User Power
Value/Post Ratio
563%
- Feb 9, 2016
- 32
- 180
Regardless of your reasons for doing SEO, there are still ways to rank higher in search engines. I'm not sure that SEO is "dead" - but I would agree that SEO is not the most efficient use of resources and time for getting customers online.
With that said, here's what you need to know about SEO.
SEO in 2017 is all about a positive experience for the person searching on Google.
In the old days, you could just put your keyword 100 times on a page and rank pretty well - those days are over and that specific technique will most likely get you punished by Google (it's called "keyword stuffing").
Google wants the person searching to have a positive experience doing so, which means Google wants the person searching to,
The biggest reason Wikipedia ranks so high so often is that the page on Wikipedia contains so much information, it becomes the most relevant for the person searching.
If you have the most relevant, high quality content, most of the work is already done.
Specific tip: Have relevant and high quality content - never less than 300 words, be sure to use subheadings.
Now, you might already have the best content in the world - what do you do now?
You make it readable, and you make it pleasurable to read.
Having a mobile optimised site is probably one of the most important factors for ranking (and making your content readable).
Google recently changed the way they rank sites - since more than 50% of all Google searches are now from mobile devices, ranking for mobile is now more important than ranking for desktop.
Specific tip: Put mobile first, optimise for mobile before you optimise for desktop. Mobile > desktop.
Since so many people are using mobile to search - you need to make your site lightweight.
Having 7 huge images that are 3 megabytes each is a bad idea!
People searching on mobile are often on a limited connection, if your site is too heavy it affects load times - which is also a big ranking factor. It's important to make your site as lightweight as possible using compression.
A tool I use to compress images is TinyPng - it's awesome and works with both png and jpeg files.
To test the actual speed and performance of your site you can use tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom.
Specific tip: Compress everything on your site, images and code. Make sure that your page is not larger than 2 megabytes and loads fast.
The bottom line is this: Focus less on techniques - focus more on having great content that is easily readable.
As to whether you want to outsource SEO,
If you have time = do it yourself.
If you have money to spend = outsource.
Be wary of people using bad SEO techniques since it'll most likely get your site punished.
Good luck!
Edit: Thank you @Scot for the rep! It's my first time receiving.
Edit 2: And thank you too @Fredyisgold for the rep. I'm glad I could be of help
With that said, here's what you need to know about SEO.
SEO in 2017 is all about a positive experience for the person searching on Google.
In the old days, you could just put your keyword 100 times on a page and rank pretty well - those days are over and that specific technique will most likely get you punished by Google (it's called "keyword stuffing").
Google wants the person searching to have a positive experience doing so, which means Google wants the person searching to,
- Quickly find the info they are searching for
- Easily be able to read and digest the information they searched for
The biggest reason Wikipedia ranks so high so often is that the page on Wikipedia contains so much information, it becomes the most relevant for the person searching.
If you have the most relevant, high quality content, most of the work is already done.
Specific tip: Have relevant and high quality content - never less than 300 words, be sure to use subheadings.
Now, you might already have the best content in the world - what do you do now?
You make it readable, and you make it pleasurable to read.
Having a mobile optimised site is probably one of the most important factors for ranking (and making your content readable).
Google recently changed the way they rank sites - since more than 50% of all Google searches are now from mobile devices, ranking for mobile is now more important than ranking for desktop.
Specific tip: Put mobile first, optimise for mobile before you optimise for desktop. Mobile > desktop.
Since so many people are using mobile to search - you need to make your site lightweight.
Having 7 huge images that are 3 megabytes each is a bad idea!
People searching on mobile are often on a limited connection, if your site is too heavy it affects load times - which is also a big ranking factor. It's important to make your site as lightweight as possible using compression.
A tool I use to compress images is TinyPng - it's awesome and works with both png and jpeg files.
To test the actual speed and performance of your site you can use tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom.
Specific tip: Compress everything on your site, images and code. Make sure that your page is not larger than 2 megabytes and loads fast.
The bottom line is this: Focus less on techniques - focus more on having great content that is easily readable.
As to whether you want to outsource SEO,
If you have time = do it yourself.
If you have money to spend = outsource.
Be wary of people using bad SEO techniques since it'll most likely get your site punished.
Good luck!
Edit: Thank you @Scot for the rep! It's my first time receiving.
Edit 2: And thank you too @Fredyisgold for the rep. I'm glad I could be of help
Last edited: