SEO – Search Engine Optimization is a form of online marketing that helps you become more “findable” putting you in front of your prospective target audiences. For many SEO is quite intimidating as it also includes some technical aspects. So, as an experienced digital agency in Cyprus, I decided to write a short Blog post with SEO tips. The following can dramatically increase and help improve your ranking, provided that your online presence is built correctly. Meaning it conforms to the rules of the most popular search engines around (Google, Yahoo, Yandex and so on).

Content related SEO tips

  1. Content – ensure you include well written and unique content focusing on the keywords that your users are likely to use when conducting their search
  2. Fresh content – try and update your content to improve your rankings. You can achieve this by introducing a Blog or articles of relevance on your website
  3. Title tags – on every page of your website be sure you add a title tag focused on a unique keyword
  4. Each page should focus on a single keyword phrase – Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once
  5. Search phrases – be as specific as possible. For example find BLEND’s office at…instead of “Our Office”
  6. Keywords – don’t overdo it with your keywords. If the keywords you use are abnormally high, this can count against you
  7. Descriptive text – surround your keywords with descriptive text
  8. Optimizing blog posts – ensure you optimize your post title tag over and above your blog title
  9. CEO blogging – encourage the owner or CEO of the website to blog, When he / she responds to comments will increase the website’s credibility
  10. Keyword rich captions – use them with your images
  11. Context surrounding your images – images rank based on the text that surrounds them
  12. Pages with similar content – to avoid duplicate content issues place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps
  13. Citations – wherever you list the name of your business online it has to be consistent everywhere – use the same name, phone number, address, etc.
  14. Content – on average your content should be over 600 words per page.

Links related SEO tips

  1. Links within your site – if you have links within your site introduce specific keywords instead of generic “Click here” links
  2. Link building – focus on a  few quality websites with good authoritative links then many poor links that can actually hurt your SEO instead
  3. Linking – if you link out, others will be encouraged to link to you too
  4. Paid links – are useless unless  the links are embedded in body text and are not obvious sponsored links
  5. Links from .edu domains – are favoured by search engines. Try and identify non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.

Design & structure to improve your SEO

  1. Website design – when designing your website ensure that your designer understands SEO and don’t include Flash, as spiders can crawl text but not flash and images
  2. Frames, Flash & AJAX – don’t use frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for better SEO results
  3. Splash page – If you must have your main page as a splash page by using Flash or an image, make sure you place text and navigation links below the fold
  4. Website usability – your website should be easy to use, which as a result can affect your link building ability and therefore your ranking too.

Other SEO tips

  1. Domain names – if you have more than one domain name pointing to the same website then one of the two, your secondary, should redirect to your primary domain name
  2. New website – the quickest way to ensure your website is “spidered” is to try and get it linked through another quality website
  3. If you are on a shared server do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site so that your rankings will not be negatively affected
  4. Call to action – include a clear call to action on your website
  5. SEO optimizations should be a daily process – as the search landscape changes daily
  6. Optimize your RSS feed – again use descriptive, keyword-rich text in your title and description
  7. Use social media marketing – it helps your SEO
  8. Make your videos findable – by creating a sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account
  9. Don’t just use YouTube to make your videos findable – submit them also in other sites like AOL, Metacafe, MSN and so on
  10. Surround your video content with descriptive content including your keywords
  11. Photo ALT descriptions – use the words image or picture there
  12. Google webmaster –  Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster central account
  13. Add reviews and sharing functions to your website – it will help make it more viral
  14. URLs – should be absolute and not relative in your code. They shouldn’t be too long and should not contain multiple query parameters
  15. Page Speed – Check your site on the Google Page Speed tool. Try and get your website score above an 85-90
  16. Robots.txt –If you want to block a page from being indexed, leave it off the robots.txt and add a noindex tag
  17. Get a Site Audit Every Year – as SEO and the search landscape evolves and changes so rapidly, we would encourage you to udneratake a website SEO on a yearly basis  to avoid search engine penalties, and make sure you your site is running smoothly. We can help you in this aspect. All you need to do is send us an email at info@blenddigital.com or call us at 22255001.

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SEO