Search Engine Optimization needs to be at the top of your priority list if you are relying on people to find you through Google searches. Generating leads for your business becomes a lot harder if nobody can find you. in the first place.
93% of experiences on the internet start with a search engine. Google's top search results have a 33% chance of getting clicked. This means you’re missing out on a third of potential traffic if you are not at the top of your Google search page. So, if you are wondering why your website is not ranking higher like the other websites on Google, it is because they are making a conscious effort to improve their SEO.
In this article, we’ve compiled a list of ten ways how you can optimize your website to rank higher on search results.
But first, let’s dive into what SEO is and how it works.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is often known as the science and art as the science and art of getting pages to rank higher in search engines like Google.
You will often see in Google and other search engines like Bing, that paid advertisements are usually at the top of the search results page, followed by the regular results. These regular results are also called organic search results.
Organic search traffic is a term used to refer to the traffic that comes by proper Search Engine Optimization and not through paid search.
Search engine marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) are the terms used to refer to paid search. The higher your visibility in search results, the higher your ranking and therefore, the higher the number of customers.
Search engines have spiders or automated robots. These spiders collect all kinds of information and data about your website on the pages that make it up. This helps them to easily determine when to push a page on your website to the searcher.
The spiders collect title tags, internal linking, page speed, social signals, backlinks, and many more. There are multiple things to consider when trying to optimize a website.
With over 200 ranking factors used by Google in their algorithm, you have to determine how well your site is optimized in both off-page and on-page ranking.
One important thing to consider here is that the spiders are automated by computer programs and not actual human beings. Hence, these have limitations. They cant view a website as normal humans can. They crawl the code of the website which implies that they cant see videos or images or audio clips or flashy designs.
Crawlability means the spider’s or search bot’s ability to crawl or access all the content throughout your site. If those spiders cannot access your web pages to index your content, your pages will never be ranked high in the search results.
To ensure access to the bots, make sure you have a good linking structure that fluidly connects all your web pages. Use a robots.txt file to exclude the pages you don’t want to be crawled.
Moreover, Google’s search console not only lets you see which pages have been crawled but also has a robots.txt generator you can use.
You might have added tons of images to your website to make it look more appealing. But you have to make sure to optimize these properly if you want to improve your website’s SEO ranking.
Outbound links are one of the best ways to increase the credibility of your website. One important thing is that all of your data claims should be linked to authoritative and trustworthy sources.
You can also use outbound hyperlinks to websites with high domain authority. Make sure all the information or links from the hyperlinks are up-to-date.
You’ll also have to include internal links to improve your Search Engine Optimization. These links direct your visitors to other pages of your website. This allows your users to search through your content more and hence, improves your SEO.
To improve the credibility of your website, it is crucial to provide accurate and updated contact information.
Make all your contact information clear and in plain sight, for people to find. If you don’t do so, the worst thing that could happen is people will start reporting your website only because you forgot your email address, location, and phone number.
Having your website marked as spam is bound to crush your SEO efforts. This is one of the easiest yet most dangerous factors to overlook.
Google uses over 200 factors in its algorithm to determine search rankings. Here are some of the key factors that can have a massive impact on your SEO efforts.
You might know it already but keywords play a very significant role in improving your SEO. You might want to include your keywords sparingly, but enough to spread them out throughout your content.
Remember not to go overboard with and saturate your website with keywords. More keywords don’t mean a better ranking. In fact, your ranking will take a hit when Google picks up on this, and it will.
Make sure your keywords fit naturally in your sentences by including them in image captions and header tags. Try using long-tail keywords. These are three or four-word phrases used by searchers to look for specific content.
For instance, if a user is looking for a phone to buy, and wants the phone to be suitable for gaming, they would probably not search for “phone”. Instead, they’d usually search for “best phones for gaming”, or “gaming phones under $500”.
Ranking for these long-tailed keywords will give you a greater chance of ranking higher, as these usually drive high-quality traffic.
You need to write an engaging title for the pages of your website within 65 characters. Although there’s no strict character limit for titles, it will however get cut off after 65 characters, when displayed in the search results.
Here are a few tips on how to make sure your titles are click-worthy:
Nowadays, when accessing a website, people expect it to load quickly. This is a very important factor to consider while optimizing your website.
Your website is highly unlikely to rank higher through Search Engine Optimization if your website takes ages to load.
These are a few loading speed benchmarks to take note of:
When another site links your site in their content, either because they like your content or you have high authority, these links are known as backlinks.
But how are you supposed to ensure the quality of these backlinks?
Creating engaging content will opt for other websites to want to share which will also allow them to include these backlinks to their sites.
Apart from unique content, good infographics and interesting statistics are a great way of driving backlinks. You can also build and monitor your backlinks easily with BacklinkSEO.
BacklinkSEO allows you to optimize your backlink workflow along with saving hours outreaching. You can also get competitor insights, monitor unlimited keywords, import your backlinks automatically, manage projects, have detailed reporting, and more.
SEO can only be as good as your content. Long-tailed keywords won’t save you if you’re hosting poor-quality content on your website. This makes having great content a top priority for your website.
Plagiarized and duplicated content can be spotted through search engines and you will be penalized for doing so. Any page should have a minimum of 300 words of original content.
Huge paragraphs with little to no information can also hamper the quality of your content. If you have a lot to write, break it into smaller chunks and use lots of headings and subheadings to make them more readable.
Google introduced the E-A-T criteria in 2015.
E= Expertise A= Authoritativeness T= Trustworthiness
Google’s guidelines specified a few topics that require a high E-A-T score. For example, websites containing information about treatment for cancer and other sensitive subjects need to have higher E-A-T.
The content on these websites might include statements from recognized or experts in the field, or links to reliable sources such as .edu or .gov websites and peer-reviewed research to get a higher E-A-T score.
This might come as a surprise, but creating a mobile app can actually be extremely effective for boosting your Search Engine Optimization efforts.
It may look like an expensive option (which it can be), but it's also an investment. You might also ask how exactly does it boost your SEO?
Recently, Google has started indexing apps on Google search with Firebase App Indexing. Users when searching for keywords in your niche will stumble across your app, which can drive traffic to your website as they’ll look for more information about it.
When your app pops up on a google search page, it automatically becomes a valuable source of information. If you have the expertise or the budget, this is an option you might consider seriously.
Now, that you know what SEO is, how it works, and how to use it for getting higher ranks, it’s time for implementation. The 10 optimization practices we’ve explained in this article can help you streamline your SEO efforts to get maximum results.
SEO is a continuous process. Make sure to evaluate your results and see what works for you and what doesn't. Having the right SEO tools can help you achieve exactly that.
If you’re looking for a backlink monitoring tool that helps you keep tabs on your backlink profile in real-time, BacklinkSEO is the perfect tool for you.
Create a free account on BacklinkSEO today and start gaining more backlinks and growing your traffic in no time!
