The year is drawing to a close and many of you are probably up to your eyeballs trying to capitalize on end of the year business. So read on and give us a call when you are ready to address the following SEO issues. Just remember that with SEO it takes time to take effect so the longer you wait the longer it takes.

Title Tags - Too short. Too long. Missing. Duplicates. Title Tags tell Google and other Search Engines the subject matter for the page. This is one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase your Search Engine Ranking. Increase the amount of Title Tags by adding more content and your rank will go up. Increase the quality of the Title Tags by making them more descriptive and your rank will go up.

Sitemap.xml - The Sitemap.xml is a file that allows Google to easily tell if you have added new content to your site. They ping this XML file and if there are new entries in it then they go to that URL and crawl the content. But not only do you need to create the XML file in a specific format but you also should tell Google where the file is located.

ALT Tag - Links should use an ALT tag so that the Search Engines can understand the context of the page you are linking to. Images should also have an ALT tag that provides a useful description regarding the subject matter in the image.

Title Tag - Images should also use a Title Tag. Similar to the ALT tag it provides a useful description to the Search Engines.

Page Speed - Is your site fast? Google Analytics will provide some useful metrics for this. But believe it or not the speed of your website has some bearing on the organic search ranking. If you are using a Theme for a Content Management System then chances are you are using too many external support files. Getting rid of unnecessary files and code will speed things up. Then compressing the remaining files so they are as compact as possible will make a difference. But often times the easiest way to speed up your site is to make sure you are using a reputable hosting provider. Hosting has gotten fairly inexpensive. We like Arcustech and Site5.

Code - Is your website coded with the proper focus on Semantic HTML? Google should know from the code what is important on the page and what is support. Google is also giving weight to sites that are responsive. If you are still using a separate site for Mobile devices vs having a responsive site then you might want to consider having the site recoded. Having a responsive site means that it resizes based on the resolution of the device viewing it. So it works well on iPhones, Android, iPads and Desktop devices.

robots.txt - the robots files is a file that tells Google what sections of the site are permissible to crawl and which ones are not. This is an extremely simple file. In fact, most robots.txt files don’t contain more than 5 lines of code. But I cannot tell you how many times I have seen a site deployed with code in the Robots file that tells Google that the whole site is off limits.

And finally...

Content - Content is King. None of the above matters if you have lackluster content. Content should be on topic, contain the appropriate keywords you are trying to rank for, be written for humans, and be updated on a regular basis. New content is extremely important for increasing your rankings in Google or other Search Engines. Focusing on content and tweaking the aforementioned SEO influencing items has helped Blue Fish see a 2000%+ increase in traffic since last year.

If you are not sure how to get started or just want some help in increasing your traffic and ranking then email us. Or Click Here for more information on our SEO Services.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!