New Year, New You, New SEO

SEO is like the magical missing piece to organically growing your site's traffic. Interestingly, Joshua Hardwick, founder of The SEO Project, monitored Ahrefs’ organic blog traffic for one year and created a checklist for SEO purposes. Ahrefs helps businesses grow their search traffic while researching your competitors.  

Basic SEO

1. Make sure you installed Yoast SEO plugin

2. Have a sitemap - sitemaps notify search engines where to find important content on your site. If you use WordPress, using Yoast generates a sitemap for you.

3. Create an txt file to your site- Robots.txt is plain text that tells the search engine where viewer can and cannot go on your website.

4. Google Analytics - Who doesn’t love free things? Google Analytics is a free tool that captures how many people visit your site, what pages they are going to, and what is their demographic.

5. Google Search Console is a powerful, must‐have tool for all webmasters. It lets you track your performance in search and see the keywords for which you rank.    

Keyword Research

1. Primary Keywords - Each page and post should have one attributed primary keyword. You can use tools like   Google Keyword Planner and  Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.

2. Long-tail Keyword Variations - These variations are how people search for the same thing in different ways. In fact, 15% of Google searches are new that have never been used before. The best way to find variations is to use Google’s autocomplete.

3. Search Intent - You know that feeling when you search something and the results you get don’t answer your burning questions? No? That’s because Google is very good at knowing search intent. It also helps to look into the questions that people are asking. If you’re googling the phrase “SEO,” look at the “People also ask” box in search results to see what people are really asking for.  

On-Page SEO

1. Short and Simple URLs - Pages containing shorter URLs rank better according to a study done back in 2016. URLs should offer insight into what users should expect when the click through to your page. Example: Customer Decision Making
2. Compelling Title Tags and Description - Hardwick says, “Most of the pages ranking on the front page of Google don’t have an exact‐match keyword in their title tag. That’s according to our 2016 case study of 2Mkeywords.” Try not to forget including keywords in titles and meta-descriptions. But create witty and enticing titles that will increase click-through rates.  

Want the full scoop? Check out: SEO Checklist