SEO is always changing. It’s hard to keep up with the new rules and strategies for boosting your search engine ranking. In 2018, optimizing your website for Google and other search engines is no longer optional. With so much competition online, you need to have a website that can appear highly in search engines. While there are a lot of resources available online claiming to know what’s best for your SEO, how do you know what information is best? Cut through the noise with these 4 most important SEO factors for your website in 2018.
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1. Is your website optimized for mobile?
One of the biggest factors of SEO today is mobile optimization. We’re all accessing the internet on different devices. Some might prefer desktops while others swear by tablets, but there’s no denying we now live in a mobile world. Users want to access your website on any screen size, and those that fail to work on smaller screens won’t stand a chance in this new age of smartphones.
Most modern themes and website designs of today are already optimized for mobile. You can test your mobile performance here to ensure you can easily navigate your website regardless of screen size. While mobile optimization might not directly impact your SEO ranking, it does affect other key metrics like bounce rate.
2. Do you have high-quality content?
The days of keyword loading are in the past. Now, content is king. It’s all about creating high-quality, informative content that your users can easily interact with. Content marketing is taking off, and it’s changing the way users interact with websites online. It’s better to take your time to develop valuable content people will actually want to read than to just focus on publishing as much new content as possible! High-quality content is about informing, not selling, and it’s easy to share across social media.
3. How fast does your website load?
Load times can really impact your SEO ranking. People like to move fast in this modern world. That means nobody is going to sit to wait for your website to fully load. You can test your page load speed using a free tool with suggestions for increasing your response time. Websites with faster load times are shown to perform better in search results! Not to mention you’ll make your users happier!
How long will users wait for your website? Research shows this number to be anywhere between 3 – 10 seconds. You can cut down on your load time by keeping your website design simple and by limiting large visuals that take a while to load.
Web hosting is a crucial factor in website load time. Mangomatter knows the hosting industry quite well, they can help you find reliable web hosting.
4. How many websites link to yours?
Link building remains to be one of the most influential parts of any SEO strategy. Of course, getting high-quality links to your website isn’t an easy task. It can be time consuming, not to mention pricey! While you should take the time to develop a comprehensive link building strategy, don’t let it take away all the time you spend on everything else. You might need the help of a well-known agency with link building expertise. For more link building information, learn more at Lead to Conversion.
Optimizing your website for search engines is a must in 2018.
With so much competition, it’s easy to get discouraged about your SEO strategy. As long as you focus on the right metrics, you’ll see improvements. Strong SEO takes time to develop, and it’s normal to not see results overnight. Most importantly, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to SEO. The best strategy is to try different things until you find that magic fit that works for your industry!
