The visibility of your website can work miracles with increased organic traffic and leads. Google’s ranking metrics are dynamic and are being updated now and then. Thus, you need to be in the know when Google updates its ranking guidelines. It’d be impossible to rank high in the search engine results pages (SERPs) if you don’t follow the provided guidelines by Google. As a result, your website should be optimized to improve its visibility online.
However, crafting an efficient search engine optimization (SEO) strategy for your website requires skill and experience. If you’re not an internet marketing expert, you may need to hire SEO professionals like Polianna and others. What an SEO professional will do is to use the right strategies to boost the ranking of your website using keywords, page speed, backlinks, and user experience, among others.
SEO Tips that’ll Improve Your Website Rankings
Here are some strategies to help you achieve that:
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Page Speed
Google monitors the amount of time it takes to open a page whenever your target audience visits your website. For many years now, the loading speed of a page has been at the top of the list when it comes to SEO ranking factors. A fast website takes around two to three seconds to open. A very slow website may increase the level of bounce rate. If visitors leave your page so fast, Google website crawlers will flag it as unimportant.
Website speed isn’t only monitored in computer browsers but also on mobile phones. It’s believed that Google’s algorithm to monitor mobile page speed started in July 2018. Google normally penalizes websites that don’t load fast. You can try using Google Search Console which gives updates on the performance of your site, including speed.
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Domain Age, Authority, And URL
It’s believed that more than 60% of the websites appearing in the top ten positions of search results are more than three years old. Very few websites that are less than a year old are likely to appear in this list. Therefore, instead of building a new website, you can consider optimizing your current site with other strategies as age gives it an advantage.
The authority of your website also matters for better ranking. It’s determined by factors such as content quality, off-page SEO signals such as inbound links, and the number of shares.
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Optimized Content
The content of your website should be optimized using the right keywords that users are likely to use when searching for information in the search engine. Keywords are phrases that talk about the topics on your website.
Therefore, research relevant keywords you should include in your content. Google search algorithms map your content for keywords to bring your website to the top of search engine results.
When searching for relevant keywords, you can use tools such as Google Search Console, Moz Keyword Explorer, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, Soolve, Google Keyword Planner, and Keyword Tool.io, among other tools. The importance of keyword tools is they also give you keyword suggestions you can use in your content.
It’s generally advised that you should use keywords with lower competition but have a high search volume to boost your SEO ranking. The keywords searchers use will depend on their intent. It may fall into the following categories:
- Finding a certain website (navigational)
- Making a purchase (transactional)
- Getting an answer to a question (informational)
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Backlinks
Backlinking requires that other websites should reference your website on their content. The way to go about this is by creating high-quality content frequently. Moreover, you can do guest posting on other high authority websites and link to your website. If you can’t write for all good websites, you can approach them to link to your website as a way of giving their customers additional information.
If your website is highly referenced by many websites, Google regards it as having quality content which boosts its authority. High authority websites always have an advantage when it comes to SEO ranking.
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Site Security
Google began factoring site security in ranking back in the year 2014. Google recognizes the use of HTTPS encryption for secure websites. Sites using HTTPS also have SSL certificates to establish a safe link between a user and the website. It protects the information exchanged between the user and the site.
Search algorithms direct searchers to secure sites after detecting HTTPS encryption in the website. Secure websites are those that begin with HTTPS and not HTTP.
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Mobile Friendliness
This refers to how a website performs and looks when opened using a mobile device. A mobile-optimized website offers a good user experience through a responsive design that can adjust to fit the screen of a mobile device. It’s believed that over 50% of searches online are done using mobile devices. Thus, you can’t overlook the importance of ensuring your site is mobile-friendly.
You can confirm if your site is mobile-friendly by submitting it to Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. After analysis, you’ll get feedback on any unresponsive issues.
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User Engagement
Search engine crawlers monitor how users are interacting with your website. A website with better user interaction is ranked higher compared to one with low user interaction. Google has designed an artificial intelligence known as RankBrain that monitors user engagement.
User engagement is measured through:
- Time On Site: This refers to the amount of time a user takes on your website. If users like spending a lot of time on your website, Google classifies it as a relevant website which boosts its ranking.
- Bounce Rate: This is the number of people who leave your website after viewing the first page on your site. A high bounce rate shows that users can’t find what they’re searching for. As a result, it lowers your search engine ranking.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): This refers to the number of people who click on your website’s link after search results. A high click-through rate can improve your search engine ranking.
Conclusion
The competition for visibility in search engine results is becoming stiff every day. Therefore, to match the competition, you ought to optimize your website using relevant SEO strategies. Besides the strategies outlined in this article, there are many more techniques. However, the SEO elements mentioned in this article are at the top of the list of factors that can push your site to the top of search engine results.
