SEO: 5 Thing You Need to Understand
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is the process of doing what it takes both on and off site in order to push your website up the rankings. While there are over 200 different factors than can affect the rankings of a website, there’s no question that some of these ranking factors matter a whole lot more than others.
#1: You Must Have a Mobile Website
Whether you have a mobile version of your website that comes up on phones or pads, or if your website is truly responsive and changes sizes as needed, you need a website that adjusts to whatever device the searcher is using. Having a mobile website was always a bonus in SEO but since April of 2015 Google has made it one of the single most important aspects to ranking online.
#2: Make Sure You Have Clean Code
You don’t want any spammy tags or long lists of keywords stuck in the coding somewhere. Good clean code is seen as a bonus, not to mention the fact it is just good practice so your website loads faster – which is also a ranking factor with Google.
#3: Make Your Content Top Notch
There are many different factors that go into deciding what makes excellent content, but Google has been very clear that great content matters as much or more than anything else. You’ve probably heard the saying “Content is King,” and this is why. While human graders help decide what the best content is, good content is always going to be a few things:
Have good grammar and syntax- Original content
- Authority content
- Well-organized
- Strong writing style
#4: You Want a Social Media Footprint
Not only can Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ all be used to get safe backlinks to pass juice to your website. In addition to this, being active on social media in general is becoming more and more important to appearing legitimate online and interacting with your customers. Social media isn’t just nice – it’s a necessity if you want to crawl to the top.
#5: Backlinks Still Matter a Lot
While you can’t just pile up hundreds of junk links like you used to, good backlinks have a major effect on ranking websites. You need links from high authority websites in related niches, and you need the anchor text to be your brand, blog name, or URL. That is the best way to pass along the ranking juice.