Source; https://www.todhost.com/blog/7-seo-tips-that-will-help-your-website-rankings-yet-are-not-often-talked-about.html

Every website owner is concerned about top ranking in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This task is a huge one and require careful approach to avoid a penalty from the search engines and also to achieve high performance in the Search Engine Result Pages. The most popular among the search engines is Google and muh of our points made in this post are based on experience with Google, though not exclusive.

Avoid Frequent Changes to Website Title

Way back in 2011, it was possible to make frequent changes to the website title, adding more keywords and gaining positions in SERPs eventually. Today, it is no longer so. You need to be careful with website titles in 2017, making sure you have crafted the best possible title rich in keywords and descriptive of your business. You can read more on how to craft your website title as recommended by Google guidelines in this post covering op-page website optimization.

Website titles play a key role in boosting page ranks. While the role of keywords has recently been downplayed, some experiences we have had with websites we manage point to the fact that Google still uses keywords, especially when present in page title, to understand a website content and ranking placement.

Focus on Less Competitive Niches and Keywords

If your business is targeted at large groups with competitive keywords, a country for instance, you could face real competition with others offering similar services or products providers within the country. You can create pages within your website which focuses on smaller niches, that could give you good ranking placements for those searches. Since organic searches and clicks have been linked to affecting search engine ranking, you could make marginal gains from those clicks and your website could get an overall benefit from those clicks.

For instance, if you provide professional accounting services nationwide, this will be a huge task optimizing for nationwide searches. You could focus on Port Harcourt, Lagos, Abuja, Owerri and Enugu. If you can gain top ranking for these major cities, it will be rewarding and earn you a lot of clicks which will also help ranking for your website even for the nationwide search.

You will have to take keyword research very seriously. In other words, find low competition keywords that your website has a chance of ranking for. Cumulatively, these will help your website gain popularity and usability. Your popularity will be rewarded by Google with greater ranking especially if your bounce rate is low, suggesting that your content addresses the needs of your users. Finding the best keywords for your website is the foundation of a strong SEO strategy. Without a solid keyword strategy as a strong base, everything you do to optimize for search will be unstable.

Use Short, Readable URLs

Most content management systems like Joomla and WordPress have an option for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) within their admin area. You will simply need to enable this option to shorten your URL. In most cases, this option will require that you also enable Apache Mode Re-write and rename your htaccess.txt file to .htaccess

You may follow some guidelines for your specific Content Management System to fully optimize your website with short and clean URL structure.

Avoid Frequent Changes to Website Title Tags

We have tested this changes to the website title and found that it has some profound effect on rankings. Google has noted the importance of site title as a search ranking signal but making frequent changes to get the most out of it could hurt ranking. We found consistently that too many changes to site title led to a major demotion in at least five cases. We could not draw a definite conclusion given the changes to Google algorithm which took place during the period. One site was demoted from top 10 to position 53 and has taken 5 years before it started regaining ranking to 27 for a specific keyword. The title changes were made in at least 20 times. Changes occurred at least once in 2 weeks.

While changing title could be helpful, it should not be done so frequently so that you can see how best each title is performing. Initially, making the changes helped Google to re-assess the website and adding more relevant and specific keywords into the title boosted the rankings. After a period of about eight months, rankings started dropping and continued to drop as changes were made to the title.

Be Patient

This point is supported by the explanation given under frequent title changes above. Be patient to observe how your changes and settings impact on your site ranking in Search Engines. Do not be in a hurry to see the impact of your changes. Just continue to do the normal website updates and observe how your site performs overtime.

Take Website Auditing Seriously

Before you make SEO changes to your site, be guided by at least a basic SEO auditing. These can be done with Semrush, iwebchk.com, seositecheckup.com pingdom.com and woorank.com These are some of the basic tools that will guide you to make changes but they in no ay judged to be the best or exhaustive.

Never Fail to Maintain Regular Updates

Updates are like food to the search engines. If you provide this food regularly, the search engines will always visit your site to see if food is available. So, apart from having a sitemap which actually tells the search engines how often you update, the search engines will always visit once your website dishes out quality food for them.

Also read: Enhance your search engine performance in simple steps

The other consideration should be how often to update. It is a good idea to fix a specific period or day Most webmasters update thrice a week and that is usually Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We prefer those less busy days and go for Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

Also read: How to Submit Your Website to Top Search Engines for Free

Do Not Ignore a Sitemap

It is recommended by Google that you have a functional sitemap for your site. Make sure your sitemap is submitted to Google and always check for any reported errors so you can take appropriate action. Most Content Mnagement Systems have plugins that can help you generate a sitemap - both xml and html sitemaps. You can also use sitemap.org to generate your sitemap. upload to your website and submit to Google and other search engines.Every website owner is concerned about top ranking in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This task is a huge one and require careful approach to avoid a penalty from the search engines and also to achieve high performance in the Search Engine Result Pages. The most popular among the search engines is Google and muh of our points made in this post are based on experience with Google, though not exclusive.

Avoid Frequent Changes to Website Title

Way back in 2011, it was possible to make frequent changes to the website title, adding more keywords and gaining positions in SERPs eventually. Today, it is no longer so. You need to be careful with website titles in 2017, making sure you have crafted the best possible title rich in keywords and descriptive of your business. You can read more on how to craft your website title as recommended by Google guidelines in this post covering op-page website optimization.

Website titles play a key role in boosting page ranks. While the role of keywords has recently been downplayed, some experiences we have had with websites we manage point to the fact that Google still uses keywords, especially when present in page title, to understand a website content and ranking placement.

Focus on Less Competitive Niches and Keywords

If your business is targeted at large groups with competitive keywords, a country for instance, you could face real competition with others offering similar services or products providers within the country. You can create pages within your website which focuses on smaller niches, that could give you good ranking placements for those searches. Since organic searches and clicks have been linked to affecting search engine ranking, you could make marginal gains from those clicks and your website could get an overall benefit from those clicks.

For instance, if you provide professional accounting services nationwide, this will be a huge task optimizing for nationwide searches. You could focus on Port Harcourt, Lagos, Abuja, Owerri and Enugu. If you can gain top ranking for these major cities, it will be rewarding and earn you a lot of clicks which will also help ranking for your website even for the nationwide search.

You will have to take keyword research very seriously. In other words, find low competition keywords that your website has a chance of ranking for. Cumulatively, these will help your website gain popularity and usability. Your popularity will be rewarded by Google with greater ranking especially if your bounce rate is low, suggesting that your content addresses the needs of your users. Finding the best keywords for your website is the foundation of a strong SEO strategy. Without a solid keyword strategy as a strong base, everything you do to optimize for search will be unstable.

Use Short, Readable URLs

Most content management systems like Joomla and WordPress have an option for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) within their admin area. You will simply need to enable this option to shorten your URL. In most cases, this option will require that you also enable Apache Mode Re-write and rename your htaccess.txt file to .htaccess

You may follow some guidelines for your specific Content Management System to fully optimize your website with short and clean URL structure.

Avoid Frequent Changes to Website Title Tags

We have tested this changes to the website title and found that it has some profound effect on rankings. Google has noted the importance of site title as a search ranking signal but making frequent changes to get the most out of it could hurt ranking. We found consistently that too many changes to site title led to a major demotion in at least five cases. We could not draw a definite conclusion given the changes to Google algorithm which took place during the period. One site was demoted from top 10 to position 53 and has taken 5 years before it started regaining ranking to 27 for a specific keyword. The title changes were made in at least 20 times. Changes occurred at least once in 2 weeks.

While changing title could be helpful, it should not be done so frequently so that you can see how best each title is performing. Initially, making the changes helped Google to re-assess the website and adding more relevant and specific keywords into the title boosted the rankings. After a period of about eight months, rankings started dropping and continued to drop as changes were made to the title.

Be Patient

This point is supported by the explanation given under frequent title changes above. Be patient to observe how your changes and settings impact on your site ranking in Search Engines. Do not be in a hurry to see the impact of your changes. Just continue to do the normal website updates and observe how your site performs overtime.

Take Website Auditing Seriously

Before you make SEO changes to your site, be guided by at least a basic SEO auditing. These can be done with Semrush, iwebchk.com, seositecheckup.com pingdom.com and woorank.com These are some of the basic tools that will guide you to make changes but they in no ay judged to be the best or exhaustive.

Never Fail to Maintain Regular Updates

Updates are like food to the search engines. If you provide this food regularly, the search engines will always visit your site to see if food is available. So, apart from having a sitemap which actually tells the search engines how often you update, the search engines will always visit once your website dishes out quality food for them.

The other consideration should be how often to update. It is a good idea to fix a specific period or day Most webmasters update thrice a week and that is usually Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We prefer those less busy days and go for Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

Do Not Ignore a Sitemap

It is recommended by Google that you have a functional sitemap for your site. Make sure your sitemap is submitted to Google and always check for any reported errors so you can take appropriate action. Most Content Mnagement Systems have plugins that can help you generate a sitemap - both xml and html sitemaps. You can also use sitemap.org to generate your sitemap. upload to your website and submit to Google and other search engines.