Digital marketers understand the key role Google rankings play in online business success, yet many business owners struggle to unlock the key to ranking high without getting penalized by search engines.
One key to successful SEO is writing for both search engines and readers, in order to avoid over-optimization and produce relevant content that reaches its target market.
1. On-Page Optimization
At the core of on-page optimization lies high-quality page content that conveys who and what your website, brand, or business are. This content must align with keywords selected during keyword research as well as title tags and meta descriptions that users will see when searching engine results pages appear.
Pre-click on-page SEO refers to any text displayed prior to a user clicking a search result, such as title tag, URL, meta description and header tag text. Post-click on-page SEO is concerned with optimizing web pages themselves – headers and paragraphs as well as images, hyperlinks and textual content such as headings. In addition, technical on-page SEO involves speed optimization – an aspect Google considers when ranking websites while users tend to prefer faster-loading websites – Core Web Vitals will give an indication of just how fast your site currently is running!
2. Keyword Research
Keyword research is one of the key elements of SEO. It allows you to identify which terms and phrases people are searching for, as well as their competitiveness.
Start by compiling a list of seed keywords (also referred to as head keywords). You can do this yourself or ask customers and sales associates which words they use when discussing your products and services.
Next, examine the search engine results pages for your keywords. Take note of what types of information they offer as this will give an indication as to what types of pages should be created in order to rank highly for these terms and how many keywords per page should be included. This is an exercise known as search intent which involves discovering what people are searching for and providing quality content as a solution.
3. Link Building
Link building is one of the core aspects of SEO. Search engines use links to crawl your website, while finding related content which serves as proof that Google considers relevant. This helps search engines crawl more effectively. This factor plays a huge role in their ranking algorithm.
Backlinks are links from external websites pointing back to your own. When Google sees many backlinks pointing at a particular page, they assume its relevance and should rank higher in search results. Backlinks also help define page quality; authoritative websites often rank higher than spammy ones when it comes to backlinks.
Another essential aspect of link building is correctly using internal links. You should avoid linking directly to pages that generate revenue using exact keyword match anchor text anchor text; rather use variations like “click here” or “visit this page.” This will prevent overoptimization from leading to penalties from Google.
4. Content Marketing
Content marketing refers to the practice of creating and publishing high-quality online content to attract potential customers and drive traffic to your website. This could include blogs, articles, videos, infographics or any other form of media that could drive audience engagement with your brand.
Key to content marketing success lies in providing value to your target audience, whether by answering common questions, addressing common concerns, or offering useful information.
One way of increasing topical authority is through content creation around key camping equipment topics like how to choose a tent or where to camp. Doing this will build up page rankings for those keywords while improving search engine optimization – and Google Search Console or another tool like DemandJump will enable you to analyze what types of content is performing well on your site.
5. Social Media Marketing
Social media is an effective marketing strategy for any business, and can even help boost SEO rankings by taking into account how popular content on social media is in Google’s SERP rankings algorithm.
Structured data can help your SEO rankings. Structured data is an HTML element that assists search engines in better comprehending the information on your page, and could even make its way into Google’s rich snippets feature.
To take advantage of this secret, start by conducting a keyword search on Google and studying its results, paying particular attention to page titles and meta descriptions. Next, implement structured data plugins onto your pages – it will make a surprising difference!
6. Analytics
Google Search Console is one of the best-kept SEO secrets, providing an efficient means of optimizing pages for specific keywords. Simply search for your desired page and look at its performance using Search Console – this will show a table listing any queries for which it ranks along with impression counts.
Singlegrain recommends this method as an efficient way of discovering what keyword phrases you’re missing out on and can use this approach to increase the odds of landing featured snippet spots.
Use Structured Data on your pages to increase their exposure on Google. This HTML markup will help your page stand out in search results and give your pages an edge against competitors.
7. Mobile-Friendly Website
With more than 3.8 billion smartphone users globally, it’s clear that mobile is the go-to platform for web searching. Google recently made changes to their indexing algorithm that give priority to websites offering superior mobile experiences – meaning sites that rank highly will get preference in search results.
Implement a responsive design to make your website mobile-friendly; this will allow it to resize itself depending on what device it’s being viewed on.
Optimize your website by placing keywords within the first 100 words of each page – known as “optimizing above the fold”. This will improve your search engine optimization ranking. Likewise, utilize a speed testing tool like BrowserStack Responsive to measure how fast it loads for different devices-browser-OS combinations to ensure it meets mobile users’ demands.
8. Mobile-Friendly Content
Mobile-friendly websites have become essential in accommodating users who access websites through smartphones. As of 2015, Google began giving priority to mobile friendly websites in its search engine results pages.
Make sure your content is mobile-friendly and simple for readers on small screens to understand. Keep paragraphs brief as people tend to scan rather than reading whole ones on mobile phones, and avoid complex vocabulary which is difficult for mobile readers.
Add images and video to your content to enhance its impact and help readers better comprehend it. Keep in mind that visuals are processed up to 600 times faster than text; name image filenames with keywords for mobile optimization purposes using alt text; this way your website can also show up on image search engines – giving you even greater opportunities to reach your target audience.
9. Local SEO
Registering your business with local directories and gathering customer reviews are vital elements in improving local SEO. Regularly collecting reviews increases brand recognition while showing that you have been established as a business.
Google changed its local search algorithm in August 2015 in order to provide users with a better experience by only showing three results for a particular location in search results pages (SERPs). Unfortunately, this meant some businesses and establishments that once featured within the 7-pack were no longer visible online.
Monitoring fluctuations in competitors’ search engine rankings is crucial to understanding opportunities to enhance local SEO strategy. A free tool such as LocalRank Flux makes this task easier; additionally, make sure your GMB information matches with that provided on your website and NAP citations – this will increase your odds of ranking higher in SERP.
