SEO stands for search engine optimization and refers to all measures that result in your own website content being made visible to search engines and classified correctly. In the best case, they lead to an increase in the placement for topic-relevant search terms within the Google search. According to Google, there are now more than 200 different ranking factors , all of which are weighted differently.
In this context, the question arises: Which of these SEO measures achieve the greatest effect with comparatively little effort?
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Improve rankings with simple measures
These measures are called ” SEO – Quick Wins ” and they can often be carried out by less experienced website operators. According to the Pareto principle (also called the 80/20 rule), 80% of the results can literally be achieved with 20% of the total effort. Whether this also applies to SEO measures, we want to deal with below – we present you a list of 5 “simple” SEO – Quick Wins for your website!
1.) Make existing content visible
If there is already good content on your website, then this is a good prerequisite for visible rankings within the search engine. However, if this content still does not rank, there can be many reasons. One of them could be that your landing page is simply not indexed.
After crawling your website, Google decides whether a page is indexed or not. The crawler can be controlled by statements in your code. If instructions such as the noindex – or nofollow – attribute are located within the <head> area, this can already lead to one or more target pages of your website being simply ignored by the crawler . Poorly set canonical attributes or unintentional duplicate content can also lead to deindexing .
Therefore, use the Google Search Console to check the indexing status of your website , or alternatively a simple site: query within Google search. More detailed explanations can be found in our respective links.
2.) The optimization of the Google snippet
The “Google Snippet” is your figurehead within the search engine. It always contains the title and description as well as the URL or the link path / breadcrumb to your target page. In addition to these normal search results, you will often find rich snippets . Depending on the type, these can be structured differently and either offer further information or further navigation options for your website or content.
So use keyword research to determine one or two main keywords for each of your important landing pages and incorporate them into your titles and descriptions . The URL should also be worded appropriately. In addition, use structured data so that you give Google the opportunity to also display rich snippets for your target pages – it will be worth it!
3.) Structure the content
If the crawler visits a target page, it will try to classify the content presented on it thematically . To make this classification easier for the crawler, a good content structure is of the utmost importance. This also benefits the general user-friendliness . Make sure that your landing pages are as uniform and clear as possible and divide your content into sensibly selected sections of text with meaningful headings .
In general, headings should always be set in the correct order . If you set an H4 heading, there should already be an H1, H2 and H3 heading on the subpage. The H1 is the most important headline evaluated by the search engine . This should be individual, used only once per page and contain the keyword to be optimized if possible . The second most important heading is the H2. This can be set multiple times. However, it is advisable to use them for important subheadings.
When structuring the content, a simple checklist can be used:
- Text length : As a guideline, a text length of at least 300 words is often used. However, the text should not be too long, otherwise users could jump off. Of course, this also depends on the search intention, so that shorter texts sometimes rank better.
- Sentence Length : The longer the sentence, the harder it is to read.
- Number of passive sentences : The more of these are used, the more negative this also affects readability.
- Text structure : Is the content clearly prepared? Are enough paragraphs, subheadings, emphasis, symbols, breakup images, graphics, bullet points, etc. used?
- Keywords should be sufficient, but meaningful and always grammatically correct. Keyword spam is to be avoided and is rated negatively.
- Have the tonality and style been chosen to suit the target group : Is the number of foreign words / technical terms chosen appropriately? Is the user addressed in a first or first name?
4.) Improve internal linking
An essential measure to optimize a website is to improve the internal linking structure . Internal linking describes all links from sub-pages to other sub-pages of the same website. It is a decisive placement criterion and can therefore influence the assessment of a website in the search engine results. Internal links are used to link and pass on the linking power of individual subpages.
If the goal is to rank a specific sub-page for a selected keyword , it is advisable to use internal links from other target pages to refer to this target page from their content. It should be noted that an appropriate anchor text is selected. (Caution! With external links that refer to your website from other websites, anchor text with the keyword should only be used in exceptional cases. Otherwise it can happen very quickly that such a link is rated as unnatural and therefore negative for your website! )
5.) Optimize images for SEO criteria
Of course, the content of a website not only includes text content, but also images . These, too, can be optimized based on several important SEO criteria for both users and the search engine. With the help of images optimized for the search engine, e.g. B. the following goals can be achieved:
- Visibility increase
- Better placement in the image search of the search engine such as e.g. Google
- indirect positive influence on the number of visitors (improvement of the access rate)
There are a few things to keep in mind when optimizing images . First of all, the file name of an image should always reflect its content briefly and concisely. You should not use any numbers, letter codes or umlauts . If the file name consists of several words, they must be separated with a hyphen . Images should also be provided with alt attributes and title attributes . This makes it easier for the search engine crawler to read your images and strengthens your topic relevance .
In addition to the content aspect of images, their file size and format also play an important role for search engines. Page loading speed of a website is one of the most important ranking factors for a website and can be significantly influenced by the correct use of images. Make sure to provide the images in modern formats and to adjust their size to the size actually used on the website . Make sure that images don’t slow down the display of your website. Both the search engine and the website visitors will thank you.
The bottom line: How much do SEO Quick Wins bring?
At the beginning we assumed the Pareto principle, which states that the majority of a result can be achieved with comparatively little effort . However, whether this statement also applies to search engine optimization must always be differentiated on a case-by-case basis . For example, if a website already has very good content with a lot of added value, the use of these quick wins can already give the necessary “push” to appear with this content in the top 10 results of Google search. However, if a website offers less added value than the competition, in many cases even the quick wins will not lead to success. So if you want to achieve a good long-term placement within the search results, you will in many cases not be able to avoid a holistic optimization of your own website. Especially for keywords with high competition, it is important to consciously optimize content, technology, added value and the display of a page and thus exploit the greatest possible potential for your own content. In this way, you are not only protected from the competition, but also from possible Google updates , which can re-evaluate the weighting of ranking factors at any time.
