5 SEO Tips for 2019
LiveSites has researched Google's latest changes and created this list of 5 SEO (search engine optimization) strategies for you in 2019. Note that "search" is now the number one way to drive traffic to your site. As of the end of 2017, "search" overtook "social media" - which had been on top since 2014 - in terms of driving traffic to websites.
1. SSL
An SSL certificate (https instead of http) tells your website visitors that your site is using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption technology to safeguard data and secure the internet connection.
SEO TIP: Make sure your site has an SSL certificate.
2. KEYWORDS
Keywords are the words and phrases that internet browsers type into search engines.
SEO TIP: Include keywords in your text and put them in the first 100 words of your article.
3. CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
Google aims to help website browsers find relevant, quality content in response to their search. It follows that Google will rank those sites with relevant, quality content ahead of other sites.
SEO TIP: Optimize your website content for the search engines by:
1) Writing practical content that helps your website visitor answer their questions or resolve their issues
2) Providing action lists or steps that your website visitor can take to execute the above practical suggestion(s)
3) Making your website articles at least 1890 words long
4) Including infographics in your website articles
5) Giving short addresses to your website articles (https://www.your-site.com/your-article-topic)
4. PAGE LOAD SPEED
Page load speed is the time it takes to download and display the entire content of a web page in the browser window.
From Google's blog: "You may have heard that here at Google we're obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests."
SEO TIP: Improve your site's page load speed.
5. STRUCTURED DATA
Structured data - the future of search engine marketing - helps search engines truly understand your site content.
Search engines use structured data to generate rich snippets, which are small pieces of information that will then appear in search results.
SEO TIP: Add structured data to your website.