Embarking on the journey of SEO is akin to plunging into the vast ocean. Unfortunately, it’s a reality that many content marketing professionals, often non-technical individuals who prioritize the quality of their editorial work, view SEO as a daunting realm filled with hidden challenges and complex pathways.
Surprisingly, even prominent companies often need to catch up regarding SEO. But, unfortunately, instead of embracing its potential, they shy away, resulting in lower Google rankings, a significant loss of website traffic, and missed opportunities to engage potential customers.
However, SEO is more exciting than it may appear. In this article, I present you with 22 On Page and Off Page Technical SEO techniques that can enhance the value of your content in Google’s eyes without compromising its editorial quality. But before we delve into those techniques, let’s first explore the different types of SEO to understand better what lies ahead.
- Craft high-quality content
Both marketers and SEO experts agree that content holds immense importance. Search engines continuously enhance their algorithms, and poorly written, plagiarized, or misleading content will not rank well—every aspect matters, including spelling errors. Therefore, ensure your content is impeccable in quality: it should be unique, engaging, published exclusively on your website, and valuable to your readers.
- Maintain a consistent publishing schedule.
Consistency in publishing new content can significantly impact your rankings. Google actively seeks out new pages across the web to index. Therefore, it’s crucial to ask yourself whether you keep your content up to date. However, remember that quality surpasses quantity when it comes to content.
- Optimize your URL structure.
A well-structured URL means that the link is easily readable.
- Optimize title tags and meta descriptions.
Put, title tags define the title of your page, while meta descriptions provide a concise summary that appears in search engine results. Ideally, your title should be around 60 characters (as Google tends to truncate longer titles), and the meta description should be at most 150.
- Pay attention to text formatting.
This includes utilizing H1, H2 headings, bold text, and more. You improve their understanding and indexing by making your articles scannable for search engine algorithms. While this factor may not be the most critical, it still plays a role. Proper text formatting enhances the overall reading experience (more on that later).
- Optimize images as well.
Firstly, ensure your images have descriptive file names (avoid generic names like IMG_1234). Secondly, include an Alt Tag that describes the image. Alt Tags serve as alternative information for your images and are taken into account by search engine algorithms when attempting to comprehend the content of your pictures.
- Implement effective internal linking.
Incorporating links to your previous articles enhances your site’s architecture, creating a website within a website. This approach provides an SEO boost to the linked pages and offers your readers an opportunity to explore more of your site’s content, resulting in a positive user experience.
- Embrace external linking as well.
Feel free to link to relevant and reputable websites, even if they are your competitors. Doing so contributes to a healthy web ecosystem and establishes a semantic connection between domains. Throughout this article, we have linked to various sources such as Content Marketing Institute, Entrepreneur, Search Engine Journal, Moz, and Quicksprout, among others, because they add value to the content and benefit readers.
- Optimize links with Anchor Texts.
Utilizing Anchor Texts, hyperlinked text segments that users click on serve a dual purpose. First, it enhances visibility for search engines and provides better navigation for your readers on your website. A helpful tip is to ensure your anchor texts are diverse and sound natural, seamlessly fitting into the context without disrupting the flow of your content.
- Select keywords strategically
Make use of keywords that are more specific and less competitive. Despite their lower search volume, they often generate higher-quality traffic because users clearly understand what they are seeking. This increases the likelihood of users landing on your website.
- Know where to position keywords.
Incorporate keywords in the headline, URL, meta description, headers, and body of your text.
- Avoid keyword overuse.
Avoid excessive keyword stuffing, as keyword density no longer holds the same significance for Google. Instead, prioritize creating well-written, well-researched, well-linked, and well-cited content that demonstrates semantic relevance. Keywords will naturally appear as a byproduct of producing excellent content.
- Prioritize on-page user experience.
User experience (UX) plays a crucial role in SEO. Therefore, it is very important to give time to enhance your website’s design quality, optimize the navigation experience for easy usability, improve the readability of your articles, and carefully position ads, special offers, and pop-ups to avoid being intrusive. By prioritizing these aspects, you create a positive on-site experience for your users. This user-centric approach will not only please your audience but also earn appreciation from human visitors and search engine algorithms.
- Check for broken links.
Discovering broken links on your website can disappoint readers and search engine algorithms. It’s akin to receiving an unwelcome surprise gift. To prevent this, employ a broken link checker tool like Xenu’s Link Sleuth to identify and promptly fix broken links and images.
- Optimize website loading speed.
A slow-loading website has numerous drawbacks. Studies show that 40% of visitors abandon a site if it takes any time more than 3 seconds, and 47% of consumers expect pages to load within 2 seconds. Failure to meet these expectations leads to increased bounce rates, decreased traffic, fewer returning visitors, and reduced time spent on the site. Moreover, website speed directly impacts SEO since slower sites are crawled less frequently, negatively affecting indexation. Monitor your website’s speed using tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Pingdom. These tools diagnose issues and guide on improving loading times.
- Optimize image formats and sizes.
Unoptimized images can significantly impact site speed—approximately 90% of the effect. Therefore, it is crucial to use the appropriate image format, such as JPEG instead of PNG, and further optimize them with plugins like WP Smush. Additionally, ensure that your images are lightweight. Bulky and heavy images slow down page load times, detrimentally affecting SEO. Numerous online tools, such as Optimizilla or Image Optimizer, are available for compressing photos effectively.
- Ensure mobile-friendliness.
Remember to consider the importance of mobile-friendliness. Google places significant emphasis on mobile compatibility, continuously elevating the ranking of mobile pages. Yet, surprisingly, 44% of companies lag behind this trend and need mobile-friendly websites. The simplest solution is to adopt a responsive design for your website, ensuring it looks appealing and functions well on desktop and mobile devices. Platforms like Styla offer responsive designs that cater to various screen sizes.
- Harness the power of social media.
In today’s digital landscape, social media significantly influences search results. Therefore, establishing strong social media channels is essential for content distribution and link sharing.
- Secure backlinks through guest posting.
The number of domains linking is a critical off-page SEO factor. Aim for a diverse range of high-quality linking domains with favorable attributes such as high PageRank, domain authority, and relevance to your website. Ensure the links are high quality, contextual, fresh, and feature well-optimized anchor texts. Remember, having one link from 100 domains is more advantageous than 100 links from a single domain.
- Do-follow or no-follow?
Links can be categorized into two types: those that instruct Google to follow (do-follow links) and those that instruct Google not to follow (no-follow links) through the “rel=nofollow” attribute in the HTML code. It is preferable to receive do-follow links, but giving them may only sometimes be beneficial. Furthermore, assessing the quality of websites to obtain do-follow links can be challenging at times.
- Submit press releases
Press releases still hold value for SEO, even without a direct link to your website. The mere mention of your company’s name on another domain, even without a clickable link, is recognized and appreciated by search engine algorithms.
- Create shareable infographics
Infographics are viral among audiences. Infographic marketing is a profitable strategy that contributes to branding efforts and generates significant traffic and has proven to create numerous backlinks when executed effectively.
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