We have come a long way from the time when SEO was considered an alien concept that only the coding experts can grasp to it being one of the most widely learned skills today.
With digital marketing gaining momentum every passing day, it is but wise to make the most of everything that can help strengthen one’s digital footprint. Speaking of which, every business in the meantime has a website. But not every site makes it to the top search results in the search engines. No matter how relevant or top-notch their content might be, it always comes down to optimization.
So, what makes the cut to 2019’s Search Engine Optimization Punch List? We’d love to break it to you that it is everything that even a beginner of SEO can do.
Let’s get straight to our SEO 2019 punch list that is sure to do wonders for you if followed religiously.
Here it goes:
Web Design Optimization steals the show
Well, it won’t be wrong to say that with so much emphasis on the ‘keywords’ and the ‘content quality’ these days, many tend to underestimate the importance of a website’s design.
Optimized web design entails a user-friendly layout that works equally well on laptops, tabs, and mobile phones. This is the age where people pay bills and shop using their smartphones. And in 90% of the cases, people are looking for various services online using their phones because it is more convenient.
Having a website that has a mobile-friendly layout has to be one’s top priority
That being said, there are a few more things that need to be incorporated as well. Here is our web design punch list that one ought to consider:
To-the-point content
Compelling calls-to-action
Mobile-friendly design
Keywords in the URL
Generate a sitemap to tell Google that you mean business
Having a sitemap for one’s website reiterates the authenticity of a website. A sitemap is the blueprint of a website. One of the first few things that one ought to do while creating a website for their business is to plan a well-connected sitemap that can be submitted to Google. Submitting the sitemap to Google is important because this way, the search engine will be able to access your pages with ease. Websites that are easier to access by search engines are credited. If there is any change in the sitemap, update the search engine to avoid any issues that may arise later.
Take Google Analytics seriously
While most of us, without any doubt, do take Google Analytics seriously, are we always checking up on the statistics?
At the beginning of optimizing our website, we all are very eager to look up the performance of our site in Google Analytics, but after some time all that eagerness fizzles out. This is where the inconsistency comes in. The moment your websites loses consistency; the analytics start to go down from there. So, it is essential to check how one’s website is performing every once in a while.
Compare the website’s performance from the last month and revisit the overall strategy if required. Remember, if a plan worked for you in the past, that does not mean that it is bound to work every time. Search engines are getting smarter, and one needs to evolve with it.
Name the visuals you use on the website properly
Gone are the days when one used to get away with naming images like ‘Image 01, Image A, B, C, etc.’ With search engines smarter than ever, saving the image with a relevant name has become important. Give images appropriate names.
While the focus keyword needs to be incorporated in the alt text, the title of the image needs to describe it. So, refrain from saving images with irrelevant names.
Inbound and outbound links; both have their own value
Most of the times, people are focusing so much on getting the backlinks that they fail to address the most prominent and most straightforward thing in terms of the Search Engine Optimization; internal/inbound linking.
If you ask me how to strengthen the internal linking of a particular website strategically, I have a straightforward and time-saving solution for it. You write a comprehensive article that includes concepts covered in your website. Then you link all those concepts in that particular article and create sub-articles from the parent article. And there you have it; a well-connected chain linking all the essential pages of your website together.
Final Word
SEO in 2019 has become all the easier with tools that assist even the illiterate in this field. All one needs to do is to invest a good deal of time initially to facilitate themselves later.
Follow our SEO punch list for 2019 and give your website the kind of kick-start it needs.
