Answers to Common SEO Questions

Meta tags are important because they can impact how your website appears in the SERPs and the click-through-rate to your website. They help search engines understand the content that’s on your website. The title tag is one of the most important meta tags and it’s important they’re written correctly because a poorly written one can negatively affect the click-through-rate, rankings and Google may even re-write poorly written title tags.

140-160 characters. If it’s longer than it may appear cutoff in the SERPs.

When a webpage isn’t live anymore, a 301 redirect is used to allow the now-dead URL to go to a different URL instead of simply returning a 404 error.

The best answer is that it depends on the content. There is no magic number for how long a piece of content should be because a variety of factors go into that decision such as searcher intent. For example, a piece of content on a site about World War 2 that explains details of the Battle of Midway, I would expect that to be a much more substantial piece of content than a blog about tips on the best way to brush your dog. The searcher looking to research The Battle Of Midway likely is intending to do a lot more reading than someone just doing a quick search for tips on brushing their dog. Martin Splitt from Google even stated that content length isn’t used by Google to determine rankings in the SERPs. What’s more important is that the content is relevant to your website, and that the length is appropriate for the niche you're curating content for.

The single biggest enhancement you could make to your website is to add high-quality content. Lots of content. Content that is extremely well written, has no filler and answers questions your customers are likely to have. The content should be written for people, not search engines. If you keep adding content, Google will notice, more pages will rank, people will start linking to you, and you will see a steady increase in organic traffic to your website. Bottom line, never stop adding new content.

Most experts agree that keyword density isn’t super important to ranking your website in Google. Natural, relevant content is much more important than how many times a keyword appears in a single piece of content. However, keyword stuffing (the act of overusing a keyword in the hopes to get higher rankings) will get Google’s attention but probably not the way you want. Keyword stuffing can negatively impact your position in the SERPs. John Mueller from Google had this to say about keyword density -- "Keyword density, in general, is something I wouldn’t focus on. Make sure your content is written in a natural way."

Absolutely! Nearly 60 percent or more of all online searches are done on a mobile device. Websites well-optimized for mobile users almost always outrank those that are not.

The most accurate way to see if your pages have been indexed is to manually check with a site search on Google. In the Google search bar enter this search operator – site:mydomain.com

Indexed pages from your domain will appear as search engine results. You can also use the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console.

Googlebot is the name given to Google’s web page crawler. When it crawls your website, it helps Google make quick determinations about how to rank your site for your target keywords if it ranks them at all. Technically there are two crawlers given this name, one that crawls the desktop version of your site and one that specializes in crawling the mobile version of your site. This is yet another reason it’s important not to neglect your mobile presence.

Yes, a sitemap can have many benefits. It can speed up the work of search engine crawlers, be used as a planning and organization tool, improve search engine visibility and enable page links in a natural way to drive visitors.

Secondary keywords elaborate on the primary keywords and cater to more specific searches. For example, if a business is trying to promote and sell coffee grinders their primary keyword would be “coffee grinder(s)”. The secondary keywords would then be used to help users find specific products they sell such as:

-espresso coffee grinder
-coffee grinder for drip makers
-manual coffee grinders
-[BRAND] grinders
-[COLOR] grinders