Search engine optimization has significantly changed in recent years much to the amiss of Google’s guidelines. As you move through 2015 and look to grow your dating website’s organic traffic, what will be most important for you to use for on-page SEO? Here’s a list of 9 on-page SEO techniques that you are probably already using but are still important in 2015 and also some newer developments in SEO that you should consider in your online dating’s marketing strategy.
Keyword Marketing Tips for Your Dating Platform
1. Optimize Your Dating Site Page around One Keyword or Topic
The days of keyword “stuffing” are over, but you still need to keep your site pages optimized around one central idea, niche and keyword. Keywords should appear in important on-page elements like the page title, heading, image alt text, and naturally throughout the page copy, but you should still be sure to craft each of these items for humans, not search engines
2. Remember that Keywords Are Important but Not Verbatim
Considering Google announced in 2014 that their paid search services, AdWords, would no longer rely on exact match keywords but also co-varieties of a keyword, it is likely then that the same holds true for organic search, although it has not been announced. Keywords no longer need to be the exact same variation as displayed in your keyword tool. For example, the plural keyword, “inbound marketing tactics”, is equivalent to “inbound marketing tactic” in singular form with AdWords’ new targeting strategy. In addition, even if someone searching misspells, Google will still help them find your website despite the variation of the keyword optimized on your site.
3. Optimize Your Page Titles
A title tag is used by search engines to display a page in search results and can also be found at the top of your browser. Title tags tell search engines and searchers what the page is about. Google will only display between 50-60 characters in the title tag, so keep title tags under 55 characters and try to drive people to click with compelling and relevant copy. You should also put keywords or topics towards the front of the title.
Make Sure Your Dating Site’s Header Tags Are Optimized
4. Utilize Proper Heading Tags
Heading tags should clearly tell the reader and search engines about the page’s topic. A search engine is able to identify the heading when it is tagged by bracketing text in H1 within the page’s HTML. Heading tags help tell a search engine the level of importance of the content by also using H2 and H3 tags. You can check your site’s current heading tags by viewing in HTML view. In addition to what you should do with heading tags, you should also avoid a few things including:
Avoid using generic terms like “Home” or “Products”
Add your brand name
Don’t put important information that would likely be your H1 as an image. If your private label dating site needs header tag attention, contact your Dating Factory account manager for details.
5. Optimize Image Alt Text on Your Dating Template
While you should not hide your heading tag in an image, you should still give search engines more opportunities to link to your website by adding keywords in the image alt text and file name.
6. Grow Natural Links to Your Dating Platform
Google continues to use natural, quality inbound links as a main ranking factor. In 2015, you should closely monitor inbound links to ensure that they are constantly growing and that the inbound links come from quality websites.
7. Increase Site Download Speed
Since 2011, Google has made it apparent that site speed matter in search rankings, and today, with a bigger emphasis on the user experience than ever before, site speed will continue to be a critical ranking factor. Users don’t like to wait, and we are becoming more and more accustomed to the fast load times, which means your site will be left in the dust when a user must wait. There are a few important things you can do to speed up site speed:
Test site speed using Google or a built-in CMS tool such as offered by HubSpot.
Ensure your web server can handle you size of your company and website needs.
Overloaded web servers can slow down load times.
You may also find that one of the following issues is slowing down times:
Embedded videos or media
Using a lot of images
Images that are not compressed to minimize pixels before uploading
Clunky or excessive coding
Using a lot of plugins
Your Online Security for Safer Online Dating
8. HTTP vs. HTTPS: Why Online Security Matters
With a big push to make the web world a more secure place, Google has begun emphasizing the importance of utilizing HTTPS. While many websites have traditionally ran on a Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), a Hyper Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) ensures that a website is encrypted and cannot be hacked. With Google beginning to test the waters in using HTTPS as a ranking factor, it will be important to secure your website with HTTPS in 2015.
9. Mobile Search and Responsive Dating Sites
With nearly 40% of organic traffic coming from mobile devices in 2014 and Google’s responsive algorithm in early 2015, it should come as no surprise that mobile-friendly websites do now rank better with Google. To ensure you are mobile optimized, you should be avoiding common mistakes described by Google including faulty redirects, mobile-only 404s, blocked media, and slow mobile load times.
At the time of this article being written BBC News announces a study in the UK that for the first time (August 2015) more people are using smartphones over laptops and PC. So this makes it even more vital that your site is optimised for mobile – read the article here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33777168
Finally it may feel like Google is trying to make our jobs as inbound marketers more difficult, they ultimately want to provide the best user experience, which should be the goal of your website as well and in the case of white label dating therefore means more members.
Other relevant articles for Online Marketing your White and Private Label Website –
How To Attract New Members To Your White Label Dating Website
Why Blogging Is Essential For Online Dating SEO