6 Essential pieces of SEO Advice for 2017

SEO Advice that will improve your ranking for 2017

The Turkey has been eaten, presents have been unwrapped and you have probably sung your last Christmas Carol. Chances are, although you might not be back at the office until 2017 you are already sneakily reading business emails and articles; your mind is already drifting back to how you can make 2017 better for your business. One such way is absorbing SEO Advice that will help your business’ website become more visible among those who are actively searching the services you offer.

Here is our advice for staying on top of your SEO in 2017.

 1. See where you rank and measure improvements

The only way to measure the impact of the efforts your team puts into SEO is by finding out where you are ranking, and comparing your ranking after a number of weeks or months to see if any changes have occurred.

A little tip- the best way to do this is to either use Google Chrome in Incognito mode, or use a SERP tool like Whatsmyserp.com. Otherwise you will be searching results based on your web activity.

SEO advice - whatsmyserp

2. Alt tags on images

This is one essential element of SEO that even the most astute SEO technicians forget about from time to time. Image Alt Attributes are incredibly important for your Ranking on Google and other search engines like Bing for a number of reasons.

First and foremost it will help you get traffic from relevant image searches. Secondly, Google considers it to be an important element of its usability criteria, particularly in relation to partially impaired users. Keeping this in mind, you want to tick as many boxes as possible when it comes to Google’s criteria.

Lastly, and most basically, Google classifies Alt Tags on Images as being a basic requirement when it comes to keyword relevance of a document. While it is one of the least significant areas scanned by Google’s Spiders, it should not be ignored.

Alt Text on Images- SEO Advice

3. Connect with Social Sites

Is your website connected to your Social Media Pages? If not, make this your priority when things kick off in 2017. One of the things Google, and most useful SEO tools like Sitebeam will scan the site for its connectedness with Social Media. Why? Well it means that you are active across all popular platforms, and that you are publicising your content.

You can connect your site in a number of ways including adding buttons on your home page asking people to follow your pages, and adding share buttons on blog posts.

SEO Advice - Connect with Social Media

4. Include a blog… and use it

One of the most important elements of SEO is ensuring your site is regularly updated. The easiest way to do this is maintaining a relevant and intriguing blog.

By creating content that is not only keyword relevant, but also informative and valuable to potential readers, you are doing your website a host of favours. It should improve your Google Ranking on the basis of Keywords, but it will also improve traffic numbers to your site via Social Media visits.

5. URLs correspond with Keyword

Another basic one that gets overlooked on business’ websites is ensure that your URL is corresponded with the Keyword you are attempting to target on each page.

This makes it immediately obvious to the Google Spiders what your page is about.

SEO Advice - Keyword in URL

6.Write good quality content

Google is smarter than you might imagine. It can tell when the content you are writing is low in quality. By that we mean it doesn’t answer the questions you said you would answer, it is difficult to read, or it is too short to provide any real value to the reader. For more on this take a look at our article on what to avoid when it comes to being in Google’s favour.

SEO is a cornerstone of any successful Digitial Marketing Strategy; it is not something you can simply wing. These are just 6 small elements that will help improve your website’s position, but there is much more to it than that. If you want to overhaul your business’ online positioning in 2017, click below and fill in our consultation form. We will be in touch in the new year. 

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Richard Coen

With over 21 years of experience in Digital Marketing, 31 years in sales and 25 years in business development, Richard assists companies to develop key growth strategies on a local or international basis. He can assist marketers to achieve balance in their approach to key areas affected by the growth in digital marketing.