Our thanks to Joe Ryan, founder and CEO of Digital Search Group, for this contribution!
After almost a decade of working in the search engine optimization industry I’ve seen numerous occurrences where a website left money on the table by missing the low hanging fruit of SEO opportunities.
Large or small, missing these easy-to-implement SEO opportunities can cost an author untold revenue, all because of a little tweak here or there that would make an author website appear more actively in search results.
Here is but a small handful of the lowest of low hanging fruit –changes you could easily implement on a Monday afternoon.
- Page Titles
Badly written page titles, or those which are duplicated throughout a website are the first offenders on our list. Whether you are simply not giving pages a title at all or you’re overloading them with keywords –you’re doing it wrong.
As an author, you have about 50 to 60 characters in that title tag to paint a picture; use that space wisely. Instead of just “XYZ Company” and/or a welcome message (that’s so 1997), you should be using your book name and genre.
- Meta Descriptions
Yes, you need to include keywords in the meta description. However, you do not need to stuff your meta description like a Thanksgiving turkey. The meta description is for human eyes, and thus, it really should provide a compelling reason for a website visitor to click on your website in search results. Keyword stuffing won’t work here and the Internet’s own boogeyman (Google) doesn’t like it either.
And even worse, if you do not take a moment to write a decent meta description at all, Google will. No really, they’ll scrape a couple sentences from your website and bazinga, new meta description. That is terrible.
Digitalsearchgroup.com.au provides a great example of effective meta descriptions. Authors may also use the WordPress plugin Yoast SEO, which is specifically designed to make it easy for you to optimize your content in WordPress.
- Site Links
Generated automatically by Google, site links are the links below your search engine meta description. And those bots at Google have a wicked imagination. It’s good to keep an eye on your site links in search results, as a poorly titled page might wind up being a site link, which could cost you. This is just another reason why page titles should be as functional as they are fashionable, and tell the story of what they’re for in only a few characters.
- Video Embedding
It’s important to know what content is ranking on your website, but so often businesses will create a page with a lot of different content and then use a javascript pop-over to reveal a video.
Here’s my problem with this one; if you’re going to spend time creating or sharing a pre-existing video on the web, make it count. Give it a page; javascript popovers are sexy, but terrible for letting Google know what content is in them –making it invisible in search results.
- XML Sitemap
The sooner your content ranks in search, the better, right? That’s the whole point when you’re writing the majority of your content, right? You want the world to see it. Well, with an XML sitemap this ranking takes under 10 seconds. Yes, ten seconds.
If you’re working with a custom website this might be a little difficult to implement, which is why I love WordPress. Try the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress for quick results and near instant Google gratification.
In Closing
At the end of the day, business goals aligned with your marketing strategies work. And SEO is a large part of that strategy. There are many more “low hanging fruit” opportunities out there for SEO that we didn’t cover just yet, so stay tuned.
Anything to Add?
In the meantime, perhaps there is a quick and easy SEO opportunity you would like to add to this short list? If so, please let us know with your comments below!
Joe Ryan is the founder and CEO of Digital Search Group, an online marketing agency that specializes in smart Internet marketing. He is a specialist in online marketing strategy and brand building. When he’s not considering the next best online marketing strategy with his team, he enjoys travel and spending time with his family. Connect with the author via: Email |Twitter | Google+ | LinkedIn
Digital Search Group is a leading SEO company in the UK and Australia that provides quality tailored SEO solutions to help businesses enhance their online visibility and increase brand awareness.