Search engine optimization is a vital component of any marketing strategy.

Whether you’re a small business owner advertising your services locally, or part of a marketing department at a larger firm–it’s hard to deny the necessity of search engine visibility.

Search engine results are a major driver of consumer choice. About 85% of internet users find local businesses on the web.

In other words, if you’re not appearing in search results, potential customers may not even know you exist. But, how do you ensure your website is appearing in relevant search results?

Keep reading for a quick look at 6 SEO expert tips.

1. Speed Is Critical

Website speed is a major factor in SEO.

If visitors are greeted with an endlessly spinning circle, or images that never seem to materialize, your search performance may be suffering.

Not only is site speed a part of Google’s ranking factors, it also makes for a poor user experience. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load fully, visitors are not likely to hang around.

2. Create Content for Humans–Not Robots

A few years ago, SEO depended more heavily on keyword density than quality of content.

Fortunately for online readers, that’s no longer the case.

Rather than writing content focused around a set of keywords–worrying about density and frequency–work on creating useful, engaging content. Readers will love you and search engines will reward you in the long run.

3. Get Quality Links to Your Website

Inbound links are still a major factor in search performance.

While there are a lot of shady ways to try and game the system to get links, the best way is to simply create great content that others want to link to.

This isn’t easy–it takes time and effort–but is key to building quality, long-term SEO.

4. Link to Quality Content, Too

Adding links to external content is another SEO expert tip to keep in mind.

It might sound counterintuitive to link to someone else’s website, but by citing experts or liking to source material, you lend credibility to your own content in the process.

Quality is key here. A few high quality, authoritative links are much more valuable than a bunch of less helpful links.

5. Write Killer Meta Descriptions

Well written meta descriptions are another critical SEO ingredient.

After all, the meta description is the first thing potential visitors see in Google after the title of your page.

Your meta descriptions should quickly convey the content of your page as well as any keywords you’re trying to rank for.

6. Consistency Is Key for Any SEO Expert

An often overlooked, but important, factor in SEO is ensuring your content is recent and fresh.

A site with frequent blog updates and activity will perform better than one that hasn’t seen an update in months. Recent updates are an indicator for Google and others that your site is active and the content is still relevant to new visitors.

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