SEO Tips and Tricks for Google Ranking 2020

Power Your Google Search Performance in 2020 with the DMDB SEO Cheatsheet

Want to improve your site’s Google search results in 2020? These SEO tips and guidelines can help increase your organic search results. This a quick, abridged version, really more of an SEO Cheat Sheet, for a fast overview.

These SEO Tips build upon the premise that your website has original, quality content for users, which is probably the #1 best thing that you can do to improve your Google organic search results. Also, these tips for search engine optimization are almost entirely on-page tips.

1. Content and Context Rule the Rules

Content and context are your top priorities. Quality content should be the #1 priority, and that content should in the context of the topic for which you are trying to rank. Developing your content with your context/tropic in mind, as well as SEO strategy and SEO tips. Be sure to make original content, make the content valuable to readers, and make sure that your content will satisfy the context of the search/keywords for which you want to be included in the organic results.

2. Include Target Keywords in Page Title Tag

It’s just that simple. If a page is targeted at certain keywords, or topics, then include those keywords in the Title Tag. Your title tag should be less than 55 characters.

3. Use targeted keywords in first 100 words of an article

Google gives you extra credit for keywords when you use them early on a page. Just don’t keyword-stuff (use them too many times) or you could be penalized instead of improving.

SEO Tip #4: Wrap the page title in an H1 tag

Your page title is a great clue to a search bot on the topic of the page. Make it stand out in an H1 header.

5. Wrap a subheading in an H2 tag

Same premise as #3. The H2 header is like a continuation of your H1 title.

6. Include Targeted Keywords in content 5-10 times

5-10 times per page, and this should depend on the page length. Google seems to like pages in the range of 1,500 – 2,000 words. The longer your post, the more times you should use the Targeted Keywords. Speaking of which, this was your #6 SEO Tip and Trick for 2020.

7. Use LSI keywords throughout your page & tags

Don’t be afraid of this one. LSI keywords are Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords, otherwise known to normal people as Words Related to Other Words. Football LSIKs might include: quarterback, touchdown, tackle, 50-yard TD pass, etc.

Use words and phrases related to your page and keywords, and use them in content, the title tag, H# tags, image alt text, description tags, etc.

8. Link out to authoritative websites

While inbound links to your site from authoritative web sites certainly boost your SEO, outbound links from your web site to other sites, especially authoritative sites, will help your SEO.

9. Make page URLs brief & include keywords

Do not make your page URLs really long, stuffed with lots and lots of keywords. Keep your URLs relatively brief, but include keywords where you can.

SEO Tip #10: Optimize Title tag, use long-tails

11. Optimize Description tag

Use a Keyword rich description tag, with your targeted keywords 1-2 times in some relevant context in the entire description tag. Your meta description should be less than 160 characters. Including a call to action (CTA) won’t help your Google scoring, but it could help your Click Thru Rate, since it will be seen in the search results.

12. Put keyword rich text above the fold

Images look great above the fold, but keyword rich text, including LSIs, will help your SEO more. It’s ok, to have an image, but be sure to include text also. See SEO Tip #2.

13. Use content sections and H2/H3 headers

A structured page performs better for SEO, and we already know that Google likes Header tags, so use H2 & H3 tags for your content section titles. Only use the H1 header on your page title.

14. Boost your page speed

Make sure your website is fast and page loads are fast. Google will reward or penalize you for your page speed. First, make sure your hosting provider is performing well enough. Don’t make them the reason Google is penalizing you.

Assuming your hosting is ok: Don’t make your pages too long. Don’t include too many images, widgets, scripts, etc that will slow down the load. Where possible, strip down remove things that you really don’t need on the page.

15. Optimize images for size/load time

This is an easy fix. Don’t be afraid to use images, but optimize them. Don’t just load raw stock photos into your size, they’re probably big files. Resize them. Crop them. Re-compress them to the needed size and correct resolution needed.

Be sure to take advantage of the image filename and al-text tag – two more opportunities to include keywords.

16. Competitive comparison

Why is some other site performing better than your’s in Google organic search results? While that answer may include hundreds of factors, it could be their SEO vs. your SEO.

Examine their page or web site in a browser (view code) and search for their tags and headers, to see what they are doing. How are they using keywords and LSIs?

Alternately, there are tools out in the marketplace that will automatically do this analysis for you. SEMRush is one example.

17. Optimize for Voice SEO

Apparently Google is pushing up the ranks the importance of Voice Search, as it becomes more and more popular. Word on the street is that Google Voice Search likes to reference website FAQs. So maybe do that.

Bonus SEO Tip #18

Extend the renewal period of your domain name. With Google’s recent attraction to brands in their algorithm, they apparently believe that brands will have domain names that were registered long ago, and that are registered far into the future. While you cannot change when you registered a domain, you can extend your renewal period well into the future. Domains that are newly registered for just a single year will apparently not perform as well in Google’s scoring.

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