Best 10 Free Ways To Improve Your SEO

Free Simple Ways To Improve Your SEO

About 80% of SEO power, takes place off-site, and the 20% is on your websites pages. However, for the 80% to work, the 20% must be as near perfect as possible. It is essential that the on-site factors are in place if we want a page to rank on Google’s Page One. These factors make sure that the search engine robots know the page is about a particular keyword and that they can trust the content is perfect for the searcher.

I always recommend keeping this list of factors in mind when building websites and a new pages within websites. Ensuring you cover all the factors will provide 300%-400% more power out of your investment in SEO. YourVeganMarketer.com can put you in touch with some great writers who are fully briefed on what needs to be done for SEO to be effective. Get in touch if you need a vegan, cruelty free, eco-friendly writing specialist.

The on-site factors below, have been placed in order of importance. Based on experience and testing on over 8,000 websites.

Essential – you must do it!

Should – if you have the resources do it. Google will reward you

Spare Time – if you have some time after the Essentials and Shoulds, it will help!

Essential

1. Place Your Focus Keyword In The URL

Say we choose the keyword vegan vitamin. The most powerful and essential on-site factor is ensuring the keyword you chose is in the URL.

e.g. www.your-domain.com/vegan-vitamin or www.your-domain.com/the-best-vegan-vitamin

In the second URL we have combined other keywords within the URL, which is totally fine.

The URL www.your-domain.com/the-best-vegan-vitamin has covered two potential keywords: vegan vitamin and best vegan vitamin

2. Put Your Keyword In The Page Title

Here we are getting Google to see our keyword in the title so that it shows it on the blue line of the search. This is the part that searchers will click to visit your site. The title should be catchy and make people want to click on to see your site. Click rate is a major factor in Google’s algorithms and the most powerful metric when they judge the quality of your site.

Having something stand out, may lead to a click rate which is 0.01% more than a competitor from a Google search. This may seem small, but this difference added up over many months ensure your website is much more trusted and leads to positive improvements in the rankings. Here is an image of how vegan blog shows on google.

3. Exact or Close Variation of Keyword In Meta Description

The meta description is the small bit of text which can be found in the text under the blue link. You can populate it with calls to action or a hook which the searcher will want to click to learning more. It will help improve your click rate.

Do a quick search of your keyword and have a look at what kind of messages are being put in the meta descriptions of your competitors both from organic and paid ads. Use these as ideas and try go better to get that little bit of extra click rate. This will seriously boost your rankings!

4. Place The Keyword In The On-Page Content

Ideally your keyword should be within the first sentence of your content and then once more within the first couple of sentences. If the content flows really well, and the keyword can be placed naturally then that is fine. However, if the sentences where the keyword is placed seem a little forced, then there is a risk of over-optimising your content.

A couple of mentions of the keyword every 450-500 words,with a maximum of 4 times unless it fits very naturally.

5. The Number Of Word On A Page

My tests have revealed a couple of different ways that this factor has an impact on your SEO.

The first is to go very big and long. Putting out content that is approx. 1,750 to 2,250 words which gives a lot of power for Google to pick up on longtails. You can start a little smaller, around 600 words and see how your Search Console reacts over a few days. E.g. A blog article I put out yesterday, is already showing me on page 3 for a longtail from that article.

The second is a competitor based strategy. You simply search your keyword on Google and have a look at what the first 10 true competitors are doing. By true competitors, I mean ignore huge sites like BBC, Sky News, Amazon, Facebook etc. These websites have sheer authority and we want to compare ourselves against true competitors in our market. You will want to do similar amounts of content, number of photos and layout to your competitors. Providing Google with a little more content or a few more photos that your competitors will help you a lot.

6. Content Headers

Recent updates on Google’s algorithms has meant that your H1 and H2 headings are essential for the most success.

Your main header should have the exact keyword in it. For example if your page is about vegan shoes a heading could be Where To Find The Best Vegan Shoes.

For the H2 titles, this is our chance to show Google how this page is about our keyword but in a way that comes across naturally, not forced. Using the keyword too many times in the H2 can over-optimise a page so it should seem genuine.

For example if my H1 Title is Where To Find The Best Vegan Shoes, some examples of H2 titles through the content could be

Why Choose Our Vegan Shoes? (3 words before keyword)

Why Should I go Vegan? (1 word from the keyword)

How To Find Vegan Footwear? (1 word from keyword with a broader term for shoes)

Aim to have around 5 H2 titles, and you can mix them into the H3 and H4 titles too.

Medium Importance

7. Internal Silo SEO Strategy

It looks amazing to search engines when your SEO page has links coming in from other pages around your site. This is not essential, but the small task can really boost your SEO power. When writing content on a new post or page, if you can link certain words in the content to other pages on the site, it will build trust of the SEO page in the eyes of the search engine.

8. Voice Search Answers

The amount of searches that take place now by people speaking to their devices is always increasing. If you can link your content to common questions within your niche then you would make this question one of your H2 titles. For example, Is Leather Vegan? And Google will use your websites’ answer as the reply given to searchers.

Doing this well will also help get your featured in the Google snippet at the top of search pages.

9. Can You Embed A YouTube Video?

Google owns YouTube… embedding a video from Youtube into your content page will give it a boost. If you have a channel then use videos from your own, with a video that is optimised for the same keywords as the SEO target page. This will help boost the SEO page and your YouTube video within the same budget.