After some good holiday rest and relaxation, the start of the year is a great time to review your internet marketing and SEO strategies. What’s working? What’s outdated? What easy things can you do to make an immediate impact? While it would take a bit of digging on an individual basis to find out everything you could be doing better, here are a few SEO tips to start 2018 off right.
Increase your Meta Description Length
This is one quick and easy positive change you can make to your website when you’re auditing your site’s onpage optimization. Go through and increase the length of all of your meta descriptions. The previous recommended length was 156 characters. Google search now displays 230 – 320 characters. Make sure they are both keyword optimized and interesting enough for your audience to increase your click-through-rate. Think of it like ad copy.
Use–but don’t abuse–Structured Data
Structured data is becoming more and more important in the world of search. Schema.org and JSON markup are microdata languages that Google is encouraging web creators to utilize to display information from your website directly in search through snippets and help tell Google what type of content is on your site–from recipes and products to business information and reviews. However, be careful when using this markup to make sure it’s implemented correctly (Google has a tool for this) and to only add the markup to pages that actually have that information. You will be penalized if you try to game the system or add too much markup to one page.
Don’t forget about Internal Linking
This is one area that many folks forget about. The power of internal linking is often overlooked. Do you have one page that’s struggling and another that’s thriving? If they aren’t linked you’re not doing yourself any favors. Send a link from the higher performing page to the lesser performing one with some targeted anchor text. Your anchor text link profile can be more concentrated internally without penalty from Google. Don’t forget to go into older ranking bog posts and add links to the newer ones as well!
SSL – Secure your Site already!
If you’ve read any of our recent blog posts, you know the importance of encrypting your website. This will give you a small SEO rankings bump and also provide your audience with the piece of mind that any information they submit via your website is secure.
New Tools & Technology
Keep an Eye on upcoming technologies from Google, Facebook and others. For better or worse, platforms like Facebook and Google are continually trying to get you to use their platform exclusively. They don’t want people navigating away to your business website, for example. As much work as you’ve put into your website, you have to focus on where the traffic is. When is the last time you’ve reviewed your Google Business Listing? Google is constantly rolling out new technologies and features through rich snippets and new tools like appointment scheduling integration or Google Local Services through Google My Business. Facebook is also working on a new messenger plugin for your website to allow potential clients, customers or patients to use their Facebook messenger app (still in closed beta) to contact you directly on your website. These are potentially very powerful technologies that if properly utilized can greatly benefit your internet marketing strategy.
Think Links!
Did you donate to a charity this holiday season? Do they have a contributing business or sponsorship page? These are great places to get local, relevant back-links that can help your search rankings and build trust with your audience.
Do you need questions answered about SEO and internet marketing? We’re here to help! Contact New Wine Digital today and start off 2018 on the right foot!
Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (12/20/2017) Marco Verch (Flickr)