In the world of SEO, you will need to do plenty of things if you’d like to continue to rank in 2018. Not much has changed, but if you haven’t been around for a while, you have plenty of things to catch up on, so get to work. There isn’t much to worry about when you’re thinking of SEO in 2018, but if you need to do some research, you can go through the list below and make sure you have everything to boost your rankings and receive traffic from Google and the other search engines.
Below are the 10 SEO tips not to miss in 2018 and short descriptions to refresh your memory if you happened to forget what was involved. If you haven’t started on any of these yet, don’t worry, it’s a new year and a fresh start for you on your journey to the top of the rankings for your targeted keywords!
Also see – How To Improve Your SEO With Wix SEO Wiz
Adding Plenty Of High-Quality Content To Your Website
Content is what the search engines want to see, and not just any content, it has to be high-quality content that will increase engagement. Try writing up material that is at least 1,500 words long, since longer articles tend to rank better within the SERPs, and that’s what we’re all trying to do at the end of the day.
Using Premium WordPress Themes
When you decide to set up a website, you might not know how to code or program, which means a premium WordPress theme would be your best route for your new design. The good thing about these designs is they are pre-coded to be SEO ready for better search results, and you won’t have to invest as much time as usual to optimize every page you put up.
Using Schema Markup
Schema is a type of data that is inserted into the code of your own website. Schema can be divided into two different categories, such as Microdata and JSON-LD. You can use other kinds of Schema, but most of them are outdated, which the search engines might not recognize as much as they do the Microdata and JSON-LD. Lastly, use a review plugin and make table of contents so that the search engines could pick up your website for rich snippets.
Building High-Quality Backlinks
One of the best ways to boost your rankings is to obtain high-quality backlinks and wait for Google and the other search engines to increase your rankings for targeted keywords. To get these high-quality backlinks, you must focus on niche specific websites and insert an HTML hyperlink on a page which will link to your own. Be sure to use anchor text that is directly related to the page you’re linking to for best effect.
Acquiring “Linkless” Backlinks
This type of SEO is becoming more common every year. You can mention your company name or website, without linking it, and Google is now smart enough to figure out people are talking about your site or company. You will eventually gain a slight boost in the rankings after the mention, and you will become more of an authority, which is what all websites are looking to do when it comes to SEO.
Googles Rank Brain
When Google launched RankBrain, it was on everyone’s mind, and we weren’t exactly sure what it was going to do. Eventually, we figured it out and now know that it focuses on the relevancy of your titles to how long people are staying on your page. If someone clicks your enticing title, but they are on your page for 2 seconds and leave, you will get a mark against you and likely drop a little in the rankings. If someone clicks your title and stays to read your entire article, you will probably get a small boost in the rankings because the reader loved your page.
The Speed Of Your Website
Many people forget that your websites load times are a significant factor on how well you rank within the SERPs. If your website loads quickly, your visitors will have a better time on your website, and Google will boost your rankings because of it. If your site loads slow, people will have a less than a great time and leave; then Google will drop your rankings due to you providing your visitors with a bad experience.
Mobile Friendly Pages
Not too long ago Google said they are prioritizing responsive web pages, which are mobile friendly, and they will rank higher than anything that is not responsive. Since 43% of Googles traffic now comes through smartphones, they want to cater to the masses and only show them responsive websites to increase satisfaction while browsing online.
Googles Character Increase From 160 To 230
Not too long ago, Google increased their indexed character limit from 160 to 230. Which means you can input more keywords into the 230 character limit than you could with the 160-word limit, increasing your chances to show Google precisely what your website is about and boosting your rankings.
Proper Internal Linking
Internal linking has always been a big thing and is carrying over to 2018, which means you’ll still need to link your internal pages to other inner pages. Internal linking helps the search engines get around your website and see more of what it’s representing. The more pages Google crawls, the better chances you have of ranking for your targeted keywords, and that means you could get more traffic in a shorter amount of time.
If you’re worried that this list is too long, don’t worry, it doesn’t take much work to implement all of these small tasks over the course of a few weeks. SEO is a waiting game and not a sprint, so don’t worry if you can’t finish everything within a week or two. The people and businesses who rush their SEO campaigns are the ones who inevitably hurt their authority in the eyes of Google. So, take your time, work on your business, and watch your rankings jump up over time.