5 SEO Tricks For Daily Use
On-page optimization, link building, page speed — these topics are interesting and vital for any SEO strategy. But in addition to the big topics, small SEO tricks are also of great interest. Therefore, here is a collection of 5 small SEO tricks with great effect.
1. Use HTML entities
When optimizing snippets, the main goal is to stand out from the competition on the search results page.
One way is to use so-called HTML entities. These are special characters that do not represent letters, numbers or punctuation marks, but are nevertheless output by Google in the snippets. These are simply integrated into the description.
2. Provide PDF/image files with rel=canonical
Many know the problem — with a lot of effort a free whitepaper, an infographic or an eBook was created, which generated a lot of links. Now the created PDF or image is ranking, for which actually another landing page was intended. If you now remove the PDF from the Google index via Search Console, for example, the links to the PDF would be worthless.
The solution: in the .htaccess file of the website add
<files “filename.pdf”> header add link “<http://www.example.com/page/> rel=\”canonical\””</files>
is inserted. This inserts a canonical link in the http header, which tells Google: the page linked via rel=canonical is the original (canonical) page and only this should rank. The link power goes from the PDF/image to the correct landing page.
Beware that the page that is to rank must link to the PDF/image and preferably still contain excerpts from the text of the PDF or the image. Otherwise, Google may quickly put you in the black hat drawer.
3. Have pages indexed immediately
Often you want to get a page into the index as quickly as possible. For example, if you have published an article on a highly topical subject. To ensure this, there is a well-hidden function in the Google Search Console. Under the menu item Crawling->Recall as by Google, a page can be displayed as the Googlebot sees it. This is the fastest way to index a page. However, it should be noted that the function can only be used 10x a month.
4. Long Meta Description
Google usually displays only 140 to 165 characters from the meta description. However, it often happens that a page not only targets a keyword, but also synonyms or other spellings of the word. Here it would be useful if a more relevant description could be given for these variations.
There is a solution for this as well. Simply create a description that is twice as long, with two different keywords. It is important that there is a period after the first description to separate the two descriptions. It is also important that both descriptions are about 140 characters long. Both descriptions are written in the same tag.
5. Problems with page performance and page load speed
The topic of page load speed or performance of your website is becoming increasingly important for Google. Page performance or page load speed is a ranking signal.
First check your page with the PageSpeed Insight Tool from Google. In a second step, you might want to optimize your images. You can find the hint for large images under the tab “Recommendations”.
