The rulebook for search engine optimization (SEO) is constantly changing. To ensure your business remains relevant in organic search engine results, it’s important to stay informed about the do’s and don’ts of SEO as well as the latest requirements of SEO for 2015.
Over the past year, search engine giants like Google have altered their algorithms just enough to significantly impact your search engine ranking. IDF Marketing has developed an infographic of the do’s and don’ts of SEO for 2015 to help your business when following the 2015 SEO strategies.
Accessibility – Do’s
- A search box is a must to help your visitors navigate your website.
- Link other pages internally on your website. These additional links allow search engines to craw and index all of your pages.
- Search-engine friendly breadcrumbs like “previous” and “next” buttons improve the user experience.
- Every website must have a homepage that can be accessed easily.
- Website layout is crucial. During the design process, be sure to develop a clear, hierarchical or “tree-like” layout.
Accessibility – Don’ts
- Do not overload your homepage with links to every page on your website. The abundance of information will reduce load time as well as white space. Pages that receive a load time of 5 seconds or more will receive a bounce-off rate that can negatively impact your SEO ranking.
- Don’t build pages that cannot be accessed through typical user navigation. Pages should link into and out of each other.
- Don’t have drop down menus with too many pages — this hurts the user experience.
Good Schema Markup Practice – Do’s
- Properly name, tag and file all media content including PDFs and images that you upload to your website. Naming images based on their topic can help drive traffic to your website through organic search. This also enables Google to determine the difference between non-text content and if your website is professional.
- URLs of sub pages should use canonicalization. In other words, these URLs should be relevant to the content of that page.
Good Schema Markup Practice – Don’ts
- Don’t force visitors to leave your website. Having an infinite loop of linked pages within your website can prevent users from having to start at the beginning of your website.
- Don’t title and tag content incorrectly. Tags and titles should relate to the content or topic of the media.
- Don’t confuse search engine crawlers with multiple canonical URLs that are linked to the same page.
Content Do’s and Don’ts of SEO for 2015
- Do – Content should be unique and valuable to visitors. Website content should be informative, newsworthy or have comedic viral-video value.
- Don’t plagiarize content. Duplicate content can hurt your search engine ranking.
Good Linking Practice – Do’s
- Editorial links increase when your content is quotable, shareable and easily referenced.
- Backlinks bring attention to important pages throughout your website.
Good Linking Practice – Don’ts
- Don’t purchase links that drive people to your website.
- Don’t use backlinks that drive people to irrelevant websites.
- Don’t hurt your search engine ranking with link networks.
User Experience – Do’s
- Ensure all of your pages load as quickly as possible to minimize bounces.
- Important information should always be placed “above the fold” — in the area seen without having to scroll.
- Design is important. Develop color combinations and layouts to provide the best user experience possible.
User Experience – Don’ts
- Don’t require users to have to scroll beyond “the fold” to find the information they are looking for.
- Don’t bog down your web pages with too much information.
- Don’t sacrifice important content space with advertisements “above the fold.”
Mobile Responsive
- Do – Your website should have the same functionality on a desktop and mobile device. Content should be easily read without zooming.
- Do – Your thumb should be able to click on all links and tabs.
- Don’t have software that is not mobile-friendly across all devices on your page, such as Flash Animation. Flash Animation cannot be crawled by search engines.
Social Media Distribution
- Do – If relevant, your business should have a social media presence. Include links to your profiles on your homepage. Sharing content on social media can also drive traffic to your website.
- Do – Share buttons should be easily seen at the top or bottom of your page.
- Don’t buy robots (bots) to share your content. Bots can be easily detected by search engines and your search engine ranking can suffer.
Localize your Content for Pigeon
- Introduced in 2014, Pigeon is the latest algorithm from Google that awards geographical relevance to searches.
- Panda, an earlier algorithm, targets website content that is very minimal, low quality or has been duplicated from another web page.
- The algorithm, Penguin targets spam and was originally created to penalize websites for having low-quality links.
