There are many parts of SEO that are important to understand and implement well. This is not an exhaustive list, but rather the top 5 that are stressed today as absolutely necessary for SEO success.
1. Keyword Research
Once you understand your audience and the industry that you’re moving in, it’s absolutely necessary to do meaningful keyword research. It’s important to have done keyword research to be able to understand how to target search intent. Furthermore, many times, keyword shifts can actually make or break an SEO strategy. Knowing what your audience is searching for, how they do it, what their real intent is, protects you from being unprepared for these keyword shifts.
2. Analytics and Reporting
It doesn’t sound fun, but analyzing and reporting your SEO results is pivotal to your success. A company who doesn’t look at how their SEO is performing, doesn’t know how to report it, and doesn’t constantly make keyword changes as their industry changes, isn’t going to be around for a long time. In order to be successful in SEO, you must always be watching your SEO.
3. Mobile SEO
With Google pushing their “mobile-first” index, web designers have to get smart about how they design their sites. They must work well on mobile devices, or they won’t rank as well. While very relevant desktop optimized sites will still rank, they’re much less likely to now that mobile-first is a part of Google. As Google’s mobile index grows beyond the first few waves, expect to see updates and changes in algorithms. Best practice is to have responsive, mobile friendly sites in order to boost your SEO.
4. Technical SEO
Having good site speed, coding, java script, etc. is vital. When something is wrong with your technical SEO, your entire site will do poorly. Creators must be checking and double checking their technical SEO to make sure that they haven’t missed any small details which will be detrimental to your site’s performance.
5. Links
Links are a major ranking factor, but know that spammy links are going to leave a negative footprint for your site’s profile. Google looks for links that come from authoritative, high-quality sources that fit your niche. Don’t go after the same type of link time and time again. Vary your profile so that you get a variety of links. Practicing this will help protect you from getting spammy links.
2 Responses
This post did a great job at pinpointing the aspects of SEO that everyone should know. Throughout the course, these five aspects have been mentioned over and over again, and it is important not to forget them. Each of these aspects are simple steps to optimizing one’s site.
Good work on this post! I think you did a great job emphasizing the important impact that SEO can have on a business or organization. I liked how you touched on technical SEO. While this is super important, not a lot of people focus on this aspect of SEO.