As you may know, people use search engines such as Google to look for products and services online. You want your website to come up as one of the top results when someone searches for a term relevant to your business or products, and so it is worthwhile devoting time and effort into optimizing your site so that it has a good chance of achieving this goal. This article will provide tips on how you can improve your website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Contents
1) Keyword research
Keywords are the words that searchers type into search engines either as part of a search query or surrounding the terms they are looking for within quotation marks. For example, if you sell dog food, then ‘dog’ might be a relevant term. That is what is known as a ‘long tail’ keyword, since it contains several words. It may also be helpful to consider synonyms of keywords and how you can use these within your website’s pages more effectively (such as instead of the word ‘dog,’ using the phrase ‘puppy’). You can do this by utilizing Google’s keyword tool. Most importantly, ensure that all the keywords you are targeting are relevant to your business, products, or services; otherwise, it will be considered spamming.
2) Page titles
When someone types in a search query, the first thing they see, before seeing any actual results, is usually a list of titles with links to each page on your website which matches their search. These titles are generally taken from the page’s ‘head’ or ‘title’ tags between. Page titles can be seen next to search results, so you should try to make them as relevant as possible while also concise. Using your keywords in these tags is vital for optimizing your website, especially if they appear close to the beginning of the title tag since this gives more weight to relevancy. It will also help with other factors such as social media sharing.
3) Page content
Your keyword research should have helped you identify which terms are most likely to be used by potential customers when looking for products or services similar to what you offer. The words people type into search engines are known as ‘long-tail keywords’, and they are often more specific than single words or phrases.
Your pages must contain information relevant to the terms you have targeted since this will help both with ranking and conversions. Ensure your content is explicit, engaging, and easy to understand. In that way, it can appeal to readers who may not know as much about the subject as people involved in online marketing and, eventually improve SEO ranking.
4) Site structure
Title tags, page titles, and page content aren’t the only factors search engines use when determining where a website ranks for specific queries: they also look at factors such as how structured a site is (such as navigation menus). Having an effective site structure can increase how well search engines understand what your site is about. Therefore, it will give your website a higher chance of ranking in the results pages for related terms.
5) Site speed
Another factor search engines look at is how responsive and fast your site is. Slow loading times can reduce user experience and cause problems such as Google’s ‘slow to crawl’ penalty, which could mean that your website drops down the SERPs for specific keywords. Web pages should be well structured, easy to navigate, and load quickly.
6) Backlinks
Backlinks aren’t only important because they help with conversion rates and, for SEO purposes. In particular, they can increase visibility through other websites linking back to yours. Always try to work with other website owners so you can link to each other’s websites.
7) Images
Including images on your pages will improve the user experience and help with SEO, because search engines rely heavily on text. Images are a good way of enhancing the amount of content on a page.
8) Mobile responsiveness
Mobile traffic is increasing year on year, and your site must be mobile responsive if you want to reach as many customers as possible, including those who use mobile devices.
9) Local SEO for brick-and-mortar stores
It is becoming increasingly important for local businesses to consider how they rank in local search results, since people use search engines more often when looking for nearby services or products. For instance, if someone needs a plumber, they are more likely to use a search engine rather than wading through directories.