Search Engine Optimization employs a combination of multiple practices and techniques that are aimed at ensuring a good search ranking for your website. Some of these best practices for SEO are quite simple and require little effort when setting up your website, but some require an in depth technical knowledge in website design and development. Here is a list of some of the most effective SEO practices-
Title tags
Title tags should generally comprise of both the Primary keyword and the secondary keywords, along with your brand name. The title tag should be less than 55 characters- spaces included and the keywords should be separated with a dash. The brand name is separated from the keywords with a pipe.
Eg: Primary Keyword- Secondary Keyword| Brand name
Meta descriptions
Good meta descriptions have always been one of the best practices for SEO since the days of search engine infancy. Although it plays very little role in boosting your search engine rankings, a well written description can boost your click through rate from the search engine results page (SERP) to your website, significantly. Compelling meta descriptions that are of the length 150 – 160 characters is the norm.
Targeted keyword phrases
Google’s Panda algorithm is getting smarter with each update. It has now become easier for Google to weed out duplicate content and weak content with extensive keyword stuffing and penalise these websites that add little value to the end user. This is why it has become more important than ever to use original, well researched content that will actually help your visitors. Although it is beneficial to use keywords within the content, it is recommended that you do not over use and risk abusing it.
Header tags
Also known as the H1 tag, the header tag is essentially the subject line of the web page. The H1 tag should feature the keyword only once, and it has to be included in a page where you want to direct your traffic to. In case of multiple sections within a single page, you can also use the H2 tags.
Image ALT tags and file names
When featuring images and files on your website, you can use appropriate alt tags and file names to feature your key phrases. Alt tags are favoured by the search engines and add weightage to the credibility of your site, especially during image search. Using appropriate tags and file name is also beneficial for visually impaired people accessing your website as it is a screen reader friendly.
These tricks are most commonly regarded as the best practices for SEO or link building service across the globe. These simple techniques have been in existence since the beginning of search engines and are highly unlikely to be affected by any updates in the future.