Practical SEO tips | All DO's & DON'TS in 5 minutes

SEO. Maybe you've heard of it? Or maybe you just started delving into the world of Seach Engine Optimization (aka: SEO). Often the search for an SEO strategy stems from a specific question or problem. Your website does not yet rank optimally in Google, there are too few visitors to important pages or the downloads of an app that has been launched fail. Often this problem does not lie in the design or the content itself. You have probably had a beautiful website or app built and put a lot of work into it, but without online findability it will never achieve its intended goal. Fortunately, there are many ways to ensure that your website or app is visible. This blog gives you the tools you need to make sure you stand out. Already some basic SEO knowledge? Click here to go directly to the SEO tips.

Google: some key figures

Google is by far the most used search engine in the Netherlands. Out recent research from Sparktore's Rand Fishkin (also known as the co-founder of Moz), it turns out 70,1% of the Dutch use Google Search. Together with the 22,4% who uses Google Images to look up images adds up to Google's total market share 92,5%. Quite profitable, to optimize for Google.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO, or search engine optimization, encompasses all actions that increase traffic to a website. This is the natural (=organic) visitors, based on certain search terms (=Keyword). There is a good chance that you have also ended up on this page. By entering the keywords 'SEO tips' in Google. The internet is the first place for most people to look for information. No matter how beautifully designed your website is, if visitors can't find it, it's of little use.

The basic principle of Google's search engine is simple: a user enters a particular query and gets results back. The results you get back depend on the search terms you enter, the location where you are and a number of other factors. Search engines always try to find the best match between your query and the results you get. This is done by crawlers. These crawlers are search engine robots that scour the internet. All information from websites (or apps) is stored by these crawlers, in other words: indexed. This indexation is done based on algorithms that determine the value of your page, mainly based on relevance and popularity. So traffic creates traffic. Visitors are often 'lazy' and want to know the answer to a question right away. 75% of Google users do not search beyond the first page. So how do you make sure you're on the first page?

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SEO tips

Now that you're familiar with the basics of SEO, let's move on to the practical part. How do you make sure you rank on the first page of Google? With these practical SEO tips you will ensure that your website attracts more visitors:

RTD.

RTD? Yes, OTO. To make it easy, we divide the optimization of the website into 3 parts: on-page optimization, technical optimization and off-page optimization: RTD.

On page optimization mainly concerns the content of the page. Relevant, up-to-date content is perhaps one of the most important pillars for SEO. On which keywords do you want to be found by potential customers? Based on these keywords, you write the content of the web page with additional landing pages.

Do's:

Focus on a number of keywords you want to be found on. Useful tools for this are: Google Adwords Keyword Planner, Google trends, Answer the public.
Do a Google search for specific keywords, what suggestions will you see?
Put yourself in the reader's shoes, which questions do you want answered?
Always write unique and relevant text.
Have the chosen keyword appear in important places such as: title tag, meta tags, the images, headers and text.
Add triggering calls to actions.
A good internal structure, allows your own pages to link to each other in a natural way.
Do you have a Wordpress page? Then implement the Yoast SEO plug-in.

Don'ts:

Forget the reader/user.
Forget something of the above 😉
Keyword stuffing (excessive use of the chosen keyword).
Focus on Google indexing, keep it easy to read.
Copying content or media.

“Good content sells itself”

Good content sells itself is often said. This is true to an extent, although there are a few factors that play into this. For example, the technical optimization. We go on:

Technical optimization is about the technical SEO state of your website. The technology is one of the basic elements of an SEO strategy, if the technology is not in order, Google will penalize you for it. Does the page load quickly, is it mobile friendly and is the structure clear? There are plenty of checklists on the internet that you can use to do excellent audits, for example with Google Lighthouse. Lightouse is an open-source tool to measure the technical performance of a page. When you enter the URL you get a report with the performance and accessibility of the entered URL. Something less technical? Then engage an external company or SEO specialist to implement the technical SEO tips.

Do's:

Make it as 'simple' as possible for Google (imagine that Google is a machine and not a reasoning person, so 'chew' everything as good as possible with a clear information structure).
Provide a clear website structure (this means: clear menus, clear names/categories).
Make sure your page is mobile friendly.
Make sure the page and content load quickly. (Have a look at the page this link. What results do you get?)
Always test new plugins or updates in a test environment first.
Analyze the data (for example with Google Analytics) and study the behavior by device category.
Optimize and compress the media.
Implement rich snippets (Visitors will see this when your page appears in the Google results, e.g. ratings). You can easily set this up with a structured data generator. See the image below for an example.

Don'ts:

Too many unnecessary plugins slow down the page.
Using images or files with too large a file size.
Upload images without strategy (Use JPG or PNG depending on your purpose. Broadly speaking: PNG -> images, illustrations, photos with good or overlay. JPG -> for high quality images and photos. JPG can use more file space than PNG) .
Excessive use of media. Not only does this distract from your goal and content, but it also slows down the page.

Off page optimization includes the authority of your website or app. You have to 'earn' authority. When do you earn authority and credibility? Right, when several people say something about your website. Also known as the 'wisdom of the crowds' phenomenon. Authority can be obtained in several ways, for example by linkbuilding, reviews and an active policy on the Social Media channels.

Do's:

Provide enough reviews on, for example, Google or Facebook (and also actively respond to them).
Share relevant content and posts on Social Media.
Qualitative link building (these are qualitative hyperlinks from other related pages to your page).
Provide visibility; register with Google Business, the telephone directory, TomTom, etc.

Don't:

Overkill of uninteresting Social Media posts.
Avoid bulk link building (pages with low authority and value), keep the profile natural.
Do not enter into a dialogue with reviews or messages

Conclusion

SEO optimization is a strategic and time consuming process. It takes a while for the work to pay off. It can sometimes take months for Google to index a new page. An advantage of this is that your work will be noticeable for a long time to come. This way, the work you put into SEO now can be noticeable for years to come. So don't be discouraged if you don't get immediate results. If you have applied all the above SEO tips, this should ensure a better ranking in Google. Remember that an optimal SEO strategy covers all three parts of the SEO tips: on-page, technical and off-page. If one part is not in order, all parts will be penalized. Not yet satisfied with the result? Then please contact us. Who knows, we can help you with your problem or take care of the marketing. As a full-service app development agency, we specialize in both app development and app marketing.

Haven't had enough yet? Then watch the video below in which Neil Patel gives some practical tips about SEO in 2019.