Choncé Maddox — December 20, 2018 — December 20, 2018
If your business has a website, you know how important SEO is. Learning and mastering search engine optimization is a tactic most online business owners should prioritize.
It’s not the most exciting thing to do, but it can pay off tenfold. For starters, building your organize SEO is free. All you have to spend it time.
Once your site’s SEO improves, you can reap the benefits of increased traffic and leads. I know some business owners who rely heavily on SEO to drive their 6 and 7-figure businesses. Tackling SEO can seem overwhelming at first. If you’re just getting started or want to make some progress ASAP, here are 3 easy ways to boost your site’s SEO before the year is over.
1. Remove or Redirect Broken Links
Google hates broken links and the more a site has, the more Google views the site as unreliable and gives it a lower rank. From Google’s perspective, they want to provide users with the best experience which means helping them find exactly what they’re looking for and fast.
If your site has a ton of broken links that are no longer active, this will just frustrate readers who are looking for information on a topic which is why Google will view your site as unreliable.
To fix this issue and get rid of 404 errors when people click on the broken links on your site you have two options. You can either delete all the irrelevant links, or you can redirect them,
If you choose to redirect the links and run your site on WordPress, you can do this easily with a plugin. I used a free WordPress plugin called Redirection and set up all my redirects in about an hour or two. You can literally turn on a movie or some music and power through redirecting all your bad links in one sitting.
2. Submit a Guest Post or Become an Expert Source
Backlinks are a very important part of your SEO strategy. It’s important to have links to your site from other credible blogs and websites. Google’s reasoning behind this is that often times, you are as good as the company you keep. If you don’t have any relevant backlinks or have links to and from a bunch of shady, low quality sites, Google will assume your site is low quality as well.
So, how do you get quality backlinks? You can start by offering valuable content to other blogs and websites in the form of a guest post. Guest posting is a great way to share your expertise, gain a valuable backlink to your site, and potentially gain some traffic to your website as well.
Be mindful that each website owner has their own rules and guidelines for guest posting so be sure to follow them and think critically when pitching ideas. Think about topics that will truly educate their audience and help them get engaged. Set a goal to submit one high-quality guest post before the end of the year.
If you don’t want to guest post, you can try becoming an expert source. Bloggers and journalists may need expert quotes and advice to enhance their articles. You can volunteer to be quoted and in return receive a backlink to your website.
Check out Facebook groups, Twitter hashtags and sites like HARO to find writers who may be in need of an expert source.
3. Make Your Website Load Faster
Loading time is everything given societies current expectation of quick convenience. If your website takes even a few extra seconds to load Google can rank it lower as this can hard the overall user experience.
To help your site load faster, you can make sure your images are compressed, evaluate your plugins, and make sure your website’s files and server aren’t creating any loading time issues.
Sometimes, you’ll find that your hosting company can be the culprit when it comes to delaying your site’s load time. If you find this is the case, talk out a solution with them or switch to another host. If you don’t want to deal with any of these technical aspects on your own, hire someone else to help you with them.
It will be well worth it as decreasing your website’s load time is an easy way to boost your site’s SEO.
Summary
Don’t get overwhelmed or intimidated by SEO. Some SEO tasks may be large, but many are small and easy to take care of. You can even get a head start on improving your traffic by using these 3 easy ways to boost your site’s SEO before the year is over.
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