The last article in the SEO Series focused on the importance of making your content stand out to increase your hits. The more hits your site gets where the visitor stays a while, the higher your ranking. This article takes a look at more ways to increase your hits.
Article Length:
Blog length articles should be between 300 and 500 words. There’s a reason for that. You don’t want to overwhelm a reader, but by the same token, statistics show that readers typically only read half of an article. That means, for a 300 word blog, they’ll read 150 words. I was asked to write an informational article with a minimum of 1000 words for The Attorney General of another state (not Colorado) by the SEO firm hired by the Attorney General. They wanted to increase awareness of a new bill and the implications both for and against, and make sure they stayed on the site without bouncing off. The keywords and length were critical to increasing their SEO presence – this was the way the Attorney General was monitoring the effectiveness of the SEO firm he hired. He wanted confirmation that his constituency was informed and had the facts they needed to make an informed decision.
The problem with short blogs is that even if their target audience read the entire blog, they would not be on it long enough to register as “liking it.” Scary.
Update frequently:
At least one time each month, update your content, even if it’s only a paragraph. Google and the other search engines love updated content.
Search terms in additional places:
If you include search terms in places other than your title and page description metatag, you’ll optimize your site even more. But don’t force them if you can’t naturally make it work.
Links: The words from your search terms should be used as text links or anchor text (these are words forming a link to an external site or another internal page). Keep in mind that linking to words like “click here” or “learn more” won’t increase your ranking. Also, make sure that external links open in a new window while internal opens in the same window. With an external link in a new window, if they check it out, Google reads them as still on your site as well — they like it.
Headings: Not only do headings and subheadings assist in the organization of your text, but they help readers find what they’re looking for. If you include search terms in the headers, it’ll help your ranking. Search engines can’t read words within a picture, so make sure it appears in regular text.
Text within body: Use the search terms wisely. Don’t overload a page just to try to increase your ranking, not only will it bother your readers, but Google won’t like it.
Images & tags: Images can help with your search engine results. They not only appear in search results, but they can increase your ranking when search terms appear in the filename, caption, title, nearby text, and tag (when you over over an image on a pc, this is the text that appears.)
Next month we’ll look at the importance of mechanics, what search engines “hate” and a great free tool.
(c) 2018 Karen Van Den Heuvel Fischer