Did you know that over 60% of marketers regard SEO ranking as their top priority for inbound marketing?
Search engine optimization (SEO) has been slowly gaining momentum over the years and, as the number of people browsing the web increase, it only becomes more relevant. If you want to improve your online presence and get noticed on Google, it’s essential.
But, with so many complex strategies and a whole lot of jargon, where do you start? Unless you’re an expert the world of SEO can be an overwhelming place. Luckily, we’ve got your back.
Take a look at this guide for 15 ways you can start improving your SEO ranking this year.
1. High-Quality Content
If you want to drive traffic to your website and boost your SEO, you need to give them a reason to come back.
With high-quality content, you can add consistent value to your website that entices, engages and informs your audience. To boost your SEO, focus on longer-form content that will increase dwell time (how long users spend on your site) which is another factor that influences your search ranking.
2. Optimize Images on Your Site
Images are a great way to add visual interest and value to your website, but they need to be optimized to boost your SEO. Use keywords in the titles, captions, and descriptions of your images, such as changing dog to dog at pet groomers. You should also compress your files to reduce their size, helping to reduce load speeds – which we’ll get onto now.
3. Improve Page Loading Speeds
If your website takes too long, did you know that 40% of your users could abandon it? A further 80% of those people will never return to your site. This reduces your traffic and makes you less favourable in the eyes of search engines.
It’s vital that you have quick loading speeds if you want to move up the ranks. Test the speed of your site and then optimize it accordingly, reducing your plugins and keeping your features to a minumum.
4. Add Keywords
Keywords are the foundation of SEO. Use a keyword research tool to find keywords with a high search volume but without a huge amount of competition for the best results. Optimize your content with one primary keyword, a few secondary keywords, and longtail keywords related to your industry.
5. Use Header Tags
Header tags are a great way to break up your content, making it more appealing to your users, but they also help Google to understand your content. Optimize your header tags with keywords, using your H1 for your primary keyword and H2s for secondary. Be sure to make your headers relevant and informative, giving users and search engines a good idea of the topic you’re writing about.
6. Target Google Snippets
Google snippets are a brilliant way to bypass the ranks and appear near the top of search results. To increase your changes, create content that answers searchable questions in your industry, like what’s the best shampoo for long hair?. Create an article with valuable information, putting the most important information at the top of the page, and use header tags with keywords to help Google understand your content.
7. Start a Blog
A blog with high value content is a great way to improve your lead generation and push your way up the search results. Search engines love websites that are regularly updated, and a blog is an easy way to make sure you’re doing that consistently. It also gives you a great opportunity to incorporate keywords, add links, and boost traffic, all of which are great for SEO.
8. Start Guestposting
It’s not just your own blog that can help you gain visibility. You can guestpost on other people’s blogs and add a link back to your own website – this is called an inbound link. The more inbound links you have from authoritative sites, the more authoritative you’ll look in the eyes of Google.
9. Use Outbound Links
Outbound links are links from your websites to others. Just like inbound links, having working links to reliable, trusted websites can help boost your site authority. Just make sure all of your links work (no 404 errors or redirects) to avoid being penalized!
10. Create a Diverse Linkbuilding Profile
Google has a range of blackhat techniques they can penalize your website for, and one of them is unnatural link building. If you suddenly have thousands of backlinks and they’re all from similar websites, Google will drop you back down the ranks. So, make sure you have a diverse range of links from different URLs and grow your portfolio organically.
11. Create a Responsive Site
Search engines know that users browse on a range of devices, so they’ll favor those that are responsive. Responsive sites are those that can function properly across desktop devices, smartphones, tablets, and even wearables like smartwatches. Make sure your features work on all of these and your site is easy to navigate no matter what a user is accessing it on.
12. List Your Website
Don’t forget to list your website on Google My Business. A verified, optimized profile has a good chance of appearing on the top local results for people in your area and can also help your website rank. Regularly update your listing so that your information is accurate, fill in as many details as you can, and add plenty of media (pictures, videos, 360 virtual tours).
13. Don’t Forget Your Metadata
Metadata is the snippet that appears about your website on search engines. Make sure to optimize your metatag and metadata. Both should fit within the allowed number of letters, include relevant keywords, and contain a call to action to entice your audience to click.
What’s Next?
Using SEO, ranking highly in Google becomes a lot easier, but it’s still not easy! SEO is a complex and vast strategy that takes a lot of time, and the points we mentioned here are a simple start. If you want to hit those top spots, you need to be ready to invest the hours in learning, researching, and implementing SEO.
As someone running a business, you might not have time to do all of that, which is where we come in! As a marketing agency, we know the importance of SEO and have a specialized team ready to invest their time in helping you get to that coveted first page of search results. To find out more or start working together, get in touch with us today!
