It’s not secret that a website’s search ranking directly influences the amount of traffic it receives. The higher a website ranks in the search results, the more traffic it receives. And when a website has a significant amount of traffic, it reaps the benefits of more sales/conversions. But the search engines typically remain tight-lipped regarding their ranking algorithms, forcing webmasters and digital marketers to speculate over how to improve their rankings.
Google has changed things up a bit, though, posting an SEO Cheat Sheet on its blog to assist webmasters in the otherwise confusing process of search engine optimization (SEO). The Cheat Sheet is a “…short how-to list with basic tips on search engine-friendly design, that can help Google and others better understand the content and increase your site’s visibility.”
So, what’s included in Google’s SEO Cheat Sheet? The single-page PDF document contains some helpful SEO tips that work for all types of websites. Here are some key takeaways:
- Use page titles to describe your business in a concise and informative phrase.
- Choose a descriptive, easy-to-read domain name for your website, following a similar approach with sub-pages.
- Write unique meta description of 160 characters or less for each page on your website.
- Don’t use generic image file names. Rather, rename image files to reflect what they are about (this helps Google understand your images more easily).
- Add alt text to your images, describing what they are about.
- Write a short caption on the page below your images. When given the option, convey important information in text and not images.
- Publish relevant, high-quality content to your website on a regular basis.
Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SEO. All of the tips provided in Google’s SEO Cheat Sheet correspond strictly to on-page SEO signals. While on-page signals are certainly important, they are just one building block in the SEO structure. The other component, which is equally as important, involves off-page signals. Off-page signals consist of techniques that are performed off the website. A common example of an off-page SEO signal is a backlink. When a reputable and authoritative website creates a backlink pointing to your site, Google will notice the relationship, increasing your chance of receiving a top search ranking for your target keywords.
When it comes to backlinks, though, it’s best to focus on inbound marketing to attract them instead of actively creating them by hand. Google has cracked down on manipulative backlink practices in recent years, penalizing or even deindexing offending sites from its index. Err on the side of caution by letting backlinks comes naturally.
