Surprising Ways to Improve SEO
There’s always more to learn about SEO. Here are some surprising or underutilized ways to drive more traffic to your site!
In the world of digital marketing, few things are more important than SEO. There is no better way for small businesses to increase brand awareness, build authority, and drive more organic traffic to their websites. As a small business owner, you or someone on your team should undoubtedly have some knowledge of SEO’s basic principles. But there’s always more to learn. Here are a few ways to improve SEO that are surprising or underutilized.
Incorporate Stop Words—Smartly!
For a long time, common knowledge held that you should avoid stop words at all costs. In case you aren’t already aware, ‘stop words’ are those terms that Google typically ignores in search queries—with some notable exceptions. Some examples of stop words include ‘a,’ ‘the,’ ‘of,’ and ‘or.’ Here is a more complete list.
While it’s true that you have little to gain from using stop words in areas such as your URL and keywords. But you shouldn’t overcompensate and leave them out when their inclusion makes sense—especially in your titles. If your title doesn’t seem natural without stop words, leave them in. As important as the ‘rules’ of SEO are, your human audience is even more important.
Prioritize Loading Speed
Too many people fail to prioritize page loading speed when fine-tuning their SEO strategies. A slow loading speed isn’t just annoying for your audience. Google will recognize it too, and penalize you for it.
SEO isn’t just about getting people to click on your site. It’s about getting them to stay on your site. If your site takes longer than a second or so to load, visitors will bounce. Devote some work to maximizing your server response time and the speed of your webpage.
Use Outbound Links
Most people with even a passing familiarity of SEO best practices know that it’s smart to include a few inbound links. Fewer recognize the benefit of using outbound links. After all, it does seem a little counterintuitive. If my ultimate goal is to keep people on my website, why would I link them out of it?
Keep in mind that one of the best ways to garner more organic traffic to your site is by building authority on a particular subject. If you come from an academic background, you know that the most valuable part of a text for many researchers is actually the bibliography. By the same token, using outbound links in your content shows that it’s well-researched. Google will recognize it as authoritative, and reward you with a higher ranking. Don’t be afraid of outbound links; use them to improve SEO.
Write Engaging and Original Content
One of the worst SEO mistakes you can make is prioritizing quantity over quality. While it’s undoubtedly true that pushing out a lot of content will give you more shots at SEO success, don’t skimp out on quality.
As we mentioned earlier, you don’t just want people to click on your site, but to stay there. Uninspired content is generally easy to spot. You will see high abandonment rates as a result. To improve your SEO strategy, don’t just think about the machine. It’s true that that strong SEO benefits from a scientific approach. But don’t lose sight of the human in the process.
Contact Adventure Web Interactive Today
For more tips on how to optimize your web content and drive more traffic to your Facebook page, follow our blog. Adventure Web Interactive offers expert marketing solutions, including blog and copywriting and social media management. Take the stress of planning, posting, and plotting off of your team and contact us online or by giving us a call at (410) 788-7007. To see more information about our team and services, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
