The Do’s and Don’ts of SEO

As search engine algorithms have become more sophisticated over the years, SEO has changed. This has helped to improve user experience, ensuring weak content or spammy content on websites do not rank highly on search engines.

Here are our Dos and Don’ts for SEO to make sure you stay on top of your strategy.

DO: Make things Easy to Share on Social Media

Content spread widely across social media tends to assess itself. People, rather than algorithms, are demonstrating which content is worth reading by distributing it among their own networks. Social sharing is a great data point for Google rankings. In the past, links were key and if other pages linked back to your site google would consider your content higher-quality and worth a high ranking. Today, the share is what’s important. Content shared on social media is not only excellent free marketing, but it will also show up in search results..

DON’T: Pay for Links

While links back to a website are still useful and can help improve your page’s rank, a link back to your site is only as good as the person doing the linking. Search engines looks for any links coming from low-quality websites such that abuse Google by building a network of interlinked pages. Paying for links or signing up for services that link back to you are just going to result in Google throwing you off the first page of results.

DO: Make Web Pages Mobile Responsive

Ensure your website is mobile responsive. Google will favour mobile-friendly websites, as they provide a better user experience. This includes having links and buttons that are clickable on mobiles. Not only does google favour this, but users prefer mobile-friendly websites due to the rate in which users are using their mobile phones to search google.

Don’t: Link to External Sites Too Often

Linking too often to external sites can harm your SEO. External links can make your content hard to read, resulting in high bounce rates which search engines will pick up on. Using many links can also make your website look like spam which can cause a negative effect on your site. You may be interested to read that Google has recently started penalising unnatural outbound links.

DO: Develop Good Content

Original content at good length is good for SEO. But remember creative content is more likely to be shared on social media and be read by your audience. Therefore, write for your audience and not for SEO. If a page is full of keywords but doesn’t read well, or appeal to the audience there is not much point. You will create keywords organically just by talking about the topic you are writing about, so don’t overthink it.

DON’T: Encourage guest posts just for the sake of SEO

Use guest-posting as a tool and only accept or look to do this if you run the risk of the highest quality and is relevant to the interests of your customers. A few years ago, guest-blogging got so out of hand which google picked up on and penalised those overdoing it. So, keep your guest posts in check or you will run the risk of doing more harm than good.

DO: Add YouTube to your SEO strategy

Video is becoming an increasingly important part of SEO strategy, but it’s especially true when that video is on YouTube, owned by google. All you need to create is a short informative video to quickly increase your visibility and improve your search engine results. YouTube works by popping up on regular search results making a greater impact than text ever would.

DON’T: Sacrifice mobile performance to do it

Mobile is a major part of optimisation so if you are going to do video then make sure it is mobile friendly. As previously mentioned the majority of Google searches are now done on mobile. You must always have balance in mind: A modern multimedia site that can also load easily on a phone.

YouTube is smartphone-friendly, but not all video services are, so make sure your strategy won’t hinder mobile performance, and be aware that flash players are not usually supported.

To Conclude

SEO is always rapidly evolving. What works today may change tomorrow. One thing does always remain constant however and that is that websites built in the interest of the users have the best chances of success. Focus your efforts on creating unique, relevant content for your potential customers no matter what platform they’re coming from. The right audience will be able to find you.

If you would like Wish to help you with your SEO campaign then feel free to get in touch and we will share our knowledge.