Perfecting Search Engine Optimization in 12 Easy Steps
A few weeks ago, we posted a blog post about content optimization, where we explained how you could use the Yoast SEO plugin to optimize your content for search engines. Maybe you have already started with our tips, but maybe not. The vast majority of SEO optimization revolves around optimizing your content, but it isn’t all! If you want a search engine friendly website, you should not forget all the SEO techniques. In this blog post, we will explain all the important features concerning the technical side of SEO.
What is SEO technology is not?
Many online entrepreneurs tried blackhat tricks to make their website easier to find in search engines. This may have worked in the early days of the internet when people believed that search engine optimization consisted of stuffing your website with keywords or filling pages with invisible text.
Fortunately, these tricks belong to the past, and the SEO technique has evolved since then. Blackhat tricks do not work anymore, and incorrect SEO methods can even result in exclusion from the (Google) search results.
Be careful with any of the advice (or services) you may stumble upon online that promise quick and easy success. Getting on the first page of Google means a lot of hard work!
Help! Do you have any SEO tips for 2018?
If blackhat tricks do not work anymore, what does work, then? Choosing the right and legitimate SEO technique is necessary so that search engines accurately recognize your website. Technical optimizations, such as a good link structure and sitemap, should help search engines index your website better.
Paired with high-quality, fresh content and natural link building, you will usually benefit from Google’s higher ranking.
Today, I want to share 10 SEO techniques that are 100% legit and whitehat that you can implement today to make your website SEO friendlier! So, let’s get started; the 10 technical SEO aspects of your website:
Choose a logical link and website structure.
A good site structure is important not only for Google but also for your visitors. After all, you do not want Google or your future customers to get lost inside the jungles of your website. The larger is your website, the more attention you need to direct to the link or site structure of your site. Don’t get me wrong; this doesn’t mean that you need to link to all the pages you have from the main menu. Think carefully about all the sections and categories you need and plan your website first on paper or using a graphical sitemap tool. Make sure the structure of your content is logical, intuitive, and fluent.
Remove excess H1 elements.
The rule of thumb is that each page may only contain one H1 element, and this must be the title or the name of the page. Check your WordPress theme to see if there are no errors there. As we have previously mentioned many times, free WordPress themes often have errors, and perhaps it’s a good idea to invest a few dollars in a properly coded, professional WordPress theme. When you use a poorly coded free WordPress theme, sometimes it happens that the designer places the H1 element more than once within the HTML structure. That error (seemingly out of your control) will harm your SEO efforts.
Add page titles and meta descriptions.
Every page you want to include in the Google search results must have a unique page title and unique meta description. The page title contributes to a better “findability” and a good meta description to convince the visitor to click on your search result. Using the Yoast SEO plugin or All In One SEO, you can easily optimize both elements within each page or post.
Avoid placing duplicate content.
Of course, I know you would never copy content from other websites, but you may look in panic at the archive pages that WordPress automatically creates. Suppose you have posted several blog posts, and these blog posts are displayed via various archive pages (homepage, features posts, categories, tags, date, search results, and post type). You do not want all these archive pages to be indexed because that is duplicate content. For example, the SEO WordPress plugin offers useful options for turning off these archive pages’ indexing. If you do not use these settings, you risk being penalized by Google for “duplicate content,” even if your own content shows up twice.
Use the noFollow and noIndex attributes.
The noIndex attribute can be used for the duplicated archive pages and for some pages that are not unique or do not want to be indexed. The noFollow attribute is helpful if you link to other external websites and sources, and for these external links, you don’t wish to pass any link juice. This is especially useful if you create a huge blog post and link to many resources or articles that support your idea but don’t want to support these websites by contributing to their backlinks nor want your own website to be spammy. Use the noFollow attribute to pass no authority to the linked website.
Activate the breadcrumbs function of the Yoast SEO plugin
Breadcrumbs (or bread crumbs?) are not only beneficial for Google but are also useful for your visitors. Through the breadcrumbs, your visitor always knows where he is on your website, and he can return to the parent category or section if needed. Oftentimes, breadcrumbs are already inbuilt in the WordPress theme. However, these are often not optimized, and as a result – the structured data is missing. This data helps Google to better “understand” the structure of your website. We recommend that you use the breadcrumbs structure from the Yoast SEO plugin.
Place the robots.txt file in the public HTML folder.
With the help of a robots.txt file, it is possible to tell the difference (Google, Bing, and other) bots which files or folders a search engine can index. The function works similar to the noIndex attribute but offers the possibility to exclude an entire folder or similar files from indexation with one instruction. You will find tons of online tutorials about working with the robots.txt file; the best one is obviously from Google itself.
Register your XML sitemap
An additional way to inform Google about the structure of your website is to use the XML sitemap. With the help of any SEO plugin, this sitemap is not only generated, but the function also takes into account the noIndex settings on the page or section level. Register your XML sitemap on the Google Search Console and also put an entry in the robots.txt file.
Use redirects for deleted pages
Every website changes with time! Old URLs are being removed or replaced with new pages. You must instruct Google and other search engines to deal with the changed URL. Using a redirect, it is possible to send a bot to the new location or simply tell that a location no longer exists.
Remove/replace broken links.
Over time, it will unquestionably happen on every blog that links placed in your blog post or website do not work (anymore). These can be links that refer to (external) pages that are no longer live. But, it may also happen that you have mistyped the link. Check the links within your website using the Broken link checker plugin and keep an eye on the 404 reports within the Google Search Console. Websites with (too) many broken links give the impression that the website is insufficiently maintained. Google can, therefore, give your website a worse position in the search results, and we don’t want that! Quickly inspect the 404 reports from the Google Search Console and make the necessary edits.
Two extra tips for our readers!
Link your website with the Google Search Console
The Google Search Console is how to find out how your website scores in the Google search results. For each page and/or keyword, you can see how often (for various keywords) a page is displayed in the search results and how often this search result is being clicked.
Besides, the Google Search Console offers several other tools that you can use to find out how Google sees and evaluates your website. Link your WordPress website with the Google Search Console, it’s free, easy to do, and you will have a comprehensive overview of your website’s relationship with Google.
Place structured data on your website.
An additional way to make your website (even more) transparent for search engines is to use structured data. Google and other search engines can read structured data from your website that comply with the schema.org guidelines. This is the structured data that shows information within the results, such as:
- Price and stock information
- The availability of hotel rooms
- Complete recipes with ingredients
- Reviews of products (star ratings)
- Contact information (customer service)
A complete overview of all opportunities can be found here. The use of structured data does not directly affect your position within the Google search results; however, users will click on a result quicker, which contributes positively to your website’s ranking. Many clicks show that this page is popular, and a better position in search results will reward a sufficient number of clicks.
Start today!
Our 10 tips (and the 2 extra tips) indicate a lot to optimize when it comes to SEO technique, and your work is never finished. Every adjustment you make helps the search engine understand your website better. Some improvements may not directly affect the position in the results, but they can increase the CTR (Click-through rate), which indirectly has a positive effect on your ranking. Good luck!
Full Guide to Google’s 4 Top Ranking Algorithms
Forget the old saying – “search engine optimization is useless”. And, just for the record, Google can now decide the distinction between a website that “deserves” to rank high versus one which wouldn’t, (more than earlier)!
Gone are the times of rating manipulation techniques that aimed to extend key phrase positions in SERPs. As a substitute, right now, Google makes use of its portfolio of “algorithms” and “machine studying applications” to seek out, digest and show related pages of search results that match the necessity of a person’s pressing questions.
Whether or not you assist a bunch of businessmen or run your websites all by yourself, a deep understanding of how Google works can catapult website visitors and leave rivals behind – the trick is knowing how and why Google chooses to rank websites.
Before diving deep into this blog post, you will need first to comprehensively understand what a search “algorithm” is in general and the way Google works , so without further ado, let’s get started.
In easy to understand language…
A search algorithm is a course of or algorithm utilized by engines like google to find out the importance of an online web page. Algorithms are used to filter, digest and consider net pages to make sure search outcomes match a person’s search question.
Because the web has exponentially grown in dimension, Google has needed to develop into a knowledge filtering machine. To ship outcomes that match a person’s search question, Google makes use of a sequence of advanced guidelines and procedures (i.e. algorithms) to seek out, filter and digest net pages from throughout the web for its personal “index.” It’s this “index” of web pages that Google makes use of when displaying related search outcomes.
Bear in mind, Google is not the web and as an alternative ought to be seen as a “gateway,” serving customers who seek out up-to-date and correct data time and time once more. Because it’s the “go-to” search engine, Google dominates the Internet, processing 3.5 billion worldwide searches every single day! With a lot of demand and potential energy to create or devastate websites and companies, it’s clear that investing the time to co-operate and impress Google’s algorithms is a win-win state of affairs for you or your consumer’s websites.
Let’s get right into studying about 4 of Google’s most-important rating algorithms and what you are able to do to get off their good books.
Panda algorithm
TLDR: Panda likes to learn and digest data. Attempt to create content material that a person search queries and by no means copy from others. Seize Panda’s consideration with long-form content material that’s ten occasions higher than the competitors, however, don’t bulk pages out with “fluff” if there’s no want. In case you run an eCommerce website, focus your effort round constructing high-quality product pages that need to rank.
What’s Panda algorithm?
First launched in February 2011, Google’s Panda algorithm creates a webpage “rating” based mostly on a variety of high-quality standards which is especially targeted round content material and remains to be commonly up to date. Initially constructed to behave like a “rating filter” to sieve websites with plagiarized or skinny content material from search outcomes, Panda was later included into the core rating algorithm in early 2016. The algorithm’s content material targeted metrics have continued to supply a vital spine inside Google’s ranking factors that assist to supply search outcomes that ship helpful data time after time, preserving Google because of the “go-to” search engine on the net.
How does Panda algorithm work?
Similar to the animal’s coat and markings, Panda likes to see thick, high-quality content material that’s distinctive. The algorithm understands content material duplication on a web page by web page degree (each internally & throughout different websites) and definitely doesn’t recognize key phrase stuffing. Websites with a number of duplicated pages or poor high-quality content material might obtain rating decreases which in flip will scale back visitors as Google begins to devalue the area. Pages with high-quality content that reply person search queries ought to be rewarded with greater rating positions. Nonetheless, this isn’t at all times the case, particularly in online markets the place there’s a number of competitors, and different rating components are given extra priority akin to area fairness and backlinks.
Easy methods to be sure you don’t get penalized
Site owners, search engine optimization managers, and website homeowners can all make a distinction on the subject of staying on the fitting aspect of Panda. Because the algorithm is regularly up to date, it’s vital to at all times perform greatest observe content material methods to guard your website against any future updates. Observe these three content material methods to remain forward of the sport…
Be certain that the content material you publish is 100% distinctive – by no means “spin” or copy content material.
Don’t create pages with skinny or duplicated content material – at all times attempt to write a minimal of 200 phrases per web page. Writing “some” content material is at all times higher than no content material.
Within the case the place pages with no content material can’t be up to date with extra-textual content, you need to contemplate delisting them from Google’s index to cut back damaging publicity. This may be carried out via enhancing a web site’s robots.txt file or enhancing settings inside search engine optimization plugins akin to Yoast SEO.
Right here’s an ideal net web page instance the place Panda may be triggered because of there being little to no web page content material. The web page is code-heavy and supplies no worth being in Google’s index.
Professional tip: For pages where little to no content material exists – attempt incorporating content material primarily based on answering general consumer questions or as an alternative, de-index these pages in your robots.txt file.
Penguin algorithm
TLDR: Penguin likes to see reliable relationships between websites. Keep out of the best way of Penguin’s slap by means of creating real, high-quality hyperlinks with others throughout the web. Similar to in the true world, there is no such thing as a fast shortcut to constructing robust relationships. If you’re executing link building strategies, make sure you examine your web site’s backlinks commonly to maintain your footprint clear, tidy and pure.
What’s Penguin algorithm?
First launched in April 2012 and later integrated (like Panda) into the core rating algorithm in 2016, Google’s Penguin algorithm is a real-time, location and language unbiased knowledge processing filter that goals to uncover and devalue websites with backlinks that could be deemed manipulative or unnatural. Continuous Penguin updates have significantly modified the search engine marketing trade and right this moment, partaking in outdated tactics can depart websites penalized and even delisted from Google’s index. The algorithms sole concentrate on backlinks now ensures search engine marketing managers and site owners construct an appeal to high-quality backlinks which might be seen as a robust “vote of confidence” between websites.
How does Penguin algorithm work?
Similar to penguin huddles, the algorithm likes to see trusted “hyperlink” relationships round websites. Regardless of trade noise, high-quality hyperlink constructing remains to be probably the essential techniques to drive rating will increase, and Penguin retains detailed focus guaranteeing websites don’t manipulate the system. Operating in real-time, Penguin kicks into motion when websites construct threatening volumes of hyperlinks in a brief area of time, pay for sponsored hyperlinks or perform spammy black-hat methods. The algorithm additionally displays “anchor text” profiles as these may also be cleverly orchestrated to affect rankings. Manipulating Penguin employing executing unethical techniques might lead to an enormous lack of website site visitors.
How you can ensure you don’t get penalized?
Within the words of Google – “Keep away from tips meant to enhance search engine rankings. An excellent rule of thumb is whether or not you’d feel comfy explaining what you’ve completed to a Google worker”. To remain in Penguin’s good books, you must construct hyperlinks that you wish to exist and never simply because you’ve got a short-term finish objective. If you’re a hyperlink constructing “beginner” or wish to change your methods, keep in mind to at all times strategy hyperlink constructing with the motto of “hyperlink incomes.” This implies constructing hyperlinks you’d by no means wish to take away.
Seen a current drop in site visitors or fearful about being penalized? Keep calm, and you may take motion earlier than it’s too late. Paid backlink profiling instruments corresponding to Majestic, ahrefs and Link Research Tools will enable you to consider a web site’s footprint and spotlight areas to enhance.
To shortly gauge spammy hyperlink ranges surrounding a website, it’s worthwhile to assessment its anchor textual content breakdown. Utilizing Majestic’s software right here’s an important instance of a site that appears to have an unnatural high 10 checklist highlighting a lot of spammy hyperlinks.
Professional tip: Anchor textual content profiles needs to be pure and comprise primarily branded, services or products associated key phrases. In case you spot spammy or unrelated anchor textual content in your high 10 checklists, this may very well be a trigger for concern and needs to be investigated instantly.
Hummingbird algorithm
TLDR: Hummingbird is prepared and ready to feed in your website like candy nectar. Strive to attract consideration by creating pages that match the “search intent” of the consumer. Discover doable synonyms and goal longer tail key phrases with much fewer competitors. Be taught from rivals that could be outranking you. In case you wrestle to put in writing content material, reply to general buyer questions in a pure and interesting approach – here’s a great example.
What’s Hummingbird algorithm?
First launched in September 2013, Google’s Hummingbird algorithm considerably modified the best way the search engine interpreted consumer queries and rewards websites who reply a consumer’s search phrase. The introduction of Hummingbird shifted sites to concentrate on matching a user’s “search intent” relatively than merely attempting to rank for a key phrase or phrase. The last word objective for this model new algorithm was to assist Google higher perceive the “what” behind a consumer search question, relatively than displaying outcomes primarily based on a broad degree, key phrase foundation. In brief, Hummingbird helps customers discover what they need alongside enabling Google to search out, filter and show outcomes which might be extra exactly centered on the which means behind a question.
How does Hummingbird algorithm work?
Similar to the hen it’s named after, the algorithm is immediately recognizable each time a Google outcomes web page is displayed. You possibly can see Hummingbird in motion on the backside of Google the place different “theme-related” outcomes are proven that don’t essentially comprise the key phrases from the unique search question. Hummingbird will not be a penalty-based algorithm. As a substitute it breaks down lengthy, conversational queries to unpick the “intent,” takes into consideration wider website relevancy of every search and rewards websites that use pure synonyms and long-tail key phrases. Hummingbird not solely understands how completely different internet audiences behave, and the algorithm may shortly recognize what a searcher is searching for, through displaying associated options within the search field previous to presenting outcomes.
For unrecognized search queries (do you know – around 15% of all daily Google searches have by no means been searched earlier than!?) Google harnesses the ability of its artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm – Rankbrain. Launched in April 2015, this machine studying supercomputer not solely deciphers the “intent” behind new queries, it additionally filters the displayed outcomes accordingly. You possibly can learn extra about Google’s Rankbrain algorithm here.
What can I do to get its consideration?
Finally, web site’s that implement a cross-combination of the algorithms standards ought to see vital rating will increase extra time. In case your website is at present rank poorly inside your area of interest, there’s an excessive probability that Hummingbird has some effect on your positioning. Attempt to construct robust “Hummingbird pleasant” foundations firstly of any digital challenge as this may pay dividends. This may embody; incorporating conversational solutions to questions inside content material (here’s a great example of this), together with synonyms and focusing on long-tail key phrases or phrases. To search out synonyms, Ubersuggest is a good place to start out. Moreover, Google’s related search results are at all times value taking a look at and don’t neglect to take a look at the competitors that’s rating above you.
Right here’s an important instance of an eCommerce website that generates content material primarily based round widespread buyer questions. This helps Hummingbird to know site relevancy.
Professional tip: Earlier than writing or creating new internet pages, reply the next questions: what’s the goal of this web page? What’s it attempting to focus on? Scoping the aim early provides time to doable analysis synonyms, lengthy tail key phrases and to discover the competitors.
Pigeon algorithm
TLDR: Pigeon is able to ship higher native outcomes once you begin feeding it. Reap the benefits of Google My Business and get listed in some real and trusted on-line native directories corresponding to Yelp when creating content material, attempt to use textual content and imagery that’s distinctively related to a location or space. In case you run a service primarily based enterprise, ensure you are generating user reviews – this may enable you to stand out from the native crowd.
What’s Pigeon algorithm?
First launched in August 2013, Google’s Pigeon algorithm was launched to supply higher outcomes for native searches. Previous to Pigeon, Google’s native search outcomes produced a combined bag of knowledge, and a replacement was wanted to include each location and distance as essential elements when displaying outcomes. Subsequently, Google lowered the variety of displayed native enterprise outcomes from 7 to three, making native publicity even more durable. Nonetheless, the algorithm successfully mixed Google search outcomes with Google Map searches and set in motion a fresh cohesive approach for websites to rank organically for local searches.
How does pigeon algorithm work?
Similar to the navigational means of homing pigeons, the algorithm depends closely upon gathering knowledge on a consumer’s location and distance earlier than displaying search outcomes (this knowledge have to be shared with Google in any other case outcomes are primarily based on key phrases solely). Pigeon is a good instance of Google in a “mobile-first” world, striving to ship related search outcomes throughout each doable interplay. Though it’s not doable to control the place potential prospects might use Google, Pigeon now takes extra discover of native listing listings, opinions, and native fame when rating outcomes. This algorithm doesn’t penalize websites. As an alternative, it focuses on giving prominence to these websites that should be listed regionally.
Tip: Pigeon is just at present affecting search ends in the English language.
How you can ensure you get observed regionally
Pigeon likes to see native relationships and rewards knowledge consistency throughout the web. You will need to concentrate on foundational SEO that comes with location primarily based key phrases and make sure you reap the benefits of Google My Enterprise listings. If you wish to actually impress Pigeon, work on constructing high-quality directory listings with constant knowledge and work exhausting to ascertain optimistic user-generated opinions. With so many native companies now closely counting on Google to drive foot site visitors and gross sales, a deep understanding of this algorithm will assist carve some much-needed area between the native competitors.
Right here’s an important instance of an area enterprise that has taken benefit of Google My Enterprise and publishes content material primarily based around native key phrases. This helps Pigeon to know the situation of potential prospects.
Professional tip: For websites which closely depend on native site visitors, it’s essential to deal with native search engine marketing very like your native fame. Keep in mind to supply the identical knowledge throughout the web, be critical about opinions, and assist the Pigeon algorithm to know your viewers’ location with focused content material.
Conclusion
Gaining a deeper understanding of how Google ranks websites helps you spend time within the areas the place change can most influence efficiency. It’s essential to do not forget that growing website rankings is an extended course that requires strategic steering, and assembly the standards of Google’s algorithms can generally be a tough course of. Nonetheless, on the identical time, aligning with the expectations of every algorithm self-generates the technique wanted to succeed online. Executing techniques that purpose to impress Google’s algorithms is at all times the very best technique as they, in the end, create the foundations that may make or break any future achievements.
It’s inevitable that Google can be endlessly updating and tweaking their algorithms. Whilst essentially the most dominant web search engine, Google frequently rocks the boat to disrupt the search engine marketing trade, enhance search outcomes and to remain forward of its personal competitors. It is because the second a consumer doesn’t get the reply they’re searching for, they could fairly probably use one other search engine. Over time, if searches on Google decline, so does their big income from Google Adverts, so it’s within the search engine’s greatest curiosity to take care of and enhance search outcomes on an ongoing foundation.
The 4 algorithms portrayed on this blog post are solely a part of Google’s rating algorithms. In whole, there are over 200 rating elements which might be examined throughout a variety of subtle algorithms and machine studying applications. It’s, in the end, these algorithms that resolve the place an internet web page ought to rank in search outcomes. Continuous updates from each technical and behavioral views require the important want, to remain up to date extra time.
In case you’re desirous about holding updated with Google’s newest algorithm updates and ensuring your consumer’s or your personal websites climb the search rankings and keep away from potential site visitors losses, listed below are just a few assets to bookmark:
- MOZ Google Updates – shows updates stretching again to the 12 months 2000
- SEMRUSH Sensor – exhibits a day by day graph of search rating velocity
- Search Engine Land – highlights Google information, updates, and press releases
Is One Page WordPress Website Enough for Your Business?
Do you need a website? Probably, yes. Without a website, it is almost impossible to compete with other companies on the internet. Nevertheless, a website requires an investment. An investment that you may not be ready to make because you do not see any point in creating a website for the success of your business. For people like you, a one-page website can be the perfect solution. A professionally looking website for very low price and minimum effort, but at the same time, which does deliver the desired benefit.
Why should you choose a one-page WordPress template?
As the term implies, a one-page website consists of a single page only. If you browse the web, you will come across this kind of simplified websites more and more. One-pagers look fantastic and can be put together within one day or just a few hours. In just a few hours, you can have a professional looking website ready to go. However, apart from the super-fast creation, a one-page website has many other advantages:
- Low costs: a one page website does not require complex functions and is therefore easier to code and cheaper to purchase.
- Very mobile friendly: one-page websites provide a user-friendly experience on mobile. A big advantage is that visitors do not have to navigate through the website via small buttons and menus to find the right information. The page that is displayed is all there is. On that single page, you will find portfolios, testimonials, contact information and everything else.
- Little content needed for a professional website: many businesses find it difficult to write enough content for a website of a regular size. If you are using a one page WP theme, there is only so much content you can stuff in there.
- Visual experience: one-page websites are very visual and therefore very suitable to create a gorgeous website with lots of visual material.
Properties of a one-page website:
An important key factor of a one-page website is the special user experience. The visitor often fails to work out his way through the pages of a multi-page website, however, a single page website deals with this problem. A one-page website can consist of many different elements yet there is a standard layout for a one-page template that typically looks like this:
- Photo slider/video intro
- Company information and employees
- Portfolio / photo gallery
- Products and / or services
- Contact form and / or location on Google map
Of course, there is no set or rules and the layout of your website depends on your industry and references.
When should you use a one-page website?
One page websites are suitable for different types of organizations and projects. For example:
- Product promotions / actions
- Temporary sales of a product or online course.
- Personal website (online CV)
- Creative companies, speakers or personal trainers.
- Online business cards
- Business websites for painters, plumbers, etc.
One page websites are, therefore, suitable the most in 2 types of situations. First, if you need an additional website to promote a product or service. With a WordPress template designed as a one-page website, you can put together a simple website that serves this straightforward purpose only. Besides, one pager is useful when you want to promote yourself or your organization online and thereby reduce the costs of a website. One page WP themes are very suitable for personal websites or as an online business card.
Since a single page website consists of a single page, this type of website is not recommended if you have plenty of content or if you plan to expand your website in the short term.
One pager WordPress themes and the Google ranking
Can one page websites benefit from better ranking in Google? That is a question that we often hear from many new entrepreneurs. A well optimized one page design can actually be ranked just as good as a similar site with 5 pages. With that being said, websites with one page or up to five pages, are not as “strong” as larger websites with hundreds of pages, which means they also score lower highly in Google.
Does your website need to be ranked on various keywords? Then it is essential that you continue to improve your website systematically and an indispensable part of that is creating new content. If you think a one page website is really enough for your company, but do you want to improve the ranking of your website in Google? A good solution is to link a blog to a one pager. This way you keep one page for your presentation, service(s) or product(s) yet at the same time, you work on creating content, which will help you rank better. Remember, that you will always need to link back to the ‘homepage’ of your one page website, from the various blog posts you publish.
Is one page design enough for your company?
If you are after a good ranking, this question can quickly be answered: no! If the ranking isn’t crucial, and you would like to start a website quickly, just to get online, then we can certainly recommend a one page design. In some cases, a one-pager (including a blog) is enough for the long-term strategy. For example, if you only offer one product or service with few alterations. Most entrepreneurs would notice, however, that a one page website in insufficient for the success for their company.
A one page website has a good visual appeal, but to really score well in search engines, one page is simply not enough. It is not only about your position in Google, but also the result that the website produces in the visitor’s mind. A one page template is a good start, but to get more clients through your website, it is vital to keep developing your website. When you start developing your website further, you will soon notice what a big difference it makes.
How to choose a template for your one page website?
Do you still want a one-page website design, even after everything you have read above? Then it is definitely a good idea to work with a ready-to-use template. I’d not recommend hiring a web design company for a 1-page template, because you can find hundreds of them online, either free or premium versions. There are several options that you can choose from:
- HTML bootstrap templates – Do you have any knowledge of HTML and CSS and do not plan to add content frequently? Then HTML templates are the cheapest options. Not only HTML templates generally cost less than WordPress themes (and there are many free), but they also don’t employ PHP queries, which in terms keeps the hosting cost at a minimum, even if you are going to have heavy loads of traffic.
- WordPress templates – If you want to be able to change the content yourself quickly, then choose a WordPress template for your website. Using the customizer or the theme settings you can effortlessly put together a great looking one-pager with tons of options and features.
Which WordPress themes come with a page builder?
If you want more options and the freedom to add and remove all kinds of elements, then build your own one page website with the help of a page builder. The possibilities with this kind of templates are endless. If you are planning to expand the one page website later, then it can be useful to choose a WordPress theme that can grow with your website. An excellent choice would then be to create a one page website using the Divi page builder.
Building a one page website with Divi.
One of Best WordPress templates with a page builder is certainly the Divi theme from ElegantThemes. This page builder has all kinds of advantages compared to other page builders and is, therefore, a must for your one-page website.
Advantages of Divi:
- The diverse quantity of elements. To build your new one pager you can choose from 46 different elements, including video, images, testimonials, blog, portfolio, counters and more.
- The Visual Builder. Editing a page is made even easier by the Visual Builder from Divi, this makes it possible to change the page directly from the front-end interface (think of a visual editor in its’ best possible form). You can immediately see how the changes look and how do they affect the design.
- The speed. It often takes a long time to build a page with the help of a page builder, but Divi works very fast. No long saving time, just continue to work, and the rest of the process runs automatically on the background.
Still not convinced of Divi’s benefits? Read our review here and post your thoughts and ideas about a one page website, do you have one or want to build one?
Link Building in 2017 – What You Should & Shouldn’t Do
Anyone who wants to get higher in Google’s search results with his or her website cannot ignore the one thing that influences the game like nothing else: link building. Even in 2017 link building (literally “link building”) is still one of the most critical methods to optimize your website (s) for search engines. What is link building and what are the essential points of attention nowadays? In this article, we share our knowledge and experiences!
What is link building?
To put it simply, link building is the placement or acquisition of multiple links to your website, so that search engines like Google will rate your site higher in the search results.
However, link building is not wizardry and is more than just ‘linking’ websites to your site. Effective link building requires a lot and good communication, resilience, creativity and great empathy and perseverance. If you want to continue to win the competition with the competition on a structural basis, then you have to stick to thorough preparation, an effective strategy, and disciplined execution.
50/50: On-Page and Off-Page SEO
Hard figures about the search engine algorithm do not give Google a price. Nevertheless, reputable SEO experts and agencies generally agree that search engine optimization for the first 50% consists of optimizing various aspects of your website. Think of the page titles, meta tags and descriptions, content, loading time and an ‘https connection.’ This is also called On-Page SEO.
Your Off-Page SEO activities determine the other 50% of your position in Google. Off-Page SEO means all things that are taken outside your website to make your site easier to find in Google. The most common methods for this are link building and content marketing. These activities are about the quality of the links to your site, the so-called ‘backlinks.’ Link building, the process of collecting backlinks, determines for a huge part of how well people can find you online!
What does Google look at?
Google indexes the internet in the same way as how a user surfs the web; clicking on links and going from one page/website to another. However, Google still looks at many more things than the number of links. After all, the company does everything it can to ensure that users continue to have a pleasant search experience and not make use of other search engines. For this reason, Google Quality Rater has drawn up guidelines in which, as the name suggests, quality requirements of a website are included.
For example, Google looks at the quality and authority of the pages where you are left on, whether the topics of these pages are related to the subject of your site, and whether the websites that contain your links contain good content and not have been set up to only link up. What Google finds very important is that your site has a natural link profile. Some relevant questions are:
- Is there enough variation in the texts that link to your website (a text link can be www.domainname.nl but also for example “click here”)?
- Are all links to your homepage or are there also references to subpages?
- Is it referred to from different domains and IP addresses or does it all come from the same angle?
- Do you not only have links on “links” pages but also in blog articles, on forums, and on portals?
- How many people actually click on the links and ultimately stay on the landing page?
What it comes down to is that you do not have to work on as many links as possible or outsource the work to link building agencies that promise you higher positions within a few weeks. Remember that Google’s abuse of link building is heavily penalized and may result in a lower ranking in the search results, or in the worst case completely removing your website from the Google Index.
Important factors with link building in 2017
Five years ago, Google changed the search algorithm to prevent manipulation of link building. In 2012, the so-called “Penguin” update was implemented. This update identifies and penalizes websites that automatically generate links or participate in link exchange programs and/or paid links.
As described earlier Off-page SEO mainly consists of link building and content marketing. Since the Penguin update and the various updates that followed, the focus at Google has come to lie more and more on good content. How much good link building you do (or outsource), providing your website with good quality content is nowadays the most important aspect of SEO.
Year 2017 is the key to your website first technical order and weekly the content to refresh by, for example, relevant blogs on it. After that, you can only start with link building, where the quality and relevance of links is much more important than quantity. An additional advantage of working on good quality content is that it will automatically be linked to your website, something that in turn contributes to a beautiful natural link profile.
SEO Audit: The Beginning Of The SEO Cycle
Search engine optimization is a cyclic process. In this series about the SEO optimization cycle, I cover all the steps of SEO projects that focus on customer questions. In this first blog post: the SEO audit or inventory.
Search engine optimization (SEO) helps organizations answer questions from customers at every stage of the customer journey. The echo of the ‘ Friends of Search ‘ conference still sounds like: “All a conversion process is a series of questions asked by a customer.” As a content specialist or web editor, you can make smart use of SEO to recognize and answer customer questions. A good marketer, of course, knows which questions are (intended) customers awake, but Google knows this much better. Worldwide, people do about 100 billion searches per month. All questions have already been asked – to the search engine. Not making work of findability is therefore not an option. It is as if you do not answer the phone when a customer calls. Being discoverable means setting up content so that it is accessible to (potential) customers using search engines. But where are you going to start? This series of blog posts helps you to work on the SEO optimization cycle. In this article I will discuss the SEO audit or SEO inventory: the best way to quickly discover how your SEO hygiene is and where SEO problems are located.
The SEO optimization cycle
SEO optimization is not a one-off job: it is a cycle that you repeat for the best result. Optimizing means always tuning organizational objectives, user questions and ‘competitors’ performance on the search results page. But above all, you have to see it as a game in which you are continually looking for ways to better connect with the query of your user or (potential) customer.
SEO starts with an objective
Every SEO project must, of course, start with a question or objective. What are typical SEO goals?
With objectives, of course, the more concrete, the better. Ask before you get always started when SEO optimization is a success. When is your (internal) client satisfied? A SMART answer to this question immediately gives you a KPI. For yourself, this phase is essential to estimate at an early stage how realistic the assignment is. How much effort will it cost to improve findability? Are the expectations unrealistic? Then you can intervene now. It is wise to point out that the direct effect of your SEO efforts is not always easy to identify. SEO correlates with better findability. That is something different than a causal relationship.
Components of the SEO optimization cycle
In the coming weeks, I will cover all phases in the SEO optimization cycle in a series of blog posts. Today the first step: the inventory or SEO audit. Why is an inventory significant? Can not you start with a keyword analysis? That does not seem like a good idea, because:
An SEO audit shows how a website is located. An SEO audit displays all indexed URLs, from web pages to images and PDFs. Do you want to tackle the findability of a part of the website? In that case, first, identify all existing URLs related to that theme during the inventory.
An SEO audit shows where the opportunities for improvement lie. An SEO audit makes the content similar on similar pages. What do you notice when you compare all navigation or product pages?
An SEO inventory gives you a quick view of how the SEO hygiene of the website is. If you, like me, are hired by an organization for an SEO-advice or SEO-project, you have a nice overview in a short time without knowing the history of the website.
An SEO inventory is not only necessary, but it is also made fairly quickly. For this, I use the ScreamingFrog tool, just like many other SEO specialists. ScreamingFrog provides you with an overview of all indexed URLs in a few hours with data ranging from page title and meta description to response time and incoming links. From ScreamingFrog you can easily connect (via APIs) to Google Analytics and the Google Search Console. This provides extra columns with data and extra added value for your SEO audit. Your starting point is then an Excel sheet with 51 columns. In this spreadsheet, you will start analyzing.
Analyze data from an SEO audit
What can be analyzed? In a recent SEO project I paid attention to the following aspects:
Title
The column ‘Title’ shows the meta title. The complete overview makes it immediately clear whether the site administrators maintain rules for the construction of these titles. Does the name of the organization appear in every title? Stop that. A generic title does not in any way match a search query from a Google user. Repeating your company name also makes page titles unnecessarily long. This is evident in the SEO audit from this example: of the 1,019 indexed pages, no less than 836 have a page title that is 50 characters or longer. And as you know, there is only space for a page title of 50-55 characters on the regular search results page.
Meta description
The ‘meta description’ column contains the meta-description per indexed page if it is filled in. Again, length is the most important criterion. In the example audit, the ‘meta description’ field is filled with all URLs. Hoera! Unfortunately, it soon turns out that there is no reason to cheer. The editorial staff has failed to add a tailor-made meta description for hundreds of pages. The web builder has ensured that in those cases the first few hundred characters of the page text are included as the meta description. That leads to descriptions of 500 characters and more. No less than 668 meta descriptions are longer than 150 characters, nowadays the absolute maximum for mentioning on the search results page.
Headings
An SEO audit gives a good picture of the use of (intermediate) headlines on the website that you are investigating. Are the H1 and H2’s not filled in anywhere or are they the same on every page? Then there is a badly built website or a web editor that only distinguishes between headings as bold text and does not use the built-in headings.
The number of words
ScreamingFrog states by default the number of words per indexed URL. This can be useful when you want to compare similar pages. Of course, there are also stories about the preference of the search engine for long texts ( see for example here ). It is striking how these sources turn around cause and effect. And then we have not even mentioned the difference between correlation and causal relationships that you should always keep in mind when you start working with SEO.
Level of the page
ScreamingFrog indicates neatly at which depth level a page is in the site. Is it acceptable that a website 25 levels go into the depth? The answer will vary per organization, but the SEO audit gives you insight.
Inlinks
How many incoming links does a page score? With the ‘conditional formatting’ option in Excel, you can immediately visualize in this column which pages and topics score above average when retrieving inbound links.
Response time
The response time of a page is a ranking factor in the Google algorithm. The slower a page, the less attractive it is for visitors. Does a page score above average? Then there is work to be done. The Page Speed Insights can help you with that. In the SEO audit in our example, the loading time of pages sometimes increases to more than three seconds, twice as long as average. That is a starting point for further research.
Pictures
The filter function of Excel helps you to isolate all images easily. In this example, there are 782 images on the website. No less than 212 are larger than 100 KB, with outliers to 9 MB. Such huge images significantly delay the loading time of web pages. Another aspect is the name of the image. With totally obscure or irrelevant names you do not have to expect that you can be found in Google’s image search engine. And did you know that only a hyphen (-), and therefore not the underscore (_) counts as a separator between individual words?
404 errors
With the filter function in Excel, I filtered all URLs with a 404 response code from the results. Why is this an SEO action? ScreamingFrog also records how many incoming links a URL has. Each inbound link pointing to a 404 page is a missed opportunity for link value.
Figures from Google Analytics: bounce rate
Thanks to the Google Analytics API, as a user of ScreamingFrog you can also add statistics for each URL, both primary and conversion-related metrics, for example:
- Number of sessions in the period studied
- Bounce rate
- Session duration
- Page views per session
- Conversion rate per goal
- Number of completion of a goal
Personally, from an SEO perspective, I think the bounce rate is the most interesting metric. A bounce is (especially on a page that is intended to allow the visitor to click through) a strong signal of non-engagement. Let users’ engagement be a factor that, according to all reports, increases in importance. A bouncing visitor is back to Google very quickly, and that is not a good signal for the quality of your website. As AJ Kohn says: Google measures is a long click.
The Yoast SEO plugin: a handy tool for bloggers
If you know that you have to do something about SEO for your blog, but you do not know very well, let Yoast’s free SEO plugin help you.
Yoast SEO plugin
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is quite an abstract concept for many bloggers. Incidentally, not only for bloggers but that is not the point here.
What matters is that many bloggers want to do something about search engine optimization, but they do not know where to start. Fortunately, if your site is running on WordPress, there is a handy plugin that can help you on your way to SEO.
WordPress SEO: what can you do with it?
The plugin we are talking about is WordPress SEO from the Dutchman Joost de Volk, who is also known as Yoast. And with this plugin, you can quickly tackle many common SEO bottlenecks as an absolute layman.
With WordPress SEO you can work on your on site as well as your off-site SEO. First, let’s look at the possibilities for that first point.
Onsite SEO is as you probably know everything you do on your site to optimize your blog for search engines. This is mainly due to the way in which you present your content to the robots that index your blog.
The key here is that you present everything neatly, and WordPress SEO is a star in that.
Possibilities for individual posts or pages: If, after you have installed the plugin, you open an existing or new page or post in your dashboard, you will see that a block ‘WordPress SEO by Yoast’ has appeared at the bottom. At least, if you have installed the Dutch version, like us. Of course, the English standard version works just as well, but in this article, we will go further from the Dutch.
Within this new block, you will see many possibilities. At the top, the Snippet example appeared first. This is how this page will be displayed when it hits a Search Engine Results Page.
With the help of WordPress SEO, we can optimize this snippet regarding length and content. First, make sure that the Meta description immediately makes clear what the article is about so that the searcher can determine whether your content matches what he or she is looking for. You can see in real time whether your meta description has the correct length. A good story fits precisely or almost precisely within the maximum number of characters. Something too short is, of course, better than a little too long, and your most important keyword is always at the front.
With SEO title you can (if you seem necessary) adjust the displayed title of the Snippet. Often the automatically generated title will already be useful, provided of course that it covers the load.
Even if you do not use this plugin, something will automatically be entered in the snippet of the page when it appears in a row of search results. But of course you know the best of what your article is about, so you do well to fill in the snippet in the best way for you. Please note that you do not make a description that does not match the actual content. With this, cheating will only hurt your ranking.
If you set a Focus search term, the plugin makes an automatic analysis of your text, which you can view in the second tab under Page analysis. When you want to target a particular keyword, you can check whether you have returned that word to the right places. The more green you see, the better it is.
You can skip the tab ‘Advanced’ in the beginning, but if you are active on social media with your blog, then the Social tag is also handy.
You probably know the well-known annoyance that a piece of text that is wrong in your eyes is used with a link when you place it on Facebook. In the Facebook description field, you can enter your own desired text, and this is automatically displayed by Facebook when you cut and paste.
Other useful options
WordPress SEO offers a number of other useful options, and to make use of this you navigate to the separate tab SEO in the left menu of your dashboard. We will discuss three very useful options with you.
The main option you see on this home screen is the ability to verify your blog with the important webmaster tools from Google, Bing and Alexa.
Logging in your blog with these webmaster tools is an important form of offsite SEO, for example because they will be able to index your site so easily and quickly. To log in you usually have to hide a code in your site. And instead of doing that yourself via the editor or the FTP server, where you may not have eaten a lot of cheese, you can have it done so much easier by the plugin.
You will also see XML sitemaps in your left menu. An XML sitemap is a kind of map of your site, which is used by the indexing robots of search engines to easily plow all your content (not unimportant: sitemaps can be entered in the webmaster tools just mentioned).
By ticking the top block on this page, you create an XML sitemap for your blog, which will also be automatically updated from now on.
A possibility that I have used many times eagerly, can be found under Permalinks . Here you see at the top the possibility to omit the category basis from your URLs. Do yourself a favor, and tick this box.
When you are on the landing page of a category of your blog, WordPress uses the URL structure “sitename.nl/category/categorname” by default. The word ‘category’ is literally in between, whereas that has no function at all, and in SEO terms, it is more of a hindrance. But with one simple check, that can be solved here.
How do you use WordPress SEO?
As you will see after installing this plugin, WordPress SEO offers many more possibilities, but with what we have discussed here you will already be able to take a number of steps regarding the on site and off site SEO of your blog.
For additional information about the possibilities of this plugin, you can always consult the convenient built-in tour. And if you know good applications for WordPress SEO that you do not want to remember the other readers, please leave a message with this article.
Commenting is The Art of The Blog
You can write fun, blog about interesting things, and actively promote your blog via social media. And yet it does not really want to raft in terms of visitor numbers.
Blog commenting
In other words, do you want more visitors on your blog, but do not you know how well? Then respond to someone else’s blog.
What is blog commenting?
For anything that should sound somewhat interesting, we like to use the English term, and so I’m going to talk to you about ‘blog commenting.’ But do not worry: if it’s good, the following really has some value for you.
By blogging comments, we mean in old-fashioned Dutch simply the art of commenting on other people’s blog articles. Nice for the other person to get interaction on his or her blog, but how do you get more visitors?
Get more visitors with blog comments.
That works as follows. Often you can post a link to your own site in response to a blog. So the idea is easy to guess. You react, spam your link, and via that link, you get more visitors.
For a long time – true, but it is slightly more complicated. There are two important things to watch out for.
- The blogs you respond to.
- The kind of reaction you place.
- Let’s take a closer look at both.
- Which blogs should you respond to?
If we look at the blogs you respond to, it is important that they fall within your niche. The chance is then that the greatest that people who come across your link are actually interested in the topic that your blog is about.
It is also good to try and pick out the most visited blogs. From an SEO-technical point of view, these give the links that you post to your blog more value, and more visitors also means more eyes on your link.
Be careful not to exaggerate, and to promote your own site for every article on a popular blog. Preferably choose a number of blogs so that you can spread well…
How should you respond?
In addition, you must also ensure that you place the right kind of reactions. In a nutshell, it comes down to having something useful to say. A tried and tested tactic is to refer in your response to your own article that matches the article topic.
You can also ask questions, and there is also nothing wrong with just having a self-interest – apart from placing the link – you just have to mix in a discussion once in a while.
A good recipe always adds something. Therefore, focus primarily on quality and not on quality. This way you ensure that people increasingly associate your name with expertise, with all the positive consequences for your blog (and yourself) of that.
Think beyond blogs
After all, it is good not to limit yourself to blogs. Also on forums, and in discussion groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, you often have opportunities for commenting. Closed online communities where you can spar with like-minded people are certainly useful too. This way you not only create traffic but also put your blog on the map with people with authority within your niche. And since these people often have a large follower base, that gives you all kinds of opportunities to reach an even larger audience.
Moral of the story: spread your message and expertise outside of your blog, and increase your visitor numbers.
Why Is It So Essential To Have A Fast Website?
When developing a website, the speed of sites is not always considered. Functionality and layout have a higher priority for most projects. Sites are also becoming more and more extensive: beautiful large images and videos as background, lots of information and functionalities such as links with social media and animations. This trend can be at the expense of speed, which can have significant consequences on your website’s visibility.
From the moment a website is requested via the address bar or clicked at Google, the server goes to work with a lightning-fast calculation to generate the page and send it to the user. During this time the user is waiting for the page, a crucial moment whose waiting time can vary greatly. The time between requesting and displaying a page is often between 1-2 seconds for well-optimized websites, while it may take 10 or more seconds for slow sites.
27% more conversion with a fast loading time!
An investigation by Soasta has shown that the conversion of websites up to 27% goes up when the loading time of a website is one second shorter. A Google test showed a 20% reduction in online traffic when loading the results took only half a second longer. Amazon concluded that every 0.1 second extra loading time resulted in 1% lower sales.
The general user experience of fast websites is better, and users stay longer on websites. Given that online users can move to competitors with unprecedented ease (because they are just a click away), the user experience and user retention are more important than ever. In addition to users’ experience, search engines also look at the loading times of websites as part of the algorithm that assesses websites. Google sent a message to website developers in 2010 with the encouragement to improve the speed of websites to be placed higher in the search results.
What needs to be adjusted?
Many different systems are hidden under the bonnet of a website. Among other things, generating pages, retrieving information from a database, loading images and displaying the page in a web browser. Besides, a lot of communication between web browsers and servers is required, in many cases, more than 100 messages between a browser and server are exchanged in the background before the page can be fully displayed. Every step in the process can be a weak link that can significantly affect the loading time of the website. Examples of solutions are optimizing the code, reducing images and applying to cache.
What do we do in the field of speed?
With a team of experts, we can investigate the weak links in the speed of websites and tackle the problems in a targeted manner. We provide all standard speed optimizations but also look further. Each website is unique and therefore requires a tailor-made solution. On to the best customer experience and online visibility!
New service from Google – Page Speed Tool
Since a few days, Google has launched the Page speed tool. The Page Speed tool, which for several months had been released a beta version of Google, is an online application that allows you to check your website on technical points that affect the speed of the site. This is in the area of on-page optimization interesting because a website that loads slower (than necessary) can be ranked lower. Besides, it is, of course, to a visitor a nice to have a website that loads fast. The one does not go without the other:). A chance to using this tool to see if you can make your site load faster.
How does the tool work?
Through various ways, you can perform this analysis. You can do this, for example, online or through a plugin in your Chrome or Firefox browser. When you run the analysis for the URL that you specified, then comes Google with a score for the website. A kind of optimization score for the speed aspect of your website. This score runs from 0 to 100. And which, of course, a perfect score is 100.
In addition to the score gives the result findings which are divided into the ratings high price, medium price, low price, experimental rules or conclusions that worth watching but that do not affect the rash, and already done or what We’ve already done to optimize your website in this area. We think it advisable to get started with at least the high and medium priority findings.
On-Site SEO Tips For Bloggers
As a blogger, you will probably have heard of the concept of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But which issues within SEO are actually important specifically for bloggers? In this article, we will go deeper into the concept of on-site SEO, and how you can do this as a blogger. The best SEO tips in a row!
Seo tips
As the name actually says, on-site SEO is a collective name for all SEO matters that you arrange on your website itself. We discuss a number of methods of optimizing your blog on site, in order to get a better starting position in the search engines and to work towards a higher number of visitors.
Meta descriptions
Although meta descriptions have become less important than before, you still do well to ensure that they are properly cared for. This applies both to the meta descriptions at the site level (what is the site about) and a category or post level.
The rule of thumb for meta descriptions that you can keep as a blogger is that they must be consistent with the content that is linked to these meta descriptions. So do not set up meta descriptions filled with keywords that you want to be found on, but where you have no content posted on your blog. The algorithms of Google have been developed so far that this will only be counter-productive.
Navigation items
Navigation items say a lot about what content on a blog can be found. In general, navigation items are also the internal links that are present on most pages of the website. These can be menu items as well as links to specific categories or tag overviews.
Navigation items are meant for people who are looking for certain information. Give names to navigation items that can be interpreted correctly by a visitor. Today’s search engines are intelligent enough to see these menu items in the context of the overall blog, and the topics covered on this blog. Short, descriptive titles of navigation items are therefore better than long search engines-oriented descriptions.
Search engines remain pieces of software and algorithms that need signals in order to assess whether certain content is relevant. ”
Interlinking
Certainly, when your blog grows and will contain a reasonable number of posts, it will become increasingly easier to link individual blog posts to each other. Linking blog posts together will create an internal “spider web” of blog posts that complement each other or connect to each other. This brings logic to the search engines and will ensure that your blog gets faster on certain topics in the search engines.
Structure of individual blog posts
Search engines remain pieces of software and algorithms that require signals in order to assess whether certain content is relevant. That is why it is always advisable to build individual blog posts in a logical way.
In our opinion, however, there is a difference in approach between, for example, a blog or a webshop. With on-page SEO of a webshop, you often want to write product descriptions and informative pages about certain keywords (keywords). This is because a consumer is looking for a product or information about a product. It is therefore reasonably predictable which keywords the consumer will search for when looking for a particular product.
As a blogger you have (usually) a different approach, and you write blogs mainly for the reader (and perhaps yourself), but less for the search engines. With a product description, you focus the text on a keyword and make sure that this keyword comes back in the title, the beginning, the middle and the end of the text. With a blog article, it is much more important than the title covers the load (and possibly the keyword) and that the entire text that follows fits well with this. The signals that are sent to a search engine with blog posts will be more contextual than specific keywords that come back in the text. For contextual cues, think of interlinking, links, and likes from social media and the authority of an author.
Pictures
It is advisable to use relevant images with blog posts. People are visually oriented and love that content is supported by appropriate photos. In addition, blog posts that contain “rich content” (text, pictures, videos, audio, etc.) are also greatly appreciated by search engines, because rich content often comes across more clearly to the visitor of the page in question. When using images as a blogger, you do well to give them a clear title, description and alt tag. This ensures that images can always be interpreted by the search engines and by users who can not see a picture.
Glossary
By integrating a knowledge base on your blog you can distinguish yourself from similar blogs, and at the same time show that you have certain knowledge within the niche(s) in which you are active. In addition, with a glossary, you can give an extra impulse to the interlinking of your pages and blog posts, and the whole of your blog in terms of the structure becomes a lot more logical for the search engines.
You should view a glossary as a dynamic list that you supplement and adjust in the course of time where necessary. An important reason that Wikipedia is so successful in the search engines is that it is, as it were, one big spider web with logical references to topics and concepts within the same website. When you make your blog a mini-Wikipedia, this will certainly contribute to the “visibility” of your blog in the search engines.