12 Most Essential SEO Factors Bloggers Don’t Know

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If you think link building, writing content, and keywords are all you need to know about SEO, then wake up. While these factors are extremely important there is much more to search engine optimization.

Today, I want you to consider how you can tweak your website or blog using these off page SEO factors:

1. Speed

You are probably most familiar with this one. When Google launched its page speed service they announced the importance of sites that load quickly. According to an article in the New York Times, Google Engineers have figured out that if a website loads in more than 400 milliseconds (the blink of an eye) then searchers will leave. Use Yslow, Pingdom Tools, and CDN to keep your website loading quickly.

2. Mobile

I think the message of mobile gets lost when we talk about responsive design. While responsive design is a very cool way to meet mobile needs, it is not the only one. All websites need to have a pared down version of their site that loads quickly on mobile devices. There are many ways to do this.

3. Coding

The structure of your website matters a lot. Downloading a theme from the internet is like a jack in the box. Use themes created by trusted resources or pay a competent designer to do the work.

4. Safety

I bet you didn’t know that safety matters. Have you ever seen the warning in Google that says that a website is infected? That big red warning is scary. Getting hit with one of these will prevent people from finding you in search. Be aware of the vulnerabilities of your platform and safe guard against them.

5. Image optimization

You can save a lot of load time if you learn how to control the size of your images. WP Smush.it is the most common plugin that will reduce the size of your images when uploaded to a WordPress website. You can also run images through any of the various tools online.

6. CSS sprites

You already use sprites, but you just don’t know it. Video games use sprite sheets (one huge graphic that contains all the images for the game) and it works the same for a blog. You cannot sprite everything, but compressing some background images into a sprite sheet can make your website load much faster. Sprite me makes the process painless.

7. Web host

Yep, your web host matters for more than just customer service or price. Most bloggers, especially those starting out, use shared hosting. This keeps down costs, but this means you have neighbors on the network that share the same IP. If someone in your neighborhood gets hacked and flagged in search then your website could too.

8. Code bloat

Themes can come fully loaded with CSS and JavaScript. The trouble is that a ton of scripts have to load when people come to your website. The fancier the theme, the more likely you will have some code bloat, that is, features you are not using. The best thing to do is to remove whatever you do not need to run your website.

9. Code optimization

Just like images, code can be optimized. This means stripping comments, spaces, and other unnecessary things that were added during the design phase. The more minimal your code the faster it will run.

10. Plugins

That sweet add-on might make you happy, but it could be causing a massive slowdown. Plugins conflict amongst themselves and with your theme’s code. On WordPress, you can use the P3 plugin to analyze what is slowing down your blog. It is good to aim for 30 or less plugins.

11. Using CSS3

One thing I have learned is that images are becoming passe for text effects. There is so much that can be accomplished using CSS instead. It provides text that search engines can read and can make your website load faster.

12. Footer

There is no reason why you have to know this, but the best practice for calling code is to put it in the footer of your page. Look at your code by viewing page source. At the top of the page you should see that your theme loads your CSS and JavaScript in the header. Designers should put JavaScript in the footer of your website which is better for speed. You an often move it there yourself by just cutting and pasting.

This is why I believe bloggers need to learn some code. Code Academy just started lessons on Python, a language similar to the one used as the basis for WordPress. I have signed up for the course and have started to understand what all those crazy things in the WordPress Codex are. Plus, how can you go wrong learning a language named for Monty Python?

What off page SEO factor did you find most surprising?

Featured image courtesy of GollyGforce licensed via Creative Commons.

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Susan Silver

http://www.cirquedumot.com

Susan is a copywriter who crafts content strategies that rank. She is also the community manager for Gygax Magazine. She shares information on business, social media, and writing.