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Edan Ben-Atar 🐒
Edan Ben-Atar 🐒

Posted on • Originally published at freecodecamp.org

SEO Tips for Developers

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is essential for your online marketing strategy. It's the process of optimizing your site and content to help you get as much traffic as you can from search engines.

Reaching top positions in the search engine results pages (SERPs) with your website is one of the fastest ways to drive traffic to your site and boost conversions.

This article will go over the top 10 tips to boost your SEO and grow your website.
How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

You’ll want to create a content marketing strategy that will help you increase your rankings and reach your target audience.

But what’s a content marketing strategy? Content marketing will keep your business top of mind and help you establish yourself as an expert in your field, but it requires a lot of work.

For example, the company's content marketing manager would usually have to post a minimum of one article per week, taking into consideration keywords and the searcher’s intent.

It sounds like a lot, but it pays off. The content you're posting is relevant to the audience and shows that the company cares about them. It builds trust with consumers and helps them stay connected with the brand.

The best way to do this is to create content specific to your business, targeted toward your prospects, optimized for SEO, and distributed through social media. But don’t forget – consistency is key.

Create a plan for the kind of content you want to put out there and how often you wish to publish it. Track what works and what doesn’t so you can make adjustments as necessary.

Here are a few initial steps to follow during your content strategy process:

  1. Understand your goals. Do you want to get more traffic or more conversions? Do you want to let your audience know about new features, or do you want to educate them?
  2. Figure out which content channels are best for your business. Creating content is not just about publishing a few articles. It’s also about distributing them. Share your content on websites such as LinkedIn, Reddit, or Hacker News.
  3. Research the keywords people search for when browsing for your solution. Address those keywords in your content and appeal to your audience’s pain points.

How to Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

How can you know if your website is mobile-friendly?

Mobile-friendliness isn’t the only thing that matters. It’s also essential to have a fast website, responsive design, mobile-friendly content, and navigation.

Google has tools that you can use to check if your site is mobile-friendly, as well as other tools for testing speed.

If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, you should start doing this:

  1. Make sure your website is not overloaded with plugins. If you’re using WordPress, too many plugins can slow down your website.
  2. Use appropriate sizes and formats for your pictures and media. Images that are too large will slow your pages down and will have an undesirable effect on customer experience.
  3. Check your Core Web Vitals periodically. Make sure that your website loads under 2 seconds and your CWV metrics are within limits.

Your customers and Google will thank you, and it will pay dividends in both traffic and conversions.

How to Create Evergreen Content

Another tip to boost your SEO is creating evergreen content. Evergreen content is any type of information that has long-term relevance, meaning it's both timeless and timely (that is, not outdated). It's also search engine optimized, readable on mobile devices, and can be repurposed in multiple formats.

Evergreen content can be an excellent tool to help with SEO because it tends to rank well in search engines and can help your website gain traction when posted on other sites.

When done correctly, evergreen content provides an opportunity for your business to market itself without having to rely on time-sensitive events or news items to draw traffic to your site. Evergreen posts are updated frequently but are always focused on something new or something old that has been updated.

Examples of evergreen content include "How to Start a Business," "The Importance of Being Organized at Work", and "5 Things You Can Do With Leftover Pasta".

Content like this won’t ever lose its value because it doesn’t rely on current events or trends to stay relevant. Because of this, you can build a library of evergreen content that will continue to drive traffic over time.

How to Reduce Your Bounce Rate

Once you have people arriving on your site, you need to keep them there. A low bounce rate signals to Google that your content is valuable and will rank you higher in search results.

Remember, it’s not just about bringing more traffic to your site but keeping the traffic that comes from a good SEO strategy.

We know what you’re thinking: how do I reduce my bounce rate?

Here are some ways:

  • Reduce friction for users. Make it easy for them to read your content by making it readable and entertaining enough to stay on the page. Improve your navigation, so readers don’t get lost or stuck trying to find what they came for. Remove annoying pop-ups that distract users from reading your content or even prevent them from accessing it altogether.
  • Use visual elements such as images and videos where appropriate. They can make reading text easier and more enjoyable by breaking up chunks of text and making long articles seem shorter.
  • Use short paragraphs and bullet points so readers can skim through the page quickly without losing their place or interest in the material.
  • Use headings and subheadings throughout long articles so readers can get an idea of what each paragraph is about before reading it all word by word.

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GTmetrix report for Limey

How to Optimize Page Speed

As you might know, optimizing your page speed is no small task. It requires several steps and can be challenging. If this seems like too much to take on, consider hiring an SEO to help you identify page speed issues on your WordPress or Shopify website.

Some actionable steps you could take are:

  • Reduce unused JavaScript.
  • Eliminate render-blocking resources.
  • Reduce initial server response time.

How to Start Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is a great tool to keep your site fresh and relevant. Having other bloggers accept articles you submitted can help bring new traffic to your website, and encourage back-links that increase your search engine ranking.

This could lead to more traffic, sign-ups, and sales for you.

Guest posting also helps with branding and reaching new audiences.

In the end, you will want to find blogs in your niche that accept contributions or have a "write for us" section where you can submit your content.

It's not easy to get accepted, so make sure you write something great when pitching yourself as a guest blogger!

Guest blogs aren't just for large businesses—if you're just starting out, there are a variety of ways you can use guest blogging to your advantage.

First, if you're just starting out and don't have a huge following yet, guest blogging is a great way to build up your audience. The big companies that have been guest blogging for years have thousands of new readers coming in each time they publish something new.

If you've got some good ideas on your blog, and you have the drive to pitch yourself to other blogs and websites as well, then why not give it a shot?

Also, if you've got any interesting story behind your company or products, this is another great way to show off what makes you unique. Who knows—your story could be the thing that makes your blog post stand out and draw people in.

How to Optimize On-Page SEO

Now that you have the basics down, let’s look at how to optimize on-page SEO.

  • Content relevance: Ensure your content is relevant and up to date. A key element of on-page SEO is having a page that covers the query in question and any related queries a user may have.
  • Title Tag: Make sure your title tag is relevant and accurate. Your title tag should give users an idea of what they’re clicking on before they visit your site, so make sure it accurately reflects the topic of the page and makes sense for searchers (it doesn’t need to be precisely the same as what you searched for).
  • Meta description: Don’t forget about meta descriptions! While it won’t directly affect rankings, meta descriptions are still important because they show up in SERPs and can encourage clicks from users if optimized correctly.
  • Headings: Use headers appropriately by breaking up content into sections with clear titles, including keywords when possible.
  • Links: Link out to other relevant websites and make sure you link internally when possible to help users navigate your site (and include anchor text with contextual keywords). This can also help boost page authority.
  • Images & Videos: Use images and videos strategically to make your content more compelling for visitors who don't want to read through long blocks of text or who like visuals better than reading text. You can also use image alt tags or video subtitles/transcripts (not automated) to optimize content since Google crawls these types of media as well.

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How to Find the Right Keywords for Your Content Opportunities

Keyword research is arguably the most important part of SEO. The right keywords can make the difference between a high-ranking article and one that doesn’t get noticed at all.

When you are starting, it’s important to understand your goals in terms of organic search traffic. From there, you can choose a keyword strategy that will help you reach those goals.

There are several factors to consider when choosing keywords for your content opportunities:

  • Relevancy: What is the keyword relevant to? Choose a keyword that corresponds with your content or product offering.
  • Search Volume: If you want people to see your content, choose a keyword with high search volume (that is, many people have searched for it).
  • Unique: A unique keyword may be more difficult for your competition to target and rank for in organic search results than a more general, common phrase.

How to Leverage Social Media for SEO, Traffic, and Sales

Social media plays an important role in gaining organic traffic in today's SEO landscape. The reason is simple: social media sites are some of the most visited websites.

More importantly, Google and other search engines use social signals to determine a site's relevance for a given keyword. That’s why having your content shared on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and other social media sites can help you rank higher in search results.

It’s important to note that not all social signals have the same influence on SEO. Some signals give a site more authority than others, so it would be wise for you to determine which ones are worth pursuing for your business goals.

How to Encourage Quality Backlinks to Your Site.

One of the most effective ways to boost your SEO is to encourage quality backlinks to your site by sharing your blog posts on social networks and encouraging influencers to share your content.

But what is a “backlink”?

A backlink is simply a link from another website that points back to yours.

For example, if this page had a link pointing to Social Media Examiner's homepage, that would be considered a backlink. Backlinks are vital because they show Google that other people or businesses see your site as important and valuable enough to include in their pages.

The more high-quality (important) links you have pointing toward your website, the higher you will rank on search engine results.

Some good strategies for obtaining high-quality links include guest blogging on industry websites, conducting interviews with influencers in your industry, and asking customers/clients if they would be willing to post reviews of your services online.

Once you have some high-quality links coming in, it's important to keep track of them to determine how effective they are at boosting traffic and ranking. You can use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to do this.

If you want your website to be searchable, these tips will help you

The best way to achieve higher visibility is to make sure your website appears on the first page of search results (better yet, the first three positions).

If your site doesn't show up on that first page, there's a good chance potential customers will never see it. In fact, you can increase traffic to your website significantly if you move from the second page to the first. To do this, you need a strong SEO strategy.

SEO can seem like a daunting topic, but it doesn't have to be. Whether you're already familiar with SEO or not, there's likely something in the above guide you can start implementing right away to better optimize your website for search engines and improve the user experience for potential clients. All you have to do is get started, and the sooner, the better!

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