Search engine optimization is not just about search engines. It’s also about consumers. Who they are, what they’re looking for, and how you can satisfy their needs.
As you know, it’s critical for any online business to follow best SEO practices. After all, this is the tried and tested way to rise in search rankings so that you can attract more visitors and turn a majority of them into customers.
Look at these figures from Impactplus:
- 61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority.
- 70% of marketers see SEO as more effective than pay-per-click.
- Consumers now do as much as 70% of their purchasing research online.
But SEO is a rapidly shifting landscape. What was effective yesterday may not have the same impact today.
Keeping up With SEO Trends Is Important
For years now, Google has made several changes in its ranking algorithms. Some reports say that these could even be up to 600 changes a year.
That’s why it is necessary to keep abreast of the latest shifts so that your website will always be in the best position to attract visitors.
Given all this, you may be wondering how to even start judging the effectiveness and whether you can be on top of all the changes.
The answer: yes, you can. Here, we’ll outline the five key points that are necessary for successful SEO optimization. They’re like the pillars holding up the entire system.
The Five SEO Principles
In essence, successful SEO campaigns need to research keywords, optimize web page content, make them technically polished, and build links. After that, the final step is analysis and testing. Let’s take you through these one-by-one.
1. Research Is a Critical Step
As with any venture, research is critical. When it comes to SEO, you can look at research in two ways.
- Keywords
Consumers use certain words in specific categories when they are hunting for information.
To research and come to an understanding of these keywords, one has to analyze and find a list of the most used ones, so that website content can reflect this. It can also become a guide for future online strategy.
Creating content without keyword research means that chances of getting significant traffic are slim. Some online tools that you can use for this are Google Keyword Research and Keywords Everywhere.
- Competitive analysis
Just as you wouldn’t conduct business without an understanding of the competition, you shouldn’t carry out SEO activities without investigating what others are up to.
For SEO competitive analysis, experts research links, keywords, and content of competitors in order to find out what’s working and what’s not.
Successful elements can be incorporated into your own strategy. You can also find gaps in keywords and content and use your own website to profitably use them.
2. On-Page SEO Can Make or Break Your Efforts
On-page SEO is the process of optimizing web pages to enhance search engine rankings. This drives organic traffic.
There are many ways to do this. Here are the most important.
- Meta descriptions
These are tags or small elements of code. They tell search engines about your web page and how it is displayed in search results.
Titles and descriptions are among the most common meta descriptions. These offer a quick peek at the content and why it’s relevant. Ideally, these should be brief, unique, and contain important keywords.
- Content
There are many SEO best practices for content. It should, first of all, be built on the keywords that consumers are searching for.
Such keywords should appear early on in the content. Also important is to avoid keyword stuffing.
Duplicate content should be weeded out, and there should be proper organization as well as promotion.
- Internal links
These are links from one part of your website to another. Users and search engines use internal links to find content.
For users, they are an essential navigation tool, and for search engines, it is a way to find out site structure. For search bots, internal links are important to boost rankings.
- Image optimization
Images are an essential part of a highly-ranked web page. A 2020 survey showed that 39% of people would stop engaging with a website if images won’t load or take too long to load.
Therefore, images should be in the right format, size, and resolution in order to look attractive and not affect page speeds.
Image file names and tags are also important for search engines to discover and display them.
- Keyword density
While keywords are important, many have different opinions on keyword density. It can differ from page to page and phrase to phrase.
The focus should be on high-quality content, first and foremost. Google Webmaster Guidelines say that “keyword stuffing results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking."
3. Don’t Ignore the Technical Aspects
When the technical aspects of a website are improved, it can lead to an increase in search rankings.
The website should be fast to load, easy to crawl, work across devices, and be comprehensible to search engines.
- Page speed
In general, this is the time it takes to completely display the page content. It is one of the elements used by Google to rank web pages.
Of course, it is important for enhancing user experience, too. Using compression, reducing redirects, and eliminating inconsistencies are some ways to improve speed.
You can easily check page speed performance on Google’s page speed insights page.
- Mobile usability
In 2018, 52.2 percent of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones. The figure is growing fast, and that’s why it’s essential for webpages to be optimized for mobile.
Design, speed, and technical configuration are important factors. You can check the results with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool.
- Structured Data Markup
When it comes to SEO, this refers to a common structure across web pages. This allows for enriched search results, as well as interactive features. It also provides ways to analyze traffic.
- AMP
Accelerated Mobile Pages is an initiative by Google and other technology and publishing companies. With this, you can create fast-loading mobile websites.
The reduction of non-essential elements means that users get a much more satisfying experience.
- Sitemap and robots
To improve rankings, your website should be crawled and indexed by search engine bots.
This is where a robots.txt file comes in, which contains information for such bots. Your sitemap location should be added to this file for the best results.
- Canonical tags
These are a part of HTML code that allows you to identify duplicate content. With such tags, you can specify which URL is the main one to be indexed.
This saves time and also indicates professionalism and priorities to search engines.
4. Link Building Gets You Connections, Rankings, and Hits
Creating high-quality links for your site should be a priority. Search engines use these not only to discover new pages but also to determine rankings and importance.
In fact, according to Google, it’s one of the Top 3 ranking factors. Here are some ways to do this.
- Content marketing
This is a great way to get links. A content marketing strategy, for example, could include case studies, contributions from experts, and interviews. There are good chances that all of these will be linked to.
- High authority websites
Backlinks from respected and highly credible websites are very valuable.
Posting quality content, connecting with the people behind such websites, and in general, improving the worth of your own site are some ways to acquire these.
- Guest posts
This is the practice of contributing to another person's blog. It can build exposure, authority, and links.
It helps you tap into a wider audience as well as gain authority. It starts with finding lists of top blogs in your domain and then reaching out to them.
- Press releases
When properly used, press releases can be useful for SEO and link-building. They should contain valuable news that is relevant to audiences. They should be timed properly and be unique to your business or service.
- Link profiles
These can help with the process of building backlinks as well as convey the worth of your site to search engines.
Ideally, you should be looking at eliminating spam links and increasing those with high authority. Website rankings, diversity, and relevance are some key considerations.
5. Analysis and Testing: The All-Important Final Step
After you carry out various methods of SEO, it’s essential to carry out testing to check what’s working well, along with analysis to see what can be improved.
This way, improving SEO and rankings can be an ongoing process of improvement.
- Analytics and search console
Google Search Console helps you judge your site's traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your site rise in search results.
Google Analytics measures and tracks video and social networking sites and applications. Combining data from both these tools will give you a full performance picture.
- A/B testing
This is the process of showing two versions of the same page to different visitors, and gaining information on which one drives more conversions.
Meta titles and descriptions, URL structures, headlines, and calls to action are some aspects that can be A/B tested.
- Competitors’ analysis
An exhaustive competitive analysis can be a guide to how to improve your own website and rankings.
You could make a list of competitors, examine their content and links on a page by page basis, find opportunities and gaps, and replicate best practices.
Summing up the Importance of Good SEO Practices
As many have said, SEO is both a science and an art. There are technical issues, there are content aspects, and there are link-building concerns.
User-focused content and responsive design are important, as well as a knowledge of how search engine algorithms trace and rank websites. It’s important to first assess your needs and goals. Why do you want more visitors and what do you expect them to do?
SEO optimization is as relevant in 2020 as it was before. One study shows that the #1 result on Google gets 31.7% of all clicks. That’s certainly something to aim for.
Experienced SEO service providers will then gauge your objectives and devise ways to make organic clicks go through the roof. It’s a win-win partnership for success.
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