Let’s start with the basics: SEO is vital for your business. Why? Because users trust search engines and ranking well on them will drive organic traffic to your website, which will help you get quality leads that you can convert into future customers or clients.
Sounds easy right? What isn’t easy, however, is ranking on search engines well enough to make a difference. Google is still the number one search engine, with around 75% of searchers starting their searches on it. Compare that with the fact that only the top 5 results on Google capture 67% of all the clicks. On the other hand, those ranking from 6 to ten capture only 3.73%.
If you want organic traffic on your website and build authority, you have to target the highest search engine rankings and perform equally well. But how can you improve your search ranking?
Source: databox
It is true that Google algorithms are far from fathomable. But there are some strategies and tricks that can help you rank high in the search engines in 2020. Before we dive into that, let’s check out some dos and don’ts of SEO:
Dos
Post relevant content
Add properly labelled images
Insert valuable links and references
Do a spelling and grammar check
Keep the page titles relevant and unique
Don’ts
Don’t use plagiarised content
Don’t stuff keywords unnecessarily
Don’t redirect the audiences to other sites or links
Don’t add irrelevant backlinks.
Now, let us discuss the fine art of search engine optimization in depth.
Five tips to amp-up your SEO game:
Focus on quality, not quantity
As always, content is our top priority and so should be yours. We already mentioned posting relevant content is essential, but there’s still more to work on. Published content is as good as its quality. If you are posting multiple long blogs that are monotonous and full of grammatical errors, hoping they will work, you are wrong.
The trick here is to make it as engaging as possible. Add valuable stats and images to make your case. Did you know Google ranks videos in their search engines too? If you are posting an exciting product video or a helpful tutorial, it will help you just as much.
This certainly does not reduce the importance of written content. You still need to produce high-quality blogs that meet your audience’s needs and resolve their queries. But they will undoubtedly improve your chances.
Optimize page load speed
Source: hostingmanua
Pages that load within 5 seconds see 70% longer average sessions compared to those that take longer. In fact, 79% of web shoppers won’t return to a website that has performance issues.
Indeed, we live in a fast-paced world, and no one has the time to wait. But it might come as a surprise that search engines notice the loading speed. Yes, they do. The logic is simple; if you can not provide good user experience, you will receive no promotions on the search rankings.
But before you try to fix the problem, make sure you get to the bottom of the problem. Slowing of loading speed can be tied to several reasons. It can be your page host; your page may have too many images or perform poorly on a particular browser.
The first step is to evaluate all the possibilities before troubleshooting.
Optimize for mobile
We have already discussed what slow loading speed does to a website’s performance on search rankings. Another factor that matters is how your website performs on mobile devices. There are several factors that one needs to consider.
- Speed: optimize your page for AMP. AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. It is a coding standard that enables a website to load faster. It is a feature by google that makes complicated desktop sites more compatible for mobile devices.
- Web design: we recommend a responsive web design for brands. A big part of website traffic comes from mobiles, as more and more people orient to browsing through cell phones and tablets.
In this scenario, big brands are optimizing their websites to fit these devices’ size, and so should you. Search engines consider mobile-friendliness as a factor while ranking websites.
Use external links
We cannot emphasize enough the importance of backlinks or external links for your SEO. Linking to higher ranking or authoritative websites gives you a fair share of advantage in this case. Outbound links help users with an in-depth understanding of a certain topic.
Linking your website to external authoritative sites will increase your popularity, gain your authority, and trustworthiness which positively affects your search rankings. Hyperlinks are considered as votes of popularity by search engines.
Consider the following factors when adding external links:
- The popularity of linking page
- The trustworthiness of the domain
- The relevance of the content on the source page and external pages
- The anchor text used for the link
- The root domains linking to the target page
Focus on URL structure
Your URL is your website’s address. It is essential to keep the URL simple to make it easy for users and search engines to find you on the internet. It is also a smart idea to add keywords in your URL. Use words and punctuations in URL to make it more useful.
An URL with numerous parameters and complicated coded makes it difficult for crawlers to process the information and impacts your search ranking inversely.
Another factor to consider is the session IDs. They increase the problem of content duplicity. To resolve this issue, try adding cookies to the site.
Conclusion
There may not be any proven formula to rank in the top 5 results, but there is, indeed, a pattern. Search engines prefer authenticity and creativity. Their primary target is to provide users with the most relevant results. So, the best way to earn the Holy Grail or SEO would be providing users with relevant content.
Try to pose as the audience and ask yourself, what would you be looking for and deliver the same. This will not only ensure good SEO ranking but will also help you convert more and retain customers.
Prefer reading: Tips For Writing An Well-Crafted Online Review
