Internal and External Links
Internal Links: Links within website content that connect readers to other sections of your website.
External Links: Links within website content that connect readers with other credible sources of information.
Both internal and external links have a significant place in the SEO strategy for your website. Within your content, internal links help to direct visitors to other sections of your site and fully immerse them into the online experience you have created. Google and other search engines like internal links because they help them to develop a picture of your website navigation and layout. Furthermore, search engines like to see that a variety of pages on your website are getting a decent amount of hits, and internal links help to achieve that.
Many people avoid external links because they feel they are counterintuitive. After all, you want people on your website, why would you direct them somewhere else, right? Not exactly. Google and other search engines favor sites with external links throughout their content because it helps them to source additional credible information and create a more connected worldwide web. In other words, if you link your content to other website’s content, Google views your site as a more trustworthy source of information, and you can rank higher in their search engine.
Website Speed
In a world where fast internet seems to be the norm, a critical, but often overlooked, aspect of SEO is website speed. Many people, unfortunately, assume their websites automatically load quickly for users across desktop and mobile devices. However, if your site is not optimized for speed, this might not be the case. There are many reasons your website speed might be slow, including large image sizes, poor server performance, or having too many plug-ins in your CMS. If you can identify the issues that slow your website down and correct them, you can improve your SEO and your search results.
Social Media Accounts
Believe it or not, there are factors outside of your website that affect and influence search results, and one of them is social media. When a search engine combs through a series of sites to rank them, it looks at the overall picture of their web presence, including social media. Therefore, if you have a well crafted social media strategy that includes consistent posting, quality content, engagement, and relevant information about your business, your website is more likely to appear and even rank higher in online searches.
Online Business Listings
People use the internet to search for local businesses on a daily basis. You could say it’s today’s equivalent of the yellow pages from decades past. Therefore, when people search for your business using Google or any other search engine, you want correct and complete information to be displayed so they can contact you without a hiccup or hesitation. If you have search engine business listings that are incomplete or display incorrect data, a search engine is likely to know and limit the possibility that your website appears at the top of search results.
Keyword Diversity
It’s true that keywords are the basic bread and butter of SEO. That’s why keywords are where many people start to build their SEO strategy. However, if you do not diversify your keywords to include a comprehensive list of words and phrases relevant to your business, then you’re not doing your business any favors. At Seventh Scout, we take the guesswork out of keyword selection and use keyword research tools like SE Ranking or Google Keyword Planner to find keywords that are not only relevant to the business, but are also well-searched. You can find a winning keyword that speaks to your business, but if no one is searching for it, then is it worth using?
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