TOP 15 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) TECHNIQUES I FORGET TO DO

Search Engine Optimization is a very hot topic on the World Wide Web. After-all, everybody wants to rank higher and come up on the first page of Google search and get more traffic. Sometimes it is easy to get carried away with SEO though. In my opinion, the best technique is to keep it simple and apply a bit of common sense. Most SEO plugins will take care of the common architecture related stuff for you. So in this article I will only focus on techniques that you need to do yourself (or be aware of). I have identified and made a list of top 15 SEO practices that I tend to forget quite often. These simple SEO techniques, if practiced properly, can make a significant difference as to how my pages are ranked in the Search Engine Queries. Use proper anchor text for inter-links. Don’t use “here”, “there” etc for the anchor text (if you can avoid it). Optimize the images, always create alt tags and write description in the alt tag. Use search engine friendly permalinks. Try not to have too many ‘&’, ‘?’, ‘!’ etc characters in the URL. Sometimes it is unavoidable but try to keep it to a minimum. Use hyphens (-) between words to improve readability. Do not use underscores (_) in URLs, use hyphens (-) instead. Do not use session id in URLs. If you are using good hosting then you shouldn’t have to worry about this one. Avoid using capital letters in URLs. Windows servers are case sensitive. Keep them lowercase so there’s no confusion. Use internal linking when possible and appropriate. Use sticky posts (if you can and if it applies to you). Have a category description paragraph. Let the visitors subscribe to category specific RSS feed. (Use category specific RSS plugin for WordPress) Use rel=”nofollow” tag on low value links to not pass the page rank juice. For example “Read the rest of the entry”, “About”, “Contact” etc. Use sub-directories rather than sub-domains when possible. Sub-domains do not share link love from the main domain as it is treated as a different domain. Research the target audience and aim the site content appropriately. Keep the content up to date. Visitors don’t like outdated content. Updating the content frequently also attracts the Search engines spiders to index the web pages frequently. Going forward I will try to use this list to optimize my web.....

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6 Mobile SEO Mistakes That Are Sabotaging Your Mobile Marketing Efforts

SEO remains one of the most popular topics on the internet. Why?

Because webmasters are always fighting to get search traffic – the better your pages are optimized for search engines, the more chances you have to rank your content, and the more traffic you’ll drive to your site.

That’s not all; it equally means that you’ll be making a lot of money (provided your site is optimized for conversions).

It doesn’t matter whether you are in blogging, content marketing, affiliate marketing, social media, or e-commerce, the challenge is the same…

…Every website owner is searching for the right skills required to make their sites perform better in SERPs (search engine result pages).

However, while implementing SEO strategies, one area most people often fail to give adequate attention to is mobile SEO.

In today’s marketing era, mobile marketing is becoming increasingly popular. Any marketer who’s not yet paying attention to mobile traffic is not doing SEO correctly.

As more and more people are starting to use mobile devices for every task that used to be only possible on desktop, one thing has become apparent:

• The mobile web is gradually taking over the internet.

And, I’m not talking about just surfing the net. I’m talking about everything from browsing social networking sites, checking emails, collaborating with teams, and making purchases.

According to statcounter.com, mobile browsers enjoy 53.03% of the total number of people who access the internet, while desktops have 42.19% and tablets have 4.78%.

Furthermore, in an article on the Hallaminternet blog, Jonathan Ellins stated that:

“In 2016, we saw an increasing number of people using tablets and mobile devices instead of desktop computers to browse the internet. On average, the combined number of mobile and tablet users finally surpassed the number of desktop users globally and the upwards trend is continuing.”

Therefore, it’s important for site owners and internet marketers to pay more attention to the mobile version of their sites so that they will benefit more from these mobile users.

However, just like desktop marketing, mobile marketing requires the right SEO tactics to get you a significant position in SERPs.

Sadly, a lot of marketers still make huge mobile SEO mistakes that end up robbing them of a considerable chunk of internet traffic – thereby leaving a lot of money on the table.

What Are These Mobile SEO Mistakes?

1. You’re Not Using A Responsive Design

What exactly is a responsive web design, and why does it matter?

According to HuffingtonPost:

“A responsive design simply means a website that has been constructed so that all of the content, images and structure of the site remains the same on any device. For example, when a user accesses a site on their desktop, they are getting the full view of the site. But when that same user goes to visit the site from their smartphone or tablet, the site will retract to fit on the smaller screen.”

(Source: Freshparks)

In 2015, Google started taking a website’s mobile presence as one of its ranking factors – this alone can justify why using a responsive design is essential.

Typically, one of the reasons why responsive blogs perform better in search rankings is because they provide a better user-experience over websites that are not mobile-friendly.

Additionally, Google likes the fact that responsive sites use a single URL as opposed to using different URLs for separate versions of a website.

With a responsive site, you no longer have to worry about creating different websites for different devices; your website will run perfectly across all devices.

Apart from all these obvious facts, there are also other vital reasons why you should instantly switch to a responsive design right now.

Responsive sites:

• Enable you to reach more clients and customers on smaller devices (smartphones and tablets).
• Decrease labor and costs as you no longer have to run separate websites for various devices.
• Track and report analytics from one place.
• Increase customer satisfaction, which will eventually lead to higher sales and conversions.
• Stay ahead of the competition as over 44 percent of fortune 500 companies not yet mobile ready.

Finally, if your site is not responsive, you will lose out on mobile traffic as a lot of mobile users who try to access your site will quickly hit the back button and leave.

Further reading:

• How To Make A User-Friendly Blog For More Conversions
• Find Out How Responsive Web Design Equals To SEO benefits
• How To Radically Increase The Overall Performance Of Your Responsive Website?

2. Your Mobile Pages Load Slowly

Just as people who access your site on desktop computers hate slow loading pages, so do mobile users.

According to Think With Google:

“Slow loading sites frustrate users and negatively impact publishers. While there are several factors that impact revenue, our model projects that publishers whose mobile sites load in 5 seconds earn up to 2x more mobile ad revenue than those whose sites load in 19 seconds.

The same study also observed 25% higher ad viewability and 70% longer average sessions for sites that loaded in 5 seconds vs. 19 seconds.

If your site takes too long to load, visitors might leave before they’ve even seen anything.

Apart from annoying visitors, Google also punishes slow loading pages and ranks them very low in SERPs.

In a blog post on the Appticles blog, Alexandra Anghel stated that, “when your mobile website or app is clumsy or slow, 29% of smartphone users will immediately switch to another site or app if it doesn’t satisfy their needs (that is, they can’t find information or it’s too slow).”

Below are the basic things you can do to boost your mobile page speed:

• Reduce server response time.
• Load above the fold content before below the fold content.
• Enable browser caching.
• Optimize your images.
• Minify JavaScript, CSS, and HTML
• Activate Google AMP.

Further reading:

• 
  

3. You Have Blocked Files

Internet marketers understand how critical search engine indexing is to their website search experience. This is why they always do their best to help the search engines to properly crawl and index their sites, spending time and money in off-page and on-page optimization such as website structure, content, links, meta descriptions, tags, image optimization, etc.

But, while it’s obvious that high-quality website optimization is paramount to success in search, not paying attention enough to the technical aspect of SEO can be disastrous.

If you’re not familiar with terms like robots.txt, XML sitemaps, microformats, and meta robots tags, you might be putting yourself in a lot of trouble.

Let’s focus on one of those terms right now – robots.txt.

Robots.txt is simply a text file whose function is to instruct search engine robots (also known as spider, bots, or crawlers) how to properly crawl and index web pages. Typically, the robots.txt file is placed in the top level directory of your site so that the bots can easily access its instructions.

Unfortunately, in an attempt to optimize a site and rank higher, some site owners make a big SEO blunder by shutting out the Googlebot from indexing their files.

How do they do that? They restrict Google’s access to their CSS, JavaScript, and image files.

And if your robots.txt file disallows the Googlebot from accessing crucial elements of your site, your rankings will definitely drop.

To prevent this potential disaster, always check your robots.txt files to see that no essential elements are disallowed. You can also test your robots.txt files on the Google Search Console to be sure that all is well.

Further reading:

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4. You Don’t Have Rich Snippets

Let me ask you a question:

Have you ever noticed that when performing a search on Google, some listings often look more attractive and sexier than others? For example, check out the screenshot below:

See that extra information like the star rating? That’s a rich snippet.

Rich snippets take relevant information from your blog and display them on your website’s listing in the search results, apart from the usual page title, URL, and meta description. This additional information can include star ratings, images, author information, etc.

Rich snippets are often neglected in SEO strategies, and this is because they are more tedious to implement than traditional on-page SEO tactics. But if you can spend a little time practicing how to use them, it will be well worth it in the end.

According to Search Engine Land, adding this extra piece of information to your Google search listings captures the eyes of viewers, and they can increase your click-through rates by 30 percent, even if you’re not occupying the first position.

(source)

Google loves websites or blogs that provide rich, accurate, and instant answers to queries. If you want to be the website that provides those instant answers, you should use Schema.org on your site.

Finally, using these kinds of rich snippets increases your CTR because it makes your site more attractive to users, and Google tends to reward these helpful additions.

Further reading:

• 
  

5. Your Multimedia Content Is Causing Problems

Adding videos and multimedia content to your site is a great way to make your blog posts better and more engaging. However, you need to be sure that your site is able to play this content without any issues.

In a situation where this multimedia slows down your site’s speed or isn’t playable, this could pose a great challenge to your mobile marketing efforts.

Back in the day, all the videos you’ve ever watched on the internet were channeled via a 3rd party plugin such as RealPlayer, QuickTime, or Flash. With these great plugins integrated into the various available web browsers, almost invisibly, the viewer wasn’t concerned about how they were seeing the video.

Nowadays, problems occur when the audience suddenly attempts to view a video on an unsupported platform. This is especially problematic for mobile users who may not be using a supported browser.

One good way to overcome this problem is to follow Google’s advice by using HTML5, especially if you want to display animated content on your website.

With an ever growing number of people viewing video content on mobile devices, ensuring video can be seen on any device and with any browser should be of great concern to every webmaster.

Further reading:

• How To Embed YouTube Videos In WordPress (It’s easier than you think)
• How to Fix Mixed Content Error in WordPress After Adding SSL Certificate

Mobile SEO Mistakes

Because the mobile internet is so ubiquitous, optimizing the mobile version of your website will not only improve traffic, it will also go a long a way in improving your income as well.

Do not wait until you’ve lost your users before implementing changes on your site. People love sites that load fast, have responsive designs, and have obviously been optimized for their specific platform.

And in doing this, Google will reward you.

Implement the tips we have provided in this post, and you will surely notice some level of improvement in your SERPs.

What things do you do to improve your mobile SEO? What tips can you add to this list? Let me hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Like this post? Share it with your friends!

Here are hand-picked articles for you to read next:

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The Detailed Comparison of Best Position Trackers SEO Tools With Results

Let’s not beat around the bush here. Irrespective of what some professionals may claim, search engine rankings are still the best indicators of SEO progress.

Sure, on their own, they’re nothing more than a means to an end – increasing online visibility, getting more sales or achieving any other outcome you want for your business.

And it is not possible if your rankings aren’t up there.

It is crucial that you can properly track and monitor your domain’s positions for relevant keywords.

The thing is, given the plethora of choices, how do you choose the best keyword ranking tool?

Well, that’s what I intended to find out. I decided to compare some of the popular rank trackers in the market – Moz, RankRanger, SEMrush, SE Ranking, and Ahrefs – to establish which offers the best value.

Without any further ado, here’s what I discovered.

Comparison criteria:

Here’s the functionality I took into consideration when comparing rank trackers.

• How many search engines and devices does each tool track
• How many keywords could I monitor
• Can I track rankings by location (and how many locations could I specify)
• Can I track rankings for my business name in local listings
• Can I compare my rankings with the competition
• Could the tool suggest additional competitors for me
• Can I see which keywords trigger a featured snippet
• How often do they update the data
• Can a tool alert me of unusual ranking fluctuations
• What sort of reports can I generate

I know there’s a lot to cover so let’s dive right in.

Comparison Results

#1. Search Engines and Devices

Search Engines

It goes without saying that we are all eager to know how our sites rank on Google.

But depending on various factors, like your location or business type, for example, you might want to track the rankings on other search engines as well.

And as it turns out, rank trackers differ greatly when it comes to search engines they target.

For example, Moz allows you to track rankings on Google, Google Mobile, Bing and Yahoo.

SEMrush and Ahrefs, however, track only Google (and Google mobile) rankings.

SE Rankings on the other hand, also tracks rankings in Yandex, Yandex mobile and YouTube.

And finally, RankRanger offers an impressive list of search engines, including Google, Google mobile, Yahoo, Yandex, Bing, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Play, iTunes, Google Jobs, Haosou, Sogou, Baidu, Seznam, Atlas, and others.

However, the problem is, RankRanger allows you to pick only two search engines from the list. And so, although you have a plethora of choice, you can’t avail the options in full.

Verdict: If you look at the list of supported engines, RankRanger is miles ahead of the rest. Unfortunately, its restriction to two sources lands it in line with other tools.

Devices

All rank trackers allow monitoring rankings for desktop and mobile devices separately. However, SEMrush is the only one that splits mobile devices between smartphones and tablets, offering a more in-depth look at your mobile rankings.

Verdict: SEMrush for offering a more detailed analysis of mobile rankings.

#2. Keywords

Depending on the size of your site, and the business, you might want to track anything from a handful of keywords to thousands or more.

And particularly, if you’re in the latter category, it is crucial that the rank tracker you choose will not force you to drop some of the data.

Here’s how my selected rank trackers stack up regarding the number of keywords they allow you to track:

(Note: I’m quoting official information from those companies here, covering various price plans these products offer)

SEMrush	Moz	Ahrefs	SE Ranking	RankRanger
From 500 to 5000	From 300 to 7500	From 300 to 10000	From 50 to 20000	From 350 to 2000

Verdict: A tricky choice as the best tool in this case largely depends on your business requirements.

So, instead of offering a strict verdict, I thought I’d compare the cost per keyword for each tool (using their smallest paid plan).

	Price per month	Keywords	Price per Keyword
MOZ	99	300	0.33
Ahrefs	99	300	0.33
SEMrush	99	500	0.20
SE Ranking	29	250	0.12
RankRanger	69	350	0.20

#3. Location Tracking

If you run a local business, it is crucial that you know how your keywords perform in your immediate locale. And although it’s not a functionality I’d personally be interested in, I compared whether rank trackers from my list can deliver local rankings.

And I was pleasantly surprised to find out that every tool on the list allows tracking rankings by location.

SEMrush	Moz	Ahrefs	SE Ranking	RankRanger
Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

However, they all offer a different number of location targets you could specify and track. What’s more, in some of the tools, the actual number also depends on a price plan you’ve selected.

Here’s the breakdown of how many locations per website you can specify:

SEMrush	Moz	Ahrefs	SE Ranking	RankRanger
10	4	From 1 to unlimited, depending on a price plan	5	2

Verdict: Ahrefs beats everyone else with their unlimited package.

#4. Tracking Business Name in Local Listings

Similarly, if you run (or help promote) a local business, you should know how it ranks for its business name.

Therefore, a rank tracker you choose should give you the ability to monitor rankings for the business name.

From the ones I’ve compared, SEMrush, SE Ranking and RankRanger offer this functionality.

RankRanger

SE Ranking

SEMrush

Moz doesn’t include it in its PRO package. However, you can get it if you sign up for their Moz LOCAL tool. To use it, however, you need to buy a separate license.

Ahrefs, however, doesn’t allow tracking a business name.

Verdict: A tie between SEMrush, SE Ranking and RankRanger.

#5. Competitor Rankings

Similarly, I analyzed which rank tracker allows me to compare my rankings with the competition and build an image of my competitive landscape.

Ahrefs, SE Ranking and RankRanger allow to compare up to 5 competitors.

SE Ranking

Ahrefs

Rank Ranger

SEMrush allows adding up to 20 competitors. You can also add specific competitors for each keyword, making the tool’s competitive report highly relevant.

Finally, with Moz, you can track rankings of up to 3 competitors. However, you can also add them from the organic report.

Verdict: SEMrush. If you need to monitor ranking changes for a large group of competitors, the tool delivers the greatest opportunity.

#6. Additional Competitor Research

I believe most will agree with me on this:

Companies you consider immediate competitors aren’t necessarily the ones you battle for the searcher’s attention.

Additional websites might be ranking for your keywords, trying to steal your traffic and revenue.

And so, it is crucial that you understand who your online competitors are (not just the market ones).

And as it turns out, there are only two tools on the list that offer this functionality:

SEMrush

SEMrush’s competitor report includes all domains that target the same keywords as you, not just the ones that battle for the same organic traffic.

Plus, it provides a wealth of additional information about each domain that you could use to plan strategies to overcome them in rankings.

SE Rankings

SE Rankings offers a list of domains targeting similar keywords as you to choose from.

Verdict: SEMrush and SE Ranking because of their holistic approach of looking at other sources than just organic to get the full picture of the competitive landscape.

#7. Featured Snippets Report

Featured snippets are one heck of a deal.

After all, as some SEOs suggested, the featured snippet is now a rank zero, the ultimate ranking position you could strive for.

(Hell, you could rank on top of organic search, and the Answer Box will still nick your traffic!)

Unfortunately, getting it isn’t easy.

Or is it?

Because, for one, knowing which keywords already trigger the answer box could help you improve your relevant pages, and take over the feature box.

And so, as part of the comparison, I checked which rank trackers report on featured snippets in rankings.

And this is where things get really tricky. Because all the tools show the featured snippet icon, denoting that a particular keyword fires off the Answer Box. Then some of them allow to dig deeper and filter results by this rank type.

So to take it from the top, Moz, Ahrefs, SEMrush and RankRanger denote featured snippet in ranking reports, allowing you to identify keywords that trigger the answer box.  

The cool thing about SEMrush featured snippet report is that it is unique in the market. It significantly speeds up your workflow of getting into featured snippets in two ways: result analysis and opportunities search.

First, based on your keyword list, you get the list of all your pages that got you to featured snippet for any location or device that you target.

At the same time, in the other tab, you get all the keywords that you did not gain a featured snippet rank for, but your competitors did. In the table, you can see at once the keywords AND the specific URL from the snippet. This feature allows you to quickly analyze why a particular page gained on the FS ranking and therefore how to improve your own page. Also, by putting priorities to your pages that got to the top-20 SERP positions, it’s easy to strategically plan your work.

RankRanger provides a dedicated featured snippet report as well, including the information about keywords, domains, and landing pages that trigger the answer box.

    

Verdict: A tie between RankRanger and SEMrush

#8. Data Update Frequency

Given how fast rankings can change, it is crucial that you have access to the most current data.

Spotting unusual rankings fluctuation might help you identify and overcome a bigger issue if the problem was left unattended.

For that reason alone, I prefer an instant data update, rather than a delayed one. And so, as part of the process, I checked the intervals at which I could have my data delivered by the rank trackers.

But to my surprise, there are huge discrepancies with data update frequency between those products.

SE Ranking, SEMrush and RankRanger provide daily rankings.

From SEMrush’s website:

RankRanger

Moz reports on your search positions only once a week.

SE Ranking, on the other hand, allows you to specify your desired frequency, and choose to receive the data every day, once in 3 days or weekly. Note that the frequency you choose will affect your price, with daily reports costing you more, and weekly slashing your cost by as much as 40%.

Finally, Ahrefs ties frequency to price plans. The higher plan you choose, the faster you’ll receive your data.

Verdict: RankRanger provides the best value for the money here. But it’s worth mentioning that SE Ranking allows to select the frequency on all plans, and customize it to your needs.  

#9. Alerts

In case something unusual happens to the rankings one would like to know the cause behind it, identify the problem in detail and take adequate measures to eradicate the problem.

Unfortunately, the only rank tracker that offers the ability to set up alerts, and receive emails when rankings change is SEMrush.

That said, I admit that this is hands down an incredible feature, allowing SEOs to become more proactive, rather than reactive to changes and potential issues with rankings.

Verdict: SEMrush, undoubtedly.

Note: This is a different functionality from weekly (or daily, monthly, etc.) ranking update reports that most tools offer.

#10. Reports

It doesn’t matter if you’re an in-house SEO or work for an agency, at some point you’ll have to issue reports to prove your work. Although agency folk might do it more often, it’s a feature we all need.

Most of the rank trackers I compared offer the ability to create PDF reports. The only exception in the list is Ahrefs. It does not offer any reporting functionality.

With others, however, there are some differences regarding the type of reports you can create.

SEMrush allows to create a standard PDF report that you can schedule to receive regularly.  

You can also customize the look and content of the PDF, adding data from other SEMrush tools with a simple drag and drop interface.

Many of those elements allow you to bring in custom data and reports created specifically for this report, making it an invaluable tool for marketers and agencies that need to provide more context for the ranking report.

Moz offers custom reports too, and allows to schedule and annotate them.

SE Ranking includes a template builder, allowing you to create various templates for your reports, depending on your requirements.

Finally, RankRanger offers an option to create white-labelled reports, customize the cover page, and customize predefined PDF templates.

Closing Thoughts

As SEOs, we all have different objectives – increasing overall rankings, showing up in the Answer Box, boosting local presence among others. However, the rankings, like I said, are the best indicators of SEO progress.

And we need to use a tool offering functionality that can help us achieve it.

I hope this detailed comparison helps you identify the most effective tool to reach your own SEO goals.

Disclaimers:

First, I signed up for and used demo trials of each tool. As a result, there is a possibility that certain functionality I may highlight as lacking in a particular app was simply blocked in the trial version.

Second, the results of this comparison are entirely subjective and based on my expectations for a rank tracker.

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