Tactical SEO Approaches.
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“Good” Page Speed
A Further Look at SEO STRATEGY.
The second entry in our Long-Term SEO strategy series is focused on the Implementation Phase of SEO, including strategies behind content creation, technical and creative on-page SEO tactics, domain focused SEO strategies and the importance of backlinking. When SunCity Advising takes on a new project, one of the most important first steps taken is the SEO technical audit. In the SEO Planning phase, we utilize our SEO toolkit evaluate your website performance.
Domain Strategy
As discussed on our Search Engine Algorithms blog, search engines crawl web pages to evaluate a domain. If the page is not clean and easy to navigate, i.e. crawlable, the site score will be penalized, and your page rank will be overtaken by competitors. A strong domain structure promotes the main page with subdomains each focused on their own vertical of subject matter. If every subdomain, or subsequent page has the same tagging and keywords, the search strength (your SEO juice) of each page is diluted, therefore, it is important for each page to have its own subject matter. Removing excess domains and leveraging strong existing domains is a great building block for the effective implementation of a long-term SEO strategy. With the domain structure set up correctly, search engines can now crawl through your website.
Technical On-Page SEO Tactics
The structure of your domain is important, but search engines still penalize websites for poor on-page performance, low optimization, and unresolved errors. Brian Dean of Backlinko put together a helpful infographic with 16 On-page SEO factors and we break down those factors below.
Site Speed
Improving site speed is a well-documented tactic for improving page ranking. Choosing the right website hosting company is one of the most important business decisions you can make for your website. We recommend choosing a fast host with a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and – this can drastically reduce your page load times and overall domain speed. If you have a lot of media or plug-ins on your site, compressing those images and disabling unnecessary plugins will improve your site speed. It may be tempting to remove multimedia to help improve site speed but keep in mind that search engines deem this content as “user-interaction signals” in their ranking factors.
Keywords, Modifiers, Tags & Links
In the SEO Planning stage, keyword research reveals useful terms to help with URL names, Title Tags, Headings, and Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords for on-page use. LSI keywords are semantically related words or phrases that search engines are designed to look for. Research and implementation of LSIs is a great way to expand your SEO reach without being penalized for reusing the same terms. Adding modifiers in the Title Tag can also help you appear for more long tail searches – phrases that visitors more likely to use when searching for your product or service.
Outbound linking to quality sites that relate to your topic or overall business target is another great way to help search engines understand what your website is about and form a relationship to other content. Internal linking (linking to your own site) can also be a great way to point Search Engines to your primary page, or specific pages you wish to focus on. Here is a great article by Yoast explaining how linking works.
Content Creation
Once the structure and on-page optimization of the entire site is complete, new content can help target additional keywords, strengthen existing pages, and create links. Combining the On-Page SEO tactics with consistent and high-quality content is the best way to improve your overall ranking. It is critical that new content adheres to the tactics laid out above. New website content is also a great way to drive traffic through social media and backlinks from other websites. Search engines look for content length, multimedia and “dwell time” or “bounce rate” as ranking factors so make sure your content is compelling and well thought out.
Maintaining this strategy for all website content can be overwhelming at first so it helps to have SEO professionals for guidance on this implementation. At SunCity Advising, we cater to a variety of clients with different levels of involvement for SEO Strategy Implementation. Contact us today for a consultation.
Ivan Reed, CEO
Ivan Reed is the CEO of SunCity Advising. His client portfolio includes successful partnerships with startups, small businesses, medium-sized firms & large corporations. SunCity Advising specializes in developing high performing websites, including services in SEO, paid media advertising, social media, email marketing and other digital marketing solutions.
