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onpage and offpage search engine optimisation tips

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On Page Optimization Tips

        <head>
        <title>Example Title</title>
        </head>

Title tags are often used on search engine results pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page, and are important both for SEO and social sharing. Make sure you are using a different title tag on EVERY page. Laser target your page's topic and describe it.

Place Important Keywords Close to the Front of the Title Tag
Keep the length below 55 characters.
Optimal Format: Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
Consider Readability and Emotional Impact

02 Description Tag

The description tag should also include the most important info and keywords before the SERP cutoff at approximately 920 pixels wide, which translates to approximately 156 characters including spaces. Side note: Don't forget to make the title and description compelling as this text assists in conversions. You don't want to waste your prime real estate in the SERP with boring copy. The description tag is also used for articles shared on social media plattforms.
full article: Meta Name Description Guide

03 Headlines

Use h1 headlines only one time on each page or section. Semantically organize your content with h2 and h3 headlines. Read more about it: 5 tips for writing compelling headlines that fit your SEO and Writing Headlines That Get Results

04 Word Count and Skyscraper Content

Focus on serving the best and most researched content. Be the king in your niche. Become an authority by providing in depth informations about your topic.
Check your competitors' sites and find information gaps on their pages. Serve the missing infos on your page. Always aim for high quality content and avoid low quality and dublicate content.

Do not spin your content. Provide your content in a well structured way. Research on "skyscraper content" to learn more about the high quality content tactic. Aim for at least 1900 words for every piece of content that you publish.

05 SEO-friendly URLs

Dashes vs. Underscores in URLs:
Underscores are alpha characters and do not separate words. hyphens are word separators, but should not appear too many times or it could look spammy. Keep it clean, descriptive and short. Always include your target keyword in your URL.
WordPress is using permalinks which makes it easy to build a clean url site structure.

Good Example:
http://www.yoursite.com/seo/on-page-factors/
Bad Example:
http://www.yoursite.com/keyword1/here_is_a_great_page_using_my_keyword
http://www.yoursite.com/category1/index-page-id=23&user=visitor

06 Minify and merge css and javascript files

Each file is a request to your server and requires time. If your site is using 23 plugins each with its own css and js file you won't win a price for "fastest loading site". Reduce your the server requests by combining these files. Minify them to reduce file size.

Combine CSS files into one file
Combine JS files into one file
Load vendor js files in the footer
Minify css and JS to reduce file size jslint

07 Use a Content Delivery Network

A CDN (Content delivery network) will help to split the server load and serve html, css and js files simultaneously. By setting up a CDN your website can be loaded much faster due to multiple server requests.

08 Create and submit sitemaps

Your site should have an HTML sitemap for improved usability. You can submit the sitemap which is usually in your root folder named sitemap.xml to the search engine webmaster tools. Also the robots.txt contains a link to your sitemap in Robots.txt:

Sitemap: http://www.domain.de/sitemap.xml

09 Use Breadcrumbs for better usability

By adding breadcrumbs navigation you will have a structured navigation for better usability and searchengines have hirarchical links. Use rich snippet format for your breadcrumb html output - it is used in the serps. data-vocabulary.org Breadcrumb markup example

10 Add Robots.txt File

It's important this file exists, even if it's empty. The Robots.txt file tells the search engine spiders what not to index.

full article: Robots.txt file

11 Fix 404 Errors

Regularly check your server, looking for 404 errors, 301 redirects and other errors. You can also build a custom 404 error page helping your visitors to find similar content or use your site's search box.

12 Responsive Layouts / Mobile Ready

More and more users are surfing the web via their tablet or smartphone. Make sure your website is using responsive layouts which matches the content to the visitors device. Test mobile friendly

13 Use specific keyword term

Pick a keyword term for each page. Optimize it accordingly. Check search volume and competition with google's keyword planner.
Aim for lower volume keywords (200-2000 per month) to get quick results. High volume keywords with millions of searches per month require a lot of off-site seo practice.

14 Page speed

A fast loading site is a must have. Visitors decide within seconds if they stay or leave. If your page is loading too slow you will loose traffic. Use google's page speed insights to find the bugs. Aim for desktop speed score higher than 90.

15 Social meta tags

Each social network offers various meta tags which can be placed in the header. Make your content easy to share by using social sharing plugins and fill the social meta with appropriate data. Read more: Must-Have Social Meta Tags for Twitter, Google+, Facebook & Social media meta tag generator

16 Enable and work with webmaster tools

Add the searchengines' webmaster tools to find errors and get further data. Webmaster tools accounts for Google and Bing give site owners insight into how search engines view their sites with reports on issues like crawl errors and penalties. How to Set Up Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools & Google's Webmaster Guidelines

17 Optimize Images

It's important to support your content with related images helping your visitors to understand your topic. Make sure to use alt-attributes for each image. Do not spam your keywords. DESCRIBE the image i.e. "seo infographic 2016". This will also bring some traffic from image searches. Read More: How to optimize images for SEO
Also make sure you're images are optimized in size so your site is loading as quickly as possible. Use compressJPG or similar plugins which automatically compress your media files.

18 Use outbound and internal links

Use 2-4 outbound links to high authority sites per 1000 words - Rule of thumb by Brian Dean. Also interlink your own content where it fits in. If you got a related article on your site - link to it. Wikipedia is a great example for internal links. Read more: Internal linking

19 social sharing buttons

Make it easy for your visitors to share your content. Searchengines care about your social engagement. Read more: Social Media & Ranking In Search Results

20 Encourage Blog comments

Having an active community which discusses your content a) generates related content and b) increases visitors' time on site and c) sends repeating visitors. That`s an encourage ranking factor thus helps your site to rank.

21 Improve Bounce Rate

Google Analytics shows a bounce rate factor. The more pages a visitors clicks the lower (better) is your bounce rate. Read more: What does bounce rate mean and how to improve it.

22 Regular Updates

Searchengines love active and regularly updated sites. Commit to a publishing schedule and create fresh high quality content. Don't forget to promote your posts. 80/20 works great where 80 is promo and 20 is creating content. Read more: The Best Blog Posting Schedule Ever: Finally, Proof and Real Numbers!

23 Use LSI Keywords

Start generating Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Keywords for your SEO strategy. Using variations of your primary keyword won't get you to page #1. Find related topics and long term keywords to harden your main topic. Read more: Generate LSI keywords

24 Repair internal broken links

Make sure all links on your website are valid and working. A 404 page not found may happen and is also needed sometimes to get pages out of the index but in general it should be your focus to redirect broken links to a matching source and check links for typing errors or other technical issues.

Off Site Optimization Tips

01 Create shareable content

Content is king and a good high quality article will be shared and builds backlinks by getting picked up by other sites.

02 Create Outreach list

Identify the influencers in your niche. Create an excel spreadsheet, list the authority sites. Connect with their social profiles. Share their content. Get in contact with them. Read more: 15 Experts on how they develop an outreach strategy & Outreach - The Complete Guide To Building Your Blog Audience

03 Find missing content and replace links

Millions of sites have dead sites linked on their pages. Find those dead links and ask the webmaster to replace the link with your content which covers the same topic. Give them an alternate and make it easy for them to fix their broken links. Read more: A Step by Step Guide to Modern Broken Link Building

04 Guestblogging

You are an expert in your niche but nobody knows you yet? Search for guest blogging possibilities and get featured on authority sites. You can show your experience, reach a new audience, build networks. The focus should NOT be to get a backlink to your site - it`s about introducing you as an expert. Read more: The Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging & The Definitive Guide to Guest Blogging

05 Forum Posting

Show off your skills and experience in the most frequented forum and boards within your niche. Pick the top 3 boards and create your brand. Be active, helpful and start discussions. Get to known to others. Link your website in your signature. How to Use Forum Posts to Make Your SEO Campaign More Efficient

06 Submit Press Releases

Ideal for business owners or digital product owners. Get into google news and send out the word of your new site. This off-page seo strategy requires a well planned schedule so be ready to spend some time on this. Read more: 12 Ways to Optimize Press Releases & Avoid Google Penalties & The 12 Ironclad Rules for Issuing Press Releases

07 Question and Answer Sites

Yahoo Answer and Quora are big plattforms for a community who is interested in everything. Also in your niche. Find the questions, answer it properly and link back to the matching article from your site. Read more: The Marketer's Guide to Quora

08 Video Marketing

Youtube is the second biggest search engine. Millions of people search for how-to guides, music, tutorials. Create a video and support your website with video content linking back to your site. Read more: How Video Marketing Creates Immediate SEO Results

09 How to: Backlink guides

Here are a few great guides about off page backlink seo strategies. Only a few selected links which will take you weeks to follow.

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