Search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the essential things you need to know about if you’re into content marketing, or simply want people to find you online. SEO tactics help create traffic, gain page rank (PR) and domain authority, and make your website searchable. There’s more than a million web pages on the web, it’s quite a challenge for people to actually find your website, no matter how relevant your content, if you don’t apply some of the best SEO practices.Internet giant Google has presented a list of recommended SEO tips you can apply to optimise your website and generate a good amount of traffic. Here are some practical pointers:Content Quality:Remember to always create high-quality and unique content. Google doesn’t like low quality pages—meaning, pages that don’t provide anything of value to the reader. Google don’t usually award good PR to sites with a large number of pages with low value. Without quality content, the less likely your website is going to show up in the Google search engine results pages (SERP).Avoid publishing irrelevant and duplicate content. Instead, create content that Google’s algorithms would find favourable. Text-heavy content is also advised. Make your content interesting and useful to readers too, to encourage them to keep coming back to your website.Be Original:Make sure content on your site is original and not just syndicated from other pages. Plagiarism is easily detected by Google. Plagiarised content are referred to, in SEO terms, as duplicate content, which causes problems for your website.Duplicate content can affect your PR and traffic, and cause indexing issues. Google drops web pages with duplicate content in favour of the ones where the original content came from. Always make sure that you create unique content. Google likes it if it’s error-free and grammatically correct. Adding a nice photo also won’t hurt.Include Relevant Links:If there are relevant links in your website, the more chances your pages will be indexed in major search engines. Google checks the authenticity of content, plus the relevance of the links on-site, with its crawlers. It also uses algorithms for determining PR and it doesn’t have an indexing cap. If you manage to generate incoming links from sites with high PR leading to your website, then it’s also a good way to get your website indexed properly.Create Engaging Page Titles:Creating something out of the ordinary is kind of fun for your readers, plus, it can catch the attention of your audience. One way to do this is by making an effort to craft your page titles so that when your site shows up in the SERPs, people would actually want to click the pages. A smart title helps you stand out from sites with a similar theme or content. Engaging titles can also increase readability. Don’t forget to be accurate in describing the content of your pages which you can apply in your meta-descriptions. The meta-description, essentially, is the snippet under the page title that people see when your site appears in the SERPs.Be Careful In Tweaking Your Site Architecture:On-page issues can cause problems to your website’s optimisation. You shouldn’t just odo off-site SEO optimisation, you also need to mind the on-site issues on your page. Check the usability of your page and see to it that your readers will have no problem navigating through your pages. You don’t have to use JavaScript links for your website navigation. In some cases, using this technique becomes effective.Use Social Media To Attract Buzz:The Google video about Webmaster Help says, “to rank well, provide an awesome product or service, then attract buzz: natural links, +1s, likes, follows, shares…”. Social media is one of the most effective ways to create traffic to your site. If people like what they read on your blog or website, they are more likely to share your content on their Facebook pages and other social media networks. Find out what types of content has good potential for going viral. Creating viral-worthy content may provide increased traffic and page ranking to your website.Get Notified By Google:Sign up for email forwarding in Webmaster Tools to get notified by Google if there are some issues related to your website. Google suggests using Webmaster Tool Message, which gives you access to information about the sites you’ve verified or changes to site-wide settings.There are many other ways you can optimise your website for search engines and there are plenty of resources online that describe them in greater detail, such as this one. SEO is not just about keywords. The quality of your content, usability and functionality of your website, and the way you leverage the power of social media can do a lot to make your website known to a bigger audience.#ath{background:#f8f8f8;margin:0 0 40px 0;padding:10px;border:3px outset #e8e8e8;-moz-border-radius:10px;border-radius:10px;overflow:hidden;font-size:14px;}.pro{background:#FFF;float:left;margin:0 10px 0 0;padding:4px;border:2px inset #e8e8e8;}.social{float:right;}About the Author:This article is contributed by Israel Defeo from CompareHero, the leading comparison site which aids its visitors find the best broadband connection. You can know more about Israel when you visit his accounts.Find Me On GooglePlus | Facebook | Twitter
