The 7 Easiest SEO Techniques – Minimal Effort Required

Many Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques require a significant amount of planning, strategy, and prior knowledge of how SEO works. Building quality content, keyword research, and reputation building are by far the most effective methods of SEO, but that requires a ton of effort. This post won’t cover any of that. In this post, you will find 7 techniques that don’t require much work at all and are guaranteed to give a little boost to your SEO.

1) Put Your Address and Contact Information on Every Page

This is exactly what it sounds like. Put your address, phone number, and email address on every single page of your website.

Generally, the easiest way to do this is to put it in the header or footer of your website. This doesn’t just apply to local businesses either. Even if you’re an online-only business, having your contact information on every page will help. Google interprets address and contact information on every page as more user friendly and therefore attributes value in search engine rankings to it.

2) Claim ownership of your Google and Bing Local Listings

Unlike #1, you actually need a physical location to take advantage of this one. If you’ve ever searched for a local business such as a restaurant, you’ve seen local listings. See “restaurants in old town alexandria”. While Google likes to change how local listings appear on a seemingly search-by-search basis, they’re all managed the same way. Connecting your website to local listings in both Google and Bing will help your search rankings in either search engine. To find your local listing, search for your company as explicitly as possible to guarantee your listing comes up if it exists (eg “ironistic.com 1199 n fairfax st alexandria va”). If a local listing comes up, there will most likely be a link at the bottom of the listing that says “Is this your business?” or “Claim Listing”. If not, see the links below. You will either need to be able to receive a call at your business phone number or receive mail at your mailing address to verify that you are who your say you are.

Claim or create a local listing with Google

Claim or create a local listing with Bing

3) Install an SSL Certificate

Using a security certificate used to be optional. The best practice was to use one any time sensitive information was being stored in or transmitted through a website. Sensitive information includes credit card data, employment info, SSNs, medical data, etc. Google decided that it is time to change the status quo. On August 6, 2014, Google announced that “security is a top priority for Google” and “we’re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal.”

Don’t know if you site has SSL or not?

If your website URL says HTTPS at the beginning when you open it in a browser, congratulations! You already have an SSL certificate. If it says HTTP, it’s time to invest in an SSL certificate.

Installing an SSL certificate isn’t very difficult. Whoever is hosting your website should be able to do it for you. If you’re using one of the big registrars like GoDaddy or Network Solutions to host your site, they offer SSL certificates at low prices and will provide support when installing them. If you are using an awesome website hosting company like Ironistic, all you need to say is “We want an SSL certificate,” and you’ll have one installed within a day or two. SSL certificates are also not very expensive. You can purchase quality SSL certificates for $50 or less per year from nearly any provider.

4A) Create an XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap is a file that search engines look for as they crawl sites, so they know what to crawl, how often to crawl it, and how important you think it is. An XML sitemap is simply a specially formatted file that you can create and upload to the root of your site (e.g. http://ift.tt/1vtkWxH). There are 3 key elements to an XML sitemap:

1) The page and file URLs – You should include every page and file on your site that you want to show up in search results.

2) Priority – You can assign priority to every page and document on your site. Typically the homepage is 1.0, top landing pages are around 0.9, and lesser pages, documents, etc. can go anywhere from 0.01 to 0.89.

3) Update frequency – This is often ignored by search engines, but it suggests to them how often your content will be updated so they come back and crawl it again in a timely manner.

If you have a WordPress site, we like to use XML Sitemap & Google News Feeds. If you have any other CMS, try using a tool to generate it like Audit My PC or a paid service such as xml-sitemaps.com.

The 7 Easiest SEO Techniques – Minimal Effort Required