Contents
Introduction
Website owners need to improve their search engine ranking, especially if the majority of the web traffic is organic. They will have to rely on Search Engine Optimization if they want to rank high for specific and relevant search queries.
However, implementing SEO tactics is not easy since many moving parts are involved in the process. We have created a guide on some of the best ways to improve the search engine rankings of your business website. Implementing these tips and tactics will quickly give you an edge over your competition. Let’s get started!
16 reliable and proven techniques to boost your rankings on Search Engines
Boost page load speed
Google factors in a website’s page loading speed while determining its search engine ranking. Low page speed will cause a significant drop in your search engine rankings. Not just that, it will also impact user engagement on the site.
Most online users expect websites to load within 3 seconds. You will lose potential customers if your site takes too much time to load completely.
Therefore, you must optimize your website for page speed and server response time. We suggest you use online services like Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom to check how fast the site runs and what changes you can make to boost the load speed.
Internal and external linking
Internal and external linking is also a vital part of Search Engine Optimization that can impact your Google search engine rankings.
External linking allows website owners to link to higher authority websites in the quest to make their content more valuable.
On the other hand, internal linking will enable you to drive the visitors to other pages of your website.
Both the linking techniques help improve website navigation as well as search engine rankings.
Invest in image optimization
Images are great for your website since they add another dimension to the site’s content. Moreover, images play a huge role in determining the search engine rankings of your website.
Therefore, you must pay great attention to image optimization. The images can be appropriately optimized when you consider their file format and size while uploading them on the website.
To put it in simple terms, you must avoid uploading huge images as they can adversely affect the page loading time. Make sure you resize and compress the images before putting them online. Use your target keywords while naming them as well.
Optimize the website with keywords
Contrary to what some online marketers believe, keywords are not dead. They are still one of the most crucial components of Google’s search engine ranking algorithm.
Why? Well, online users still rely on specific search terms to find information related to particular topics.
These search terms can be used to optimize your content and make it rank higher. However, you must never overpopulate your website with keywords.
Google considers that an offense, and it will push you further down the search rankings. Moreover, it would help if you would use keywords that naturally fit into your content. To achieve that, you will have to shortlist long-tail keywords.
Make website mobile responsive
The incessant mobile and Internet penetration globally demands business owners to design websites that can load effortlessly across different mobile devices.
Today, over 60% of all Google searches come from smartphones. Google, therefore, expects websites to be optimized for mobile users.
You cannot circumvent mobile optimization. It is a crucial component in providing a high-quality user experience and boosting search engine rankings.
Produce fresh and relevant content
Content is the backbone of any business website. After all, it contains the information that your target audience is searching for on the internet. This is why we suggest you create high-quality content that is relevant to your target audience. It will help you drive more traffic to your site and increase its popularity.
Keep updating the site with fresh and exciting information to increase the average session or improve the dwell time. Always conduct keyword and competitive research to figure out what kind of content will bring in more traffic. Moreover, create a content calendar to ensure a regular content update on the site.
Create a blog section on your site that you can use to showcase your expertise. Use the blog to publish content that helps people solve their problems. Blogging gives you ample opportunity to place target keywords and further improve your search engine rankings.
Optimize URLs to perfection
The URLs are also a crucial part of the Search Engine Optimization strategy. It is imperative that you create clean, professional, and optimized URLs. The rule of thumb is that you must include the primary target keyword in the URL.
If you want your customers to understand or remember your website structure, avoid using filler words in the URL as they can make it longer.
Give pages a proper structure
We will be discussing a lot about user experience as it is a huge factor for improving search engine rankings. One sure shot way to boost user experience on your website is to give every page proper structure.
This involves breaking up the content in a way that makes it easier for your target audience to read and skim. The very first thing you should do is apply the header tags throughout the content.
You can divide the content using headings and subheadings and marking them as H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 tags. Next, use enough white space across the page so that the content doesn’t look cluttered.
Properly format the page using the proper font size and typography. Increase the use of bullet points and checklists to make the content more scannable.
Add multimedia elements
Your website doesn’t have to look dull. You can use it as a tool that perfectly showcases your brand personality as well as expertise. Most websites today have a combination of text and images.
We suggest you take a step further by adding multimedia elements to your site. Search engine rankings also depend on the quality of user experience. And multimedia elements like videos, slideshows, and audio can help you design a great user experience for the visitors.
Well, there is a reason why 68% of consumers prefer watching videos. Video content is easier to comprehend than text. As you will improve your site’s user experience, you will increase the time visitors spend on it. Eventually, you will witness a boost in search rankings.
Improve site readability
How do you know if your target audience understands your website content? You must always keep your target audience in mind while designing the website or publishing any content on it.
Most importantly, you must have a deep understanding of how your audience likes to speak or read. This brings us to a significant conclusion.
No matter which industry your business is in, you must always use a language in your content that most people can understand. In other words, you should work on your website’s readability. Identify the complex terms and sentences in your content and simplify them.
Work on page titles and description
The headline is the first thing that any user reads upon landing on your website. You should know that only 65 characters of your headline are visible on the Google search engine.
Therefore, you must come up with a compelling headline within the 65 characters limit. The best headlines are the ones that have a perfect combination of expressive, powerful, common, and uncommon words.
You can use the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer tool for this purpose. Besides this, you should also focus on creating click-worthy titles. The best titles are the ones that are concise, clear, and meet the expectations of the target user.
Fix broken links
Broken links are devastating for search engine rankings. Why? Google wants to provide the best experience to its users. If you have broken links on your website, the chances are that users clicking on the links will end up nowhere.
In other words, visitors will land on an invalid website. This can potentially crush your SEO ranking. We suggest you use online tools that can search for broken links on your website.
You can use the tool to check for broken links on other authority websites as well. If you find one, ask the webmaster to replace it with a working link on your website. This can help you drive more traffic to your website from authoritative links.
Allow social sharing
Encourage the visitors to share your content on social media. This is a pretty common and highly effective way to drive traffic from social media to your business website. It can positively impact your SEO ranking as more and more people share the content online. The best way to do that is by installing social share buttons using the different WordPress plugins.
Limit duplicate content
Google hates plagiarism. Duplicate content or plagiarized content can have a devastating impact on your search engine rankings.
Search engines thrive on new and unique content. And they have a robust system to manage duplicate content. Google penalizes websites for duplicate content by pushing them down the search rankings.
Make sure you don’t create duplicate content on your site by going through the previous posts before writing on new topics.
If you find multiple versions of the same page, then you can use canonical URLs. This will keep you away from any potential penalty.
Use infographic strategy
Recently, infographics have been generating a lot of organic traffic for websites. The idea of presenting content in a condensed form works perfectly, especially when you execute it using infographics.
Use infographics inside your content since, currently, Google doesn’t publicly provide the text in the pictures in their SERP (Search Engine Results Pages). Give special attention to the design and content inside the infographic because you want it to look clean and professional.
Infographics that are high in value are often linked back to. Therefore, they can help you boost search engine rankings.
Set up a Google My Business account
Create a business listing on Google my business. It is Google’s business listing platform that significantly helps with local SEO and search rankings.
Google my business ensures that your local business achieves the right exposure online. Your local business will be ranked for search queries done by people in your vicinity.
In other words, it will allow you to grab the attention of the local audience. It is just like any other business listing on the internet. However, Google will entirely rely on your listing to pull to element information about your local business.
Just improve them (your rankings) !
While these SEO tactics will give your website the right direction, you should also look forward to optimizing other critical elements as well. For that, we suggest you hire SEO professionals that have excellent experience in optimizing industry-specific websites.
Don’t forget to check out other informative posts on the blog!