Even if there are things about online that aren’t necessarily negative, you may not prefer that you have much of an online presence at all. 

You could simply want to make it a bit harder for people to find you online, especially if you’re in the midst of a big life change, like looking for a new job. 

Why Bother?

You might be thinking, “Why should I care about my online presence?” Well, there are a few good reasons:

1. Privacy: The less info out there, the more control you have over who knows what about you.
2. Job hunting: Potential employers often look you up online. You want to make sure what they see puts your best foot forward.
3. Fresh start: Maybe you’re entering a new phase of life and want a clean slate.
4. Peace of mind: It just feels good knowing you’re in control of your personal information.

The following are seven things to know and tips that can help you erase your online presence, or at least limit it, and have more control over what’s out there about you. 

1. Find Yourself

Before you can know what you should clean up or get rid of, you need to know what’s out there. It’s tough to know where you exist on the internet. 

Start with a general brainstorm session of all the accounts you’ve created over the past decade. Think about your social media accounts, online banking, shopping accounts, forums like Reddit, and anything else you can come up with. 

Then, you can start searching for yourself. 

Along with using a people search tool, you can also use major search engines. Google is the more obvious one, but don’t forget to search for your name on Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yahoo.

You can use the Wayback Machine to see if there are any archive pages that no longer exist. If you find your information in an archive, you can contact the owner and ask them to remove your information. 

2. Start With Social Media

Social media is widely used, but these sites also hold the most personal data about everyone who uses them. What’s good about social media is that it can be the easiest to get rid of. 

If you have photos or posts on social media accounts you want to keep, you can screenshot them before your delete your accounts. 

Also, remember that deleting and deactivating social media accounts are two different things. When you want to take a break from being online, you might just deactivate your social media profiles. If you want to completely wipe yourself off the internet, you need to delete the accounts. 

If you aren’t ready to delete your social media accounts, you can, at a minimum, try to make them all private and update your privacy settings to the highest levels. 

3. Delete Online Shopping Accounts

Having online shopping accounts is convenient. You can log in, and all of your personal information is probably saved for you, so you can check out with a single click. Even so, if you truly want to eliminate your online presence, you’ll need to delete these accounts. 

Retailers can make it a bit more challenging to delete and deactivate your accounts than social media sites, and you may need to contact customer service directly. 

4. Remove Forum Posts and Comments

One of the things that most often tends to get people in trouble online is their comments. These comments might be on other people’s social media profiles, they could be on public pages, or they could be forum posts on sites like Reddit. 

There’s not a standard way to have comments and posts removed, so you may end up having to get in touch with the site owner or manager and request they delete your content. This can be time-consuming, and it can also be tough to remember everywhere that you’ve commented and posted. 

5. Get Rid of Outdated Search Results

After you delete your social media and other accounts, the information can still show up in search results. Even if you’ve fully removed your presence, someone might be able to search your name and see the same results. 

That’s because search engines will keep a cache of a website. That’s what the search engine is usually going to show in results. The cache should clear within a few weeks, but if not, you may need a tool to have the cached website removed. 

Google, as an example, has a page with instructions to remove outdated content. You might not always be able to delete cashed web addresses from search results, though. 

6. Delete Email Addresses

You might want to delete the old email accounts that are associated with online accounts. Only do this if you’re able to set up an entirely fresh email account. You may not need to delete your email addresses. If you can’t delete the one you primarily use, you might disable addresses you don’t use anymore. 

7. Weigh the Pros and Cons of Online Removal Sites

If you’re trying to take your presence off the internet and as you’re removing site data, you’re probably going to come across plenty of sites that say they can do it for you. These services, for a fee, will search online for your information, and they’ll scrub what they can. 

This can save you a lot of time because the DIY approach is labor-intensive. 

These sites may also have better search functions and be able to uncover the information you can’t. 

The downside of these online removal sites is the cost and trust. You also have to provide deletion sites with personal information first. They work by looking for what you provide and requesting it be removed from other sites. If you’re giving your information to a third party to remove it from the internet, you want to be sure they’re not going to turn around and sell or store the information themselves. 

Wrapping It Up

Phew! That was a lot, right? Cleaning up your online presence is definitely a big job, but it can be really rewarding. Here are some final thoughts:

1. Take it step by step. You don’t have to do everything in one day.
2. Be thorough, but also realistic. It’s nearly impossible to erase every trace of yourself online.
3. Going forward, be mindful of what you share online. Prevention is easier than cleanup!

Remember, the goal isn’t to disappear completely (unless that’s what you want!). It’s about taking control of your online identity and feeling good about what’s out there about you.

So, are you ready to take charge of your digital footprint? It might take some effort, but future you will thank present you for looking out for your online self. Good luck, and happy cleaning!

To succeed in online marketing, you need to focus on many different components of digital marketing, including “Technical SEO.” This term can be confusing for people who are not familiar with it. Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website’s infrastructure and architecture through the use of code and other technical methods so that search engines can understand and rank it properly. Several aspects of technical SEO make your website technically sound so that it appears as high as possible on search engine results pages (SERPs).

In this guide, we will go over the most important aspects of technical SEO that you should be aware of. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s take an in-depth plunge!

Elements of Technical SEO Audit

Correct Your Site Structure

Correcting your website’s structure is one of the most important technical SEO tasks you can undertake. By ensuring that your website is properly set up, you’ll make it easier for both users and search engine crawlers to navigate and index your content.

To do this, you must ensure your website is compliant with Google’s best practices and that you are using the correct techniques to improve your site’s crawlability and indexability.

Enlist the Site with Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster

Without registering your site with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster, you’re flying blind when it comes to optimizing your website for search engines.

These free tools allow you to submit your website for indexing, track your website’s search engine ranking, and identify any potential issues with your site that could impact its visibility online.

When you’re ready to launch your website, be sure to submit its XML sitemap so that both Google Search Console and Webmaster can crawl the new site. Once these services have crawled and indexed your site, they will start displaying results from yours in search engine rankings.

Create an XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap is like a map that helps search engines understand your website while crawling it. You can think of it as telling the search engines where each page on your site lies – so they don’t get lost.

A sitemap is an XML file that contains a list of all the URLs for a website. It also contains additional information about each URL, such as when it was last updated, how important it is and how often search engines should crawl it.

Set Up SSL (Secure Socket Layer)

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is a security protocol used to establish a secure connection between your server and your visitor’s browser, making it difficult for anyone to intercept the traffic and steal your information. This makes SSL an essential tool for protecting user data, especially when transmitting sensitive information.

For example, when you enter your credit card information on a website, that information is encrypted using SSL so that it can’t be stolen by anyone else. Look for the lock icon to the left of the search engine and the “S” at the end of “HTTPS.” i.e., this shows that the site has an SSL certificate.

When it comes to installing an SSL certificate, most hosting providers now offer this as a standard feature, so you don’t have to worry about doing anything extra.

Make Sure Your Site is Mobile-friendly

A responsive website design responds to the environment it is being viewed. Whether that means scaling down to fit on a mobile screen or changing the layout depending on the user’s preference, a responsive website will always look great. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of potential visitors.

Plus, Google penalizes websites that aren’t responsive, so it’s in your best interest to make the switch. If you’re not sure if your website is responsive, hire a digital marketing agency specializing in designing sites that work well across all formats.

Speed Up Your Site

Page speed is considered one of the most important ranking factors by search engines. In this day and age, a website’s loading speed is a key factor in its success. Users are impatient and will leave a webpage that takes too long to load. Here are a few things you can do to increase your website’s speed:

1. Improve server response times using a fast hosting and DNS (Domain Name System) provider.
2. Remove unnecessary scripts and styles from your pages.
3. Minify your code – it will remove any unnecessary bits of code and make the website run faster.
4. Minimise HTTP requests – keep the number of files that need to be loaded to a minimum.
5. Use a caching plugin – it will save a copy of your pages and posts, so they don’t have to be re-created each time someone visits your site.
6. Compress your images – you can use an online tool and plugin for this task.

Implement Structured Data Markup

Structured data markup is a code that you can add to your website to provide search engines with additional information about the content on your pages. This code tells Google what type of information your page contains and can help improve your site’s search engine rankings and visibility.

It can enhance your website search results even more by adding ‘rich snippets. Rich snippets provide searchers with more information about a particular result, such as its photos, star ratings, price and availability, and more.

In the above example of SERPs, you can see Google search creates carousels of similar types of items from different sites with ‘star ratings’ and other information.

The inclusion of rich snippets can mean the difference between someone clicking on your link and someone clicking on a competitor’s.

Enable AMP

AMP (accelerated mobile pages) is an open-source HTML framework that enables web pages to load faster on mobile devices. AMP makes use of advanced caching and compression techniques, as well as a restricted set of HTML tags and attributes. As a result, AMP-enabled pages load up to 85% faster than traditional mobile web pages.

AMP pages are stripped-down versions of regular web pages – designed to load quickly and smoothly on mobile devices. According to a study by Statista, 90% of the global internet population uses a mobile device to go online (source). Enabling AMP on your website can help you reach a wider audience, including users who may have slow connections or low-end devices.

Solve Duplicate Content Issues

Duplicate content can be a major issue for your website, causing you to lose rank in search engine results pages and harming your credibility. It happens when there is more than one version of a web page found on the internet. Often, this can be caused by URL variations, session IDs, or printer-friendly versions of pages.

To avoid duplicate content issues on your website:

1. It would be best if you first made sure that session IDs are disabled in CMS where they’re not vital and remove any printer-friendly versions of your content.
2. Use the canonical link element to tell search engines which version of the page is the original and which should be considered a copy. It will help to ensure that your website’s search rankings stay consistent and high.

Fix Broken Links

Broken links can not only cause problems for users trying to navigate your site but can also hurt your search engine rankings.

For Google and other search engines to trust your site, all links must be functioning properly. To fix the broken links problem, you first need to address them and then redirect them to the original pages. This process can be complicated but thankfully, there are several plugins available to help you find and fix broken links quickly and easily.

So, there you have it. Technical SEO is just one type of SEO that you should be doing for your website, in accordance with other SEO activities as well. If you’re wondering what the other types of SEO are, click here for more information. 

While technical SEO might seem daunting, it’s important to remember that you don’t have to do it all at once. Start with the basics and then move on to more advanced techniques as your site and knowledge grows. By taking a holistic and detail-oriented approach to your website’s optimization, you can improve your site’s visibility and performance in SERPs.

The above steps will help you ensure that your website is technically sound and optimized for search engines. Implementing these changes may take some time and effort, but they’ll be worth it in the end when you see your website traffic and conversions increase. We hope this article has helped you understand what technical SEO’s ingredients are so that you can get started on improving your site. Have questions or need help getting started? Leave us a comment below!

One of the most important things you should care about is a mobile-friendly or mobile-first website. Google, the most popular search engine, should be the target of every owner, and it emphasizes mobile-first designs.

Ranking on Google is one of the most effective ways to get high yet relevant traffic. Google bots can crawl your content and web design, so be very careful while designing and creating content. Other than that, Google says that your website should be user-friendly. About 47.7 percent of users are mobile. However, desktop still has the higher numbers with 48.4 percent, but these stats will change in the near future.

So, once you have created a mobile-first website, follow the below tips to increase your website traffic.

Create Attractive Website Content

We all know that content is the most important aspect of a website. Without attractive content, traffic cannot be increased.

The content on your website should be specified in the niche. It is important to identify and analyze your website’s niche. Make sure that all the content revolves around the same niche. It will also create a sense of clarity amongst the users and the search engines. More importantly, great content can ultimately have better chances of referrals having more traffic. Use visuals and text so your website looks attractive and engaging.

Use Longtail Trendy Keywords

Keywords play the most important role when you are looking to get more traffic on your web pages. The following points will help you with your keyword strategy.

• Always use niche-specific keywords. Ensure your web page is targeted with a keyword related to your industry.
• Target every single page with one or a maximum of two keywords.
• Use LSI or relevant keywords in the content as well.
• Your target keyword should have a density of 1-2 percent.
• Insert relevant keywords 2 to 4 times in your content depending upon the web page length.
• A good web page is 1200+ words long.
• You can use tools like SEMRush or Google Keyword Planner to find trendy keywords with high search volume and low competition.
• Utilize long-tail keywords. About 70 percent of searches consist of 4 or more keywords.

• Focus on adding WH questions in your content as they appear in voice searches. Voice searches are on the rise and are the future of searches.

Start Blogging On Your Website

Having blogs on your website is very important. They play a great role in attracting a lot of traffic. Blogs posts of How-To nature or listings can attract a lot of users. Again, your blog posts should be relevant to your website’s niche.

Make attractive headlines and add images and visuals to attract more users to your website. Add share buttons at the end and provide your users to interact with you in a comment section.

Ask others to Write On Your Site

Create a ‘Write for Us’ section on your website. It will attract writers to your website. Share details about our website on this page and tell them which type of posts you are looking for. Describe your requirements and keep a good check on all the requests you receive from guest writers.

Guest writers will definitely share their written content on their social media platforms. This will bring new traffic to your website.

Go For Guest Blogging

Similarly, you should search for guest posting opportunities. It is basically an SEO link building technique. Write for other websites related to your industry. It will provide you with a chance to attract their readers. Contact them using their email and pitch them some article ideas with a bit introduction about the topic.

You can provide them with three to four ideas, giving them a chance to choose a topic or you. Provide them with your article and add your website’s link in the author bio section. Almost all the websites allow a link in the bio section. It will allow people to click on your link and redirect to your website.

Utilize Social Media

Social media is the biggest platform on the internet where you can connect with different people and share your message.

All you need is to keep your social media accounts updated. Post regularly and insert a link to your website in the content, just like the one below.

You can also conduct live sessions explaining your website in between the engaging sessions. Promote your upcoming events on social media and ask users to buy or create a ticket from your website. This will divert your social media followers to your website.

Similarly, you can post your blogs on LinkedIn and Medium to attract more traffic to your website.

Make Videos On YouTube

After Google, YouTube is the most popular search engine. And it can give us a clear idea of how much people like videos. So, you should not miss a chance.

Create videos related to your website’s niche. You can simply make behind the scene videos, tutorials and can also conduct live Q/A sessions.

In the description of your videos, share a link to your website and divert the traffic.

Answer Queries On Quora

Quora is another platform from which you can redirect traffic to your own website. People often post numerous questions on Quora, answer them, and add a link to your website with relevant keywords.

Avoid spamming on Quora, as it can create a negative impact on your website amongst the users.

Be Careful About On-Page SEO

You should take supreme care of on-page SEO to rank on the search engines.

Make sure that you have created internal links to your web pages. All your pages should be internally linked with each other via relevant keywords.

Use proper meta titles and meta descriptions for your pages to increase your chances of being shown on Google more effectively.

According to Crowd Writer, Use the focused keyword in the meta title and meta description so that your message is clear and Google can relate it to user’s search intent. 

Advertise Through PPC

Pay-per-click (PPC) is one of the best ways to get high traffic on your website. However, it requires some investment. It is basically a process where you pay Google so that it shows your content on top of the search results based on your targeted keywords.

Use geo-targeting and geotagging to get the most accurate traffic to your website. Also, you can utilize negative keywords so that your pages are not shown on such keywords

Conclusion

There are many more ways to get high traffic on your website. Conducting interviews and posting them to your website. Email marketing and leveraging influencers can also be an option.

You need to focus on the above-mentioned strategies if you want to increase online traffic on your website.

Ideas Courtesy By:

Melissa Calvert is a devoted Lifestyle Counselor at Dissertation Assistance. She also helps students who ask to write my assignments. Melissa is fond of reading and keeps herself updated with tech and marketing news.