Search engines are continuously evolving their search algorithms and other parameters in order to meet their ultimate goal – provide users with what they are looking for. New search trends are incorporated to provide relevant and useful search results. 2016 is expected to be a real game changer in terms of improved online visibility, greater Internet connectivity, and increased Internet awareness. It can be said therefore that 2016 can bring in a lot of opportunities for SEO and every affordable website SEO company will look forward to make the most of it.
The next few sections bring to you an SEO checklist for ensuring improved visibility, higher rankings and enhanced traffic in 2016:
Ensure Your Website Loads Faster
Site loading speed is going to be a major factor for search engines to give importance to a site. Faster loading sites ensure better user experience and also witness repeat visits, engagement with users and more business value. As more and more people join digital world in 2016, a faster loading site is definitely going to grow.
Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
Year 2016 is expected to see a drastic surge in demand for smart phones, tablets, iPhones, etc. More and more people will stay connected to the online platform and perform various activities through these mobile devices. This means if your site is not optimized for mobile devices, you will lose out on a major chunk of online traffic. The text, navigation, desired user actions – every detail of your site must be mobile friendly and also compatible with widely used browsers.
Get Natural With Your Keywords
Get more competitive in finding industry-specific keywords that are relevant to your business. Keep a close tab on keyword trends and how searches are being performed by PC and mobile users. Target these keywords in as natural way as possible through quality, natural flowing and informative content. Completely do away with keyword stuffing that can put off your visitors as well as search engines.
Include Only Quality Content
Content that does not interest your users (humans) will also not be able to impress search engines. Duplicate, shallow, inaccurate, keyword stuffed and spammed content will attract penalties in the form of drastic fall in rankings and traffic. Make sure you invest your time and money on getting relevant, original and good quality content that can answer your users’ queries and also provide them with valuable insights about not only your products and services but the industry and business in general.
Several affordable website SEO companies make continuous efforts to include content that meet search engines’ quality standards through stringent in-house quality check points.
Emphasize on Social Media Distribution of Your Content
Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram etc. have become hugely popular in today’s times as they offer opportunity for people to easily express and share their views, comments, and opinionswith the world. Businesses are leveraging these platforms to connect with their target audience and customers. And this trend is going to get even bigger and stronger in 2016. So, make sure you distribute your content through social media channels. Include “Share” content buttons on your pages.
Get a Better Understanding of Search Engine Algorithms
Search engines rely on their algorithms to populate results within a user’s keyword search. These algorithms are continuously fine tuned in order to improve the search results. Understanding latest algorithms and staying updated on the latest developments at this front can help you build a more search engine friendly site.
Engage in Only Good Linking Practice
Make sure to have only authentic back-links from diverse sources pointing to your key pages. Avoid any paid link schemes and a large number of links from a single source. Try to win more of editorial links through quality content (shareable and easy to reference) in your site.
Put Image Tags
Use of appropriate images in content pages adds to the relevance and also interests visitors. However, it is important that search engines are also able to understand what these images are all about. So, make sure you provide proper tags or labels for each of the images used in your website. Include relevant keywords or phrases in the image tags.
Focus on Internal Linking for Quicker Navigation and Better User Experience
Internal linking is necessary to provide a better understanding of the navigational structure of your website. Both users and search engines will not know how to navigate through your site in the absence of internal linking, which allows search engines to easily crawl and index your other pages.
However make sure that users are not required to click several times just to return to the home page. Keep your navigational structure simple, avoid multiple canonical URLs that lead to the same page and also remove infinite loop wherein the same two pages keep linking to each other.
Make Each of Your Pages Easily Accessible
Internal linking is one of the effective ways to ensure this. In addition, improve your user experience by providing breadcrumbs such as ‘previous’ and ‘next’ buttons on every page. It is also important to provide a search box on your top navigation or header (as part of master page layout) to aid in site navigation. Also, make sure that any broken or old links are redirected to appropriate pages. Your audience may hop onto another site in case they arrive on a page that is either broken or no longer exists. This can affect your SEO adversely.
Remember, search engines love those sites that are easily accessible and offer great user experience.
This SEO checklist will go a long way in making your SEO campaign for 2016 effective in delivering the desired results. 2016 is going to be a digital era reaching millions of new users. All you need to do is focus on core SEO practices as discussed in the checklist above and get ready to outrun your competition and win higher search rankings and web traffic.
Contributed byhttp://www.seotuners.com/
