SEO tips for the New Year
Happy New Year from the SEO team at Dental Design! It's been a fast paced and action packed 12 months for us, having to deal with 2 major Google updates and over 20 minor ones which have impacted the UK local search results. (see here https://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change) Certainly keeps us on our toes and does illustrate that you can't sit still with SEO. Even if you are currently ranking well it is important to consolidate your position through SEO work to maintain your good rankings.
In light of the New Year, I thought I would go back to basics and offer some simple but at the same time, very important SEO tips. Hope they are of some use!
Create an Effective Meta Title-Tag
The title tag is a critically important factor in achieving high search engine rankings. For those of you who don’t know what a title-tag is, it’s the words displayed at the top of your browser. It is also used as the title of your website in the SERP’s (search engine results pages). Google counts this as one of the most important on-page ranking factors, so it is a good idea to optimise it.
Your title-tag should also contain location and dental specific keywords relevant to the page. For example, suppose your practices name is “Riverside Dental Practice,” and you are located in Guildford, your title tag for your teeth whitening page could be written like this.
Teeth Whitening Guildford | Tooth Whitening | Riverside Dental Practice
Please note the title tags have a limit of around 70 characters and remember to avoid keyword stuffing!
Relevant Content
In case you haven’t heard, sites like EzineArticles, Buzzle and Associated Content got absolutely hammered by the recent Panda update. But why? Those sites have been around for years, and have a ton of quality content. Unfortunately, much of their content is also low-quality. When explaining the Panda update, Google said it was important for high-quality sites to be rewarded. By punishing the titans of article directories, Google sent a powerful message about quality.
But it’s not enough to just publish quality content. Your content also needs to be relevant to the overall theme of your site. Google places a tremendous amount of value on relevancy. So do everything you can to make sure your pages are as relevant as possible and accurately reflect your site’s actual content.
Website Authority
Authority sites are considered authoritative for a reason. It’s because people trust their content. That’s why authority sites rank so highly in Google’s SERP’s.
So what exactly is an authority site?
Definitions vary, but my own personal definition of an authority site is “a site that is linked to and respected by thousands of people who often reference its material.”
Authority sites have quality content and consistently show keyword to content relevancy. If you write articles, instead of submitting them to article directories which have diminishing link value, instead, submit them to top authority sites like Problogger, SiteProNews, WebProNews, PromotionWorld, Copyblogger, SearchEngineJournal and others. And while it might be considerably more difficult to get your articles accepted and published by those sites, the fact that Google places such high value on links from authority sites makes it worth the effort.
Social Networking Matters
While only Google knows for sure how much of an impact social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others actually have on search results, the fact that it’s providing real-time social sharing is an indication that Google takes participation in social networking sites seriously. And if Google takes social networking seriously, then, common sense suggests, social networking participation will help your SEO efforts
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