SEO Best Practices Update July 2013

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a constantly growing art, but in 2013, many of the same tried and true rules still apply. If your page isn’t optimized, there is a good chance that it won’t rank highly in search results. However, thanks to the updates to search engines in recent past, your attitude about using SEO may need to evolve. It’s no longer enough to simply stuff keywords and links into articles and hope for the best. You must generate high-quality content and display it in a usable way to earn the ranking you’re after.

1. Make Sure That Mobile Users Will Be Happy

One of the most important subjects in online marketing today is the mobile-friendly website. Researchers believe that by the year 2015, more than 700 million people will be using smart phones to access the web. This means that your website absolutely must be mobile friendly in order to compete. A clean layout and good functionality are two qualities that make for a mobile-friendly website. You can practice perfect SEO and get your website to the number one ranking on Google, but if it won’t load properly on mobile devices, you might as well be at the bottom of the list.

2. Check That Everything is Functioning Properly

Any disturbance in the functionality of your website will raise red flags on the major search engines. Check to make sure that your website doesn’t display any broken links, doubled pages or any other major issues, or else it may lose its ranking.

3. Watch Your Loading Speed

Load-time averages relate to functionality, and they can affect the ranking of your website just as much as broken links or other issues. In this fast-paced world, no one wants to sit around waiting for a website to load, and if your site is having issues, you will lose customers as well as your search-engine ranking. If you can’t figure out why your website is slow to load, try removing any unnecessary apps and widgets.

4. Go With an Eye-Catching Color Scheme

Too many people focus on the technical aspects of SEO and forget about one of the most important aspects: Creating a website that looks and feels good to the person exploring it. If you want users to visit your website and search engines to rank it highly, you have to provide a pleasant user experience. This means studying color and design, generating perfectly written content and setting a schedule of regular updates.

5. Don’t Forget to Come Up With a Good SEO Meta Tag

This is one of those tried and true SEO practices that still serves a purpose. Although the keyword meta tag is no longer used in ranking search engine results, the description tag can still be useful in deciding what visitors will see when viewing search results. If you have an attractive description, it could entice someone to click on your site despite it ranking lower than some of the other options. Attempting to woo the search-engine bots into ranking your site highest is always a good thing, but at the end of the day, it’s the real human beings that must impress.

Jenny Francis is a professional blogger with vast experience in search engine optimization since the 1990′s. Jenny currently resides in Central Texas, and loves to walk her 2 dogs. Jenny is currently working on her book for her Dallas SEO prospects titled “The Art of SEO: A Dallas SEO Story”.