1. Optimise Your Site Page Around One Keyword or Topic Only

“stuffing” keywords

Its no longer appropriate to be “stuffing” keywords, however, you must still keep your website optimized around one central topic and keyword.

Important onpage elements

Its important that your keywords appear within important on-page elements such as the title, heading, image alt text and natural throughout the page content.

Use of human readers

Please keep in mind that you should be inserting keywords for the use of human readers, not just the search engines.

2. Don’t forget that Keywords are important, but do not need to be exact

Google Adwords

In 2014, Google made an announcement that their paid search services, AdWords, would no longer depend on exact match keywords but also co-varieties of a keyword, it is predicted that the same holds true for organic search even though it has not been officially confirmed. Keywords no longer need to be the exact same as displayed in your chosen keyword tool.

New strategy

For example, the plural keyword, “Outdoor Equipments”, is the same as, “Outdoor Equipment” in singular form with AdWords new strategy. Additionally, Google are aware that searchers will often misspell keywords and will now still help them to find your website despite the variation of the keyword that is optimized on your website.

3. Ensure Your URL Structure Is Short And Descriptive

Your sites URL is one of the first elements the search engine will inspect to determine your page rank, which is why it is incredibly important that you make your URLs easy to find. This can be done by keeping your URLs short and relevant to your topic and keyword, and ensuring that it helps you to categorize your site pages.

4. Optimise Your Page Titles

Search engines use a title tag to display a page in search results and can also be found at the top of your browser. The title tags let the search engines and searchers know what your page is all about. Google will only allow for 50-60 characters in the title tag, therefore you should ensure you stick to these requirements if you want to compel users to your page. Another great tip for title tags is that you should put keywords towards the front of the title.

5. Create Clear Heading Tags

Its important that your heading tags tell the reader and search engines about the page’s topic. Search engines are able to detect the heading when it is tagged using the following brackets < H1 > within the HTML code. The heading tags also help let the search engine know how important your content is by using the < H2 > and < H3 > tags. If you would like to check your websites current heading tags then simply view it in the HTML format.

Moreover, when it comes to heading tags, you should avoid using generic terms such as “Home” or “Services” and never put information that most likely appear in your < H1 > as an image.

6. Optimize Image Alt Text

Although you must not hide your heading tag within a picture, you should still provide search engines with more ways to link to your website by adding keywords in the image alt text and the file name.

7. Expand on Quality Links

Many search engines such as Google, use natural, quality inbound links as a huge ranking factor. In 2015, it's important that you monitor your inbound links closely to ensure they are expanding and that they are coming from high quality and well trusted websites.

8. Speed up your site

Ever since 2011, Google announced that site speed is a contributing factor to search rankings, and as today there is even further emphasis on user experience than ever before, site speed will continue to be an important contributing factor. Google knows that users want a faster browsing experience and that they are used to this experience within today's advanced internet technology. You improve your website's speed by doing the following:

  • Run a test site speed with Google
  • Check whether your web server can handle the amount of traffic to your website. Servers that are overloaded can slow down load times or even shut down.
  • Be careful not to include too many videos or media
  • Minimize the use of images of a larger scale or compress them
  • Do not use clunky coding or use too many plugins
If you think any of the above are causing your website to load slowly, you can let the experts here at Purplefruit clean up your site or minimize the use of each.

9. The difference between HTTP and HTTPS

Google are now pushing for even tighter security across the web by utilising HTTPS. Many websites have been running on a Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), a Hyper Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) ensures that a website can not be hacked due to its encryption. Because Google are now using this as a ranking factor, it's important that you ensure your website is running with HTTPS.

10. Become Mobile Friendly

Google dropped a bomb recently stating that, as of April 21st 2015, the search engine will be extending the use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal throughout all mobile search results.

To be sure that your site is still appearing in Google's mobile search engine results after April 21st, give your website a test run with the mobile-friendly testing tool. If yours passes through, you shouldn’t have any issues worth worrying about.

For more information on the mobile friendly update please click here to read our “Google To Use Mobile Usability As A Ranking Factor In Mobile SEO” blog post.