While it is true that there are many SEO business companies out there, most of them are ignoring the changes that are happening on the internet recently, placing most of their focus on basic tactics that are just not as rewarding as they were years ago. Even though search engine optimization doesn't really differ from site to site, the way you approach it will be determined by the type of business you own; do you have a franchise? A B2B or B2C company? A Blog perhaps? An Ecommerce website? If you are running an Ecommerce site, it is important to understand how to go about search engine optimization in your case, and a good way of doing that is to create an SEO checklist that has the following twelve items.
The SEO Checklist - 12 Factors to Remember
1. Make the Site Mobile
There are more and more smartphone users who prefer to browse the internet in the palm of their hand rather than sitting at a computer, and you need to accommodate for that by installing an application that creates a mobile version of your website, formatting it specifically for cell phone users.
2. Reduce Loading Times
There are few things out there more annoying than long loading times, especially in this day and age where we are used to having everything done fast. To reduce loading times, make sure to remove superfluous lines of code and any plugins that you don't actually need, use external CSS files and decrease the amount of HTTP requests that you process.
3. Keep Social Media in the Picture
Considering the recent algorithm updates made by Google, it is important that you invest yourself in social networks, building up your presence on them. Stick to big networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. Also, don't forget about Pinterest, a great website to actually show off your products.
4. Make your Good Content Shine
Your home page is the place where everyone ends up when they visit your website, and so it would only make sense to put your best articles and most successful products on it. In addition, your homepage is the most important one when it comes to the analysis performed by search engines, and populating it properly will give you some bonus points when it comes to search engine rankings.
5. Make Sure there are a Lot of Reviews
Whenever a customer decides whether or not to purchase something, he or she will most likely look towards customer reviews. Make sure that it is easy to leave reviews on your website, and if possible, quote reviews people have given in on other websites regards to the product you are selling.
6. Optimize your Tags
Many people forget about the Meta and Description tags, but simply inserting your main keyword once in them will provide you with a nice boost to your search engine ranking as well as your website's index.
7. Blogging and Guest Posting
More and more people are using blogs and guest posts as methods of advertising, and you can easily do the same by hiring a writer to provide you with niche-specific content, which is all you need to open your blog and guest post on others.
8. Allow your Products to be Compared
You can use this for any kind of website, but it works especially well for one with multiple products. As you can guess, giving your users the ability to easily compare the different products you sell will make them more likely to buy, and it will also help you generate internal links and increase your search engine rankings.
9. Implementing CMS Usage
Using a content management system will make it much easier for you to update your products and your content, as well as managing your entire business in general. As of now, Magento is the most popular content management system.
10. Using Rich Snippets
What are rich snippets? They are little pieces of text, images or videos that pop up on the search engine results page, differentiating you from the other results and giving a nice preview of what your site is all about.
11. HTML and XML Sitemaps
Having both HTML and XML sitemaps is important to make your website friendly to the search engine bots and spiders. In other words, having these sitemaps will allow search engines to index any updates you make faster than usual.
12. Optimize your Images
Finally, don't forget to put Alt tags in your images in order to allow the search engine bots to know what they are about. It won't take you long, and it will demonstrate to the search engines that every bit of your website is important and that the image is not just some filler content.
Author Bio:
Jason Smith is an online manager for BCVAWEB - a corporate videographer dallas tx. Jason likes blogging about online strategies that are related to SEO, Content, PPC & Lead generation.
