How to Make Websites SEO Compliant as Quickly as Possible
The Glorious Company Team
With all the ranking factors Google uses in its algorithm, it’s a matter of great urgency for content marketers to become as SEO compliant as possible. Throw in the mix Google’s constant algorithm updates that reward or punish websites based on their adherence to Google’s guidelines, and you have more reason than ever to stay on Google’s good side.
Bringing your website’s content and web design in line with what Google expects from websites it ranks highly is paramount since you want to increase the conversion rate of your clients’ websites. If you’re already practicing white hat SEO, then good on you: You’re already ahead of the game. If you’ve been using some shady SEO tactics, such as black hat SEO, it’s time to reform if you want your website or blog to ever rank highly and start making money.
In this blog post, we’ll take a comprehensive look at what it means to be SEO compliant.
What Is SEO Compliance?
Simply put, SEO compliance refers to creating content on your website, designing your website, and optimizing your website, so that it follows the recommendations of Google, the biggest search engine in the world. Complying with these guidelines will give you an instant advantage over websites that ignore these best practices for getting the best performance and rankings out of the search engine results pages (SERPs).
It only makes a world of sense. Google is a monopoly on organic search. Therefore, it sets the rules for what it deems to be the best user experience that websites can offer their site visitors. Follow these rules, and you’ll get rewarded with higher rankings. Violate these rules, and your website will likely:
Lose organic traffic
Not get indexed for numerous webpages
Suffer penalties like being demoted in search results
Have a very hard time making money online
How to Become SEO Compliant as Fast as Possible
The crux is that SEO compliance is ultra-important when you want to get webpages indexed and websites ranked, as well as increase organic traffic and monetize your blog. What follows is an authoritative list of actionable tasks you have to prioritize for SEO compliance, broken down by on- and off-page optimization.
On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization is everything you can do on your website itself to optimize it for organic search and get it into SEO compliance with Google’s guidelines.
Make Your Website Fast
One of the absolute, most critical recommendations for SEO compliance, making your website fast is a huge ranking factor in Google’s eyes. It’s in your best bet as a digital marketer, freelancer, or business to make this your first priority. There’s a misconception that a fast website is the realm of web design, but it’s equally, if not more so, applicable to good SEO standards.
Test your site speed using PageSpeed Insights. Your Core Web Vitals should pass the test for a satisfactory user experience (UX). If they don’t, see if you can eliminate unnecessary JavaScript and reduce the size of your images. Note that WordPress websites are easier to make fast than Squarespace websites.
Create Quality Content
Creating high-quality, unique, and informative content is also essential for boosting your website's SEO compliance, not to mention attracting organic traffic and leads. Search engines value credible links, so be sure to include helpful and relevant links within your content, both internally and externally. Avoid duplicative content and focus on creating original and engaging pieces that stand out from the competition. Lengthier, more comprehensive content tends to perform better in search rankings, so consider writing long-form content, including a table of contents for easy navigation.
You can also increase the quality of your content by adding original research, FAQs, interviews, data, charts, tables, graphs—anything that provides more gripping information than your competitors do.
Write Excellent Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are the short, 150- to 160-character descriptions you see right underneath the SEO or title tags in organic search results. These brief descriptions act as advertisements enticing searchers to click through to your website.
Write an excellent meta description by making it persuasive, providing pithy information about what users can expect on your webpage when they click through, and truncating it so it doesn’t get cut off on mobile devices.
Write for How People Read on the Web
Folks read differently on the internet than they do in print. The online attention span is very short, which is why you have to structure your content to make it more conducive for them to pick out the important information quickly. This includes:
Chunking copy by making sentences and paragraphs shorter (up to six sentences per paragraph only)
Breaking up paragraphs with proper headings, subheadings, and images
Using simpler, more conversational language instead of jargon
Incorporating bullet points where appropriate
Using the active voice in copywriting
This way, even long pieces of content are easier to read.
Also note that people generally read in the F-shaped reading pattern, so place your most critical content toward the left side of the screen or at the beginning of sentences and paragraphs higher up in your pages.
Optimize Your Title Tags
The title tag, sometimes called the SEO title, is the HTML code that lets you title your pages. The title tag will be seen on your page itself, in browser title bars, and in organic search results for your pages.
It’s highly important that you optimize title tags with the primary keyword that you want to target for your specific page, whether that’s the homepage, landing page, blog post, or service page. Doing so makes your website SEO compliant from the standpoint of helping users and Google quickly understand what a certain page topic is about.
Improve Your URL Structure
Your URL structure is a small but integral part of getting into compliance with Google’s standards. Ideally, your URL structure needs to have the main keyword for which you’re optimizing your page. Also, it’s a best practice not to include short words like the articles “a” or “the” in the URL. The URL needs to reflect what your page is about in succinct terms.
Another factor to look out for is how many forward slashes appear in your URL. It’s best to have no more than two to keep URLs clear and precise.
Optimize for Keywords You Want to Rank for
Each page needs to have a primary keyword that you’re targeting, so that Google’s bots can crawl your page, understand what it’s about, index it, and begin ranking it for that specific main keyword. Make sure that the content of each page naturally reflects the primary keyword you’re optimizing the page for. In other words, the content of the page should make sense with the text that supports your main keyword.
Also, don’t keyword-stuff, where you insert your keyword excessively to game Google’s algorithms. Instead, use your primary keyword at most just a few or several times, with longer content justifying the use of more keywords.
Organize Your Header Tags Properly
Information hierarchy is vital for search engines’ crawlers to understand your pages’ content, as well as for your human readers to quickly absorb the information you’re presenting to them. Header tags refer to the HTML code that differentiates the headings or H1 from the rest of the subheadings, those H2 to H6 tags.
To be SEO compliant on your website, ensure that you use your keywords in the heading (H1) and any applicable subheadings (H2-H6). Also, make sure that you use the hierarchy of header tags in their chronological order, without skipping anything. For instance, if you use H1 and then go to H3 straightaway for your subheadings, that’s not good for SEO. Instead, use H1, then H2, then H3, and so on.
Off-Page Optimization
Off-page optimization refers to the use of tactics done outside of your website to increase your website’s rankings in the SERPs. It’s equally important to on-page optimization and ensures that your site obeys the best practices of SEO compliance outlined by Google—just beyond your website.
Earn High-Quality Do Follow Backlinks
Not all backlinks are created the same. Depending on the website that points back to a page on your website, it can help or hurt your climb to the top of the SERPs for your specific keyword phrases. That’s why you want to get high-quality do follow backlinks.
Use a tool like Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR) analyzer to check the authority of a particular website. A good rule of thumb is to get backlinks for websites that have a DR of at least 50.
Another actionable tip: Get do follow backlinks, which pass on the ranking authority or link juice to your website.
Disavow Spammy Backlinks
Another strategy to bring your website into being SEO compliant is to disavow backlinks that come from spammy websites. You want to use this technique only if:
Your website is on the receiving end of many spammy, low-quality, and fake backlinks.
Backlinks have actually caused a manual action (or have the potential to) on your website.
Note that this technique is an advanced option, so you should only use it as a last resort. If you use it improperly, it can actually have the opposite effect and harm your website’s rankings in the SERPs.
Write Guest Posts for Reputable Websites and Blogs
This is related to the above points: When you write guest posts for reputable websites or blogs, you tend to get backlinks from sites that have a high DR, and you avoid getting spammy, low-quality backlinks.
How do you find these websites and blogs?
Perform Google searches to find websites in your niche that have high organic traffic, whose backlink profiles are reputable (which you can check in tools like Semrush), and who accept guest posts. They’re out there, and all it takes is some research.
Increase Social Media Traffic to Your Website
Organic and paid traffic aren’t the only places on the web where you can generate traffic that goes back to your website. Social media traffic is another powerful source of rich traffic that can bring you more customers, business opportunities, and promotional partnerships, among other benefits.
Increase this rich social traffic to your website by creating profiles for your brand on well-known social platforms like X or Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook. Then, curate each of your social profiles with daily content, sharing videos, images, insights, tips, giveaways, and any other item of value to your audience. The more people who follow and engage with your brand on social media, the more who will then click on your links back to your website, giving you more sources of traffic.
Increase Branded Mentions Online
Another surefire way of becoming SEO compliant is with this off-page technique: Increase your brand mentions online. There are numerous ways of doing this. We already covered guest posting above, but other strategies include prompting your customers to leave you online reviews on your Google Business Profile, Yelp, and other similar websites.
It’s equally effective if you start working with online influencers. Influencers are rampant on social media. If you can partner with one that aligns with your brand values, they can greatly increase mentions of your brand while creating and curating their social content.
Tools to Help You Become SEO Compliant
Bringing your site into compliance with what Google wants is made easier when you have access to tools that give you data to see what needs to be improved.
Keyword research and SEO tools like Semrush, Mangools and Ahrefs allow you to see which keywords your pages should rank for. This also helps you figure out what keywords are ideal to use in your title tags, meta descriptions, and URL. These tools also give you a backlink analysis, so you can see how good or bad links to your site are.
Analytics tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 give you reporting insights, so you can see which pages rank for what keywords on Google and the performance of all your pages.
Tools like Pagespeed Insights help you measure the speed of your site, so you can optimize it further. You can reduce image sizes on your site, which will make it faster, by using indispensable tools like TinyPNG.
Actions That Violate SEO Compliance
Under no circumstances should you violate Google’s guidelines for getting your website ranked higher in the SERPs. If you do, you’ll find it difficult to drive organic traffic to your site and monetize it successfully. Here are some examples of actions that you should only do if you want to sabotage your chances of growing your website.
First off, there’s keyword stuffing. This is when you insert keywords excessively into your pages just to try to gain an advantage in the rankings. The opposite will happen: Google will penalize you for this practice because it doesn’t consider it user-friendly.
Another practice that’s disallowed is buying backlinks to your site. You may think this is a quick hack to get link juice pointed at your blog, but this is another practice frowned upon by Google.
Finally, don’t create false pages. These are pages created solely for the purpose of pointing back to the same website, but don’t give the user any real value.
Adhere to Search Engine Guidelines to Stay SEO Compliant
Search engines like Google don’t ask for much. They simply want you to follow their rules for content and web design, so you can have a fighting chance to climb up the SERP rankings for your industry keywords and phrases. Failure to follow their best practices means guaranteeing that your website ends up in obscurity via lower search rankings.
SEO compliance covers both on- and off-page optimizations. While there are many factors to check off for compliance, they’re all doable, so there’s really no excuse not to adhere to the guidelines. If you’re aiming to run a website with growing traffic, conversions, and sales, then you’ll prioritize these SEO best practices to stay on the good side of Google.
If you’re interested in partnering with a high-ROI content marketing agency to grow your business and revenue, then reach out to us now. Contact The Glorious Company today for a no-obligation consultation and estimate.
Have any questions? Keep the conversation going by leaving a comment below.
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