focus on readability (stick to your topic and break the info into digestible bits with clear headlines and subheads).

  • Use desirable keywords in your content when it makes sense to do so. Search algorithms have evolved to the point that they recognize related topics and terms.

  • Add links to reputable material if it will improve the user experience. That includes “deep links” to your own content.

  • Include a unique meta title and description for each page. This is typically what shows up on search engine results pages (SERPs), and it’s your first opportunity to entice users to click through to your site.

  • Use alt descriptions for your images (also important for site accessibility and ADA compliance).

  • Optimize your site for mobile

  • Keep page sizes and load times low.

  • Encourage other reputable sites to link to your content.

  • Use robot.txt files to let search engines know which pages you’d like indexed, and which you don’t.

  • Make it easy to share your content on social platforms and promote it through your company accounts. These won’t have the weight of regular backlinks, but the added exposure couldn’t hurt!

DON’T:

  • Leave broken links on your site.

  • Place text content in images.

  • Engage in deceptive “black hat” practices.

  • Link to “bad neighborhoods.”

  • Let your site go stale.

  • Duplicate content from your own site or others.

  • Use keywords in a repetitive, nonsensical manner, or use keywords that don’t represent the content on your page.

  • Employ temporary redirects on a permanent basis.

 

The most important DON’T? Don’t try to tackle SEO on your own! Contact us today for help.