SEO (search engine optimisation) refers to what you can do to boost your site rankings in search results such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. SEO is a hot topic for writers, bloggers, businesses and web designers. It can make all the difference between being found in search engine results and being buried amongst a sea of competition.
In the first of our two-part series, we offer five fascinating facts about SEO that you definitely need to know…
1. Persuasive Meta Descriptions Increase Clicks
The meta description is the brief snippet of text that appears beneath a link in search engines. A persuasive, well-written meta description under 155 characters long has the power to increase click through rates. Create tempting meta descriptions that are short and sweet, otherwise they will be cut off with ellipses after 155 characters.
2. Post-Slugs Improve Results
A post slug is the portion at the end of your page’s URL. Some people post articles on websites with little care for the post slug, allowing the URL to be tailed by an incoherent stream of letters or numbers (e.g. www.chocolate.com/908886444236). A more accurate post slug might be www.chocolate.com/making-cupcakes. Keep your post slug clear, simple and short, so that Google and your readers know exactly what the page is about.
3. The Top 5 Search Engine Results get 75% of Clicks
To beat the competition it is better to focus on a handful of important, popular keywords, rather than spreading yourself thin. Be the best in your keyword choices to gain those important clicks.
4. Keyword Stuffing Reduces Results
There are countless ways to inorganically boost your search engine results, but the impact will only be temporary. Keyword stuffing, link farms and other keyword fads are the perfect way to reduce your SEO results and get you penalised by Google.
5. High-Quality Content Creation Remains the Key to Success
Your text needs to be tailored towards your readers first, and then search engines. A page that is too SEO-focused will be boring, so you need to focus on creating high-quality content that is well researched and tailored to your industry. Google detects high-quality content creation, and rewards you accordingly.
Stay tuned for part 2 of our Fascinating Facts about SEO series…
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