Do-able SEO Tips for 2017 for the Non-Techie Who Hates Being a Data Junkie
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the un-fun part of internet marketing, as far as I'm concerned. It's too close to tracking statistics and doing math for my taste, when I'd much rather immerse in the aesthetics of web design and the magic of content writing.
While you too might hope to avoid becoming a data-junkie and being a little OCD about Google Analytics, there are a few things you do need to know about keeping your website in good shape when it comes to Google's most current whims.
Uh, I mean, website ranking algorithm.
According to the Search Engine Journal (SEJ), the most important ranking factors are:
significant amount of relevant fresh content
content promotion links (incoming from Facebook)
mobile-first friendly
techie stuff: H tags, anchor text, no pop ups, https security
Significant content means pages, including blogs, that are fairly lengthy. More than 1000 words to be precise. Relevant content means information that relates to the search terms people use to get to your website.
Whereas we previously obsessed about keywords, the current priority is to have meaningful information that makes sense to the human reader, not just to a computer algorithm. So if your previous "brand" keyword was psychotherapy, you will have relevant content when you talk about "counseling", the "therapy process", "reducing anxiety", and so on.
Content promotion comes in many forms, and according to SEJ the best is from teasers on Facebook that introduce readers to a blog or page, with an enticing sentence and accompanying link back to your website. Promotion is giving a compelling reason to go to your website that makes it worth the reader's while, and giving a link that makes it easy for them to take the action you want them to take.
Google now apparently searches the mobile versions of our sites first, before the desktop version. If you don't have a mobile version, getting one should be the number one priority for you this month.
Most designers I know tend to develop the desktop version first, and some charge extra for perfecting the mobile version. (With De*WriteSites the mobile version is always included in your website package.)
Things that work well for Google indexing of mobile sites include factors such as:
pages load in less than 2 seconds
menus are easy to find and use
every page has an H1 and H2 tag (that's easy, the name in the header should be H1, and each page's main headline should be H2)
anchor text -- or what I call internal links between pages, written as part of your content, not as a button or page tab in the menu.
having an https instead of an http website (Wix gives you this automatically)
avoiding all pop-ups in your mobile version
On that last item, many marketers will tell you that pop-ups work to sell more product or get people to sign up for something. And that has been true, even though most of us hate them. But now Google is finding pop-ups especially annoying on mobile sites, and is starting to deduct SEO points from your site for using them.
