10 fundamental SEO tips for better ranking

/ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) / By

Tracking and working with all the SEO factors on your website or blog is a virtually impossible task. There are dozens of factors. Google alone considers more than 100 in the formulation of its algorithms and often includes or excludes new ones.

You do not need to work on all the SEO ranking factors. You just need to work harder than your competitor. Working few and good factors and adopting good practices will be enough to position your website pages well on the SERPs (results pages).

Table of Contents

Below are the 10 fundamental SEO tips for better ranking of your site in search engines:

1 – Search for keywords

The first thing to do in SEO is the study of keywords. After all, for which search terms do you want your site to be well-positioned on search pages?

The secret is to find keywords with a lot of demand and at the same time with low competition. Google offers a keyword tool in which you can do the Demand x Competition analysis of the search terms related to the theme of your site.

You will see that there are keyword options that are reasonably searched for and have very little competition. These are the ones you should prioritize in your SEO work.

Of course, you should not put aside words with high traffic and high competition. You should also work on these. However, in the beginning, give priority to words with low competition and that have reasonable demand, as they will bring faster results and with less effort.

2 – The importance of quality content in SEO

Now that you know the words that will work, then start developing the content for your website or blog.

For each keyword chosen, create a separate article. It is important that each article refers to a theme / keyword.

Insert the chosen keyword throughout your article, naturally, without worrying too much about density. At this stage, you shouldn’t worry so much about how many times your keyword should appear. Focus more on preparing a good article that brings quality information to the reader.

Quality content is rare on the Internet. So this is a great opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition. Well-made content, with at least 600 words, photos, videos or any other graphic or widget that brings quality information to the reader will be the basis for all other SEO techniques employed.

Do not copy content from other sites. Duplicate content on the Internet is punishable by search engines. Create something unique and original.

For tips on how to create quality content the way Google likes it go to Creating quality content: tips and concepts to stay well ranked in search engines

3 – Density of keywords

Now that you’ve created an excellent article, then it’s time to analyze the keyword density chosen for it.

Distribute your main keyword throughout the article, within an optimal density (usually between 3% and 5%). This way, you will signal to the search engines that that specific article refers to that word. But be careful!

Having a very high density (above 5%) may suggest that you are using artificial techniques in your SEO strategy, that is, trying to trick the search engines to get better positions. Your website can be punished.

At the same time, it is important not only to use the exact keyword but also match types and synonyms. This makes sense because, in a text written naturally, without any pretension of ranking on the Internet, it is difficult for a word to be repeated several times in the exact correspondence. Use singular, plural, synonyms. In key phrases, change the prepositions “from” and “to” (Ex .: SEO tips, SEO tips).

4 – Friendly URL

The URL addresses of the pages of your site must be friendly, that is, contain words / phrases suggestive about the content of that page. Examples:

Example of unfriendly URL

https://www.bloggercage.com/arquivo.asp?id=1&ref=187

The above address does not give you any clue as to what you will find when you click on the link. It is therefore not a friendly URL.

Friendly URL example

Top 200 Google ranking factors

Realize that the address above, by itself, already suggests to the Internet user what awaits him when he clicks on the link. It is possible to identify that, clicking on the link, you will be taken to a page within my blog that will address the SEO theme and will present you 10 tips on how to optimize your site for search engines.

Always have friendly URLs on your website pages. Most importantly, include the keyword you are working on in the URL. In the example of a friendly URL above, the word SEO is the main word worked on the page and appears in the URL.

5 – Meta Tags and page title

At the beginning of a page’s HTML code, inside the header, there are two extremely important tags. The “title” tag and the “description” tag. Another tag that used to be very important and has now lost weight is “keywords”. You can also consider it if you want, but it will not significantly influence the positioning of your site.

The beginning of your html code would look something like this:

<html>
<head>
<title> Write your page title here </title>
<meta name = ”description” content = ” Briefly describe your page ”>
<meta name = ”keywords” content = ” keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3 ”>
</head>

The title of your page must contain your main keyword. It is important that he also explains, in a nutshell, the content of the page. Example titles:

10 fundamental SEO tips for the good ranking of your website
10 SEO Tips to Optimize Your Website
Blogger Cage – 10 SEO tips for optimizing your website

Realize that the title contains the main keyword of the article (SEO) and a brief call about the content of the page. You can still add your name or your company’s brand (to work with branding ), as in example 3, where I added “Carlos Barros” at the beginning.

It is important that the title is not too long: a maximum of 50 characters.
The description tag briefly describes the content of the page. It must be creative and explanatory. Your primary keyword must be present in the description tag once or twice. It is not advisable to repeat the keyword too much in the description tag, as this can be seen as artificial by the search engines and subject to punishment.

The description tag should be longer than the title, however it is not recommended that it go far beyond the 165 character tag.

Example description tag:

Discover 10 fundamental SEO tips to optimize your website in search engines. Find out how the use of good SEO practices can bring efficient and consistent traffic to your website.

6 – Titles in the body of the page: h1, h2, h3…

The titles, which range from h1 to h6, will tell search engines which content in your article is more or less important. It is important to include at least three titles in your article, from h1 to h3, containing the main keyword and / or variants.

Realize that this article started right away with the title “The 10 SEO tips that will make a difference”. This title is wrapped with h1 tags and contains the main keyword SEO .

H2 is being used in each of the subtitles of the tips (from 1 to 10). In h2 titles the keyword SEO also appears, but not in all, as this would be artificial.

At the end of this article, I conclude with an h3 title (Conclusion on the main SEO tips).

7 – The importance of the sitemap in SEO

It is essential that your website has a map with links to all pages. The ideal is to create an XML sitemap. There are sites that generate XML sitemaps where you can even indicate which pages are more or less relevant, helping search engines to better understand your site.

Even if it is not in XML, it is important to have a page, even in HTML, pointing to all the internal pages of the site. That way, you will be ensuring that your entire site will be indexed.

To better understand sitemaps, visit this link .

8 – Images: file name and text “Alt”

It is important that your article has images. A quality article harmoniously merges text and images, helping the reader to better understand the message.

You can also relate the images in your article to the main keyword. The most practical way is to rename the image file to include the keyword. The example image below has been renamed to “seo-tips.gif”.

SEO Tips

Don’t forget to describe the image in the “alt” (alternative text). In your description, include the keyword. The “alt” in the image above was filled with “10 tips for optimizing your website”.

9 – Popularity of the website

There is no point in working with all the 8 SEO factors mentioned above if you do not engage in a task of making your page and website popular on the Internet.

Seeking popularity can be done in two ways:

1 – Social Signals

Social Signals, or Social Ranking, is an SEO factor that measures the presence of your website on social media. This is a factor recently included in Google’s algorithms and other search engines with considerable weight.

Being present on social media today is mandatory for anyone who wants to rank well in searches. That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? After all, if a website constantly displays quality content on a given topic, it is natural that it is commented on social media.

So be sociable and register your website on the main social media. Promote your articles on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest and others that you deem necessary.

Google has a factor called Page Rank that analyzes the popularity of a website according to the links it receives. Page Rank is a kind of note that Google gives to websites. It ranges from 0 to 10. The more external links pointing to your site, the higher the Page Rank of your site and, consequently, the better its positioning on the results pages.

Therefore, it is important that you establish consistent strategies for creating external links to your website. There are several ways you can do this. Engaging in social media is one of them. By spreading your articles and opinions on social media, you will be exposing your site to a large number of friends who, little by little, will share your articles and links in a viral way on the networks.

There are other ways to get links. However, before desperately doing link building, it is important to know the basic concepts of this technique. For that, read the article Link Building: Basic concepts.

10 – Relevance of the author (Author Rank)

Recently, Google included in its algorithms a new factor, extremely important for SEO and that makes total sense: the relevance of the author (Author Rank).

This factor assesses whether the author has authority over the topic covered in the article. The greater your authority on a particular subject, the greater the chances that your articles on that subject will be better positioned on Google.

It is therefore necessary to show Google that you have authority over the matter. How to do this?

The first step is to create a profile on Google Plus. You will receive a code that you can insert in the HTML of your pages identifying the article as being your own. WordPress already has plugins that automate the insertion of this code.

You have probably seen on Google’s search pages the author’s photo just below the result. That page is identified as being authored by that person. As you write new articles and they get good positions on that specific topic, the easier it will be for your new articles to index well.

Conclusion on the main SEO tips

These are the top 10 SEO tips. Work them sensibly and naturally and the result will be good positioning. Avoid artificial SEO techniques, called Black Hat techniques, that try to trick search engines. As much as you get immediate results, they are not sustainable long-term strategies and will only penalize your site.

It is also important to keep up to date on SEO. New factors are often included in search engine algorithms. As mentioned, you will not be able to work all of them, however it is good to always be aware.

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