SEO Tips for 2014: concise list of dos and don’ts

SEO is an ever changing concept! With time, Search Engines updates their search algorithms. These updates often leave existing SEO techniques and tips useless. Search engines don’t want webmasters to exploit loopholes in their algorithms. That’s why with each update, they step up their game! So, what has 2019 got in store for SEO enthusiasts? Will there be more updates? What should bloggers be really concerned about? This concise article will answer all of your questions.

Okay, I know that many bloggers have had suffered huge traffic loss due to the flurry of updates Google made recently. Penguin and Panda updates ruthlessly punished ‘Splogs’ (Spam Blogs). Now, the latest update, Hummingbird focuses more on conversational search. With this update, Google wants only the best stuff to dominate the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). Not only Google, other SEs like Bing, Yahoo etc will also be diverting their attention towards conversational search in 2019!

To stay in the game and get organic traffic, bloggers must follow a set of guidelines. I’m just about to discuss that. I’ve made a slideshow and embedded it here. It’ll let you know how to take SEO head on in 2019. What you should do and what not to do are very clearly mentioned in it.

SEO Tips for 2019 

The raging debate about SEO

When it comes to SEO, webmasters have two opinion. One group say that SEO is dead. According to them, not caring about optimization is the best option! The other group is of the opinion that with the right technique and optimization, a blog post can rank on first page of SERP! They even vouch that using certain techniques, a poor quality post can rank higher than a good quality one!

Okay, let me tell you that I don’t take both these groups seriously! For me, SEO is not dead! And I’m not crazy enough to believe that poor quality stuff can outrank quality posts!

I urge my readers to take only the ‘best of both worlds’. Yes, from both these groups, we can learn certain things. From the first group, we can learn when we should ‘ignore’ optimization! From the second group, we can learn how to go around addressing the basics of Optimization on our blogs.

SEO in 2019: What you really need to be concerned about?

Here I’m putting together a list of things you shouldn’t ignore while optimizing your blog.

1 URL structure

I know almost all of you are doing it right. But still, I must share this tip. It could be of help to newbies! Please make sure that your blog’s url is in this format- www.yoursite.com/your-posts-title.

WordPress users can easily change the url structure by going to their Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks.

2 Word Count

If your blog is not a photography/ image filled blog, I suggest that you keep a word count of above 300 words in your article. Don’t stuff words to meet this limit. Instead of that, write well researched articles.

3 Key Words

Key Words are still of much importance when it comes to SEO! Use them in your blog posts url, title, subheadings and throughout the article. Also, keywords can be used in the alt tags of images. This will take care of image optimization. But remember to do keyword stuffing in moderation.

4 Backlinks

There are some, who say that backlinks are not important anymore! I beg to differ here. Recently, Google updated the PageRank. From the update, I’ve concluded one thing- backlink from an authority, high PR site/blog can work wonders!

Guest blogging is thus the best way for you to get backlinks. Commenting is okay, but do it in moderation. Comment only on blogs related to your niche!

5 Avoid these things-

Don’t indulge in malpractices like buying paid backlinks, spamming, blackhat link exchange etc. It is better to have slow progress than going for quick-fixes (and getting punished by Google).

When to ‘ignore’ SEO?

While writing, keep readers, not search engines in mind. Also, don’t be too concerned about optimization, while forming titles and subheadings.
Don’t change the ‘structure’ of sentences and titles for the sake of optimization.
That’s all readers, these are the basics of SEO you need to care about in 2019. I’ve deliberately left out some things like speeding up blog/site, Social Media signals, responsiveness and device compatibility of the design etc. These factors also influence SERPs, I agree. But the above mentioned ‘basics’ have much more telling impact then the ones I mentioned just now.