Many SEO variables go into guaranteeing your website ranks as high as likely on search results pages and Google uses many ranking factors, consisting of numerous ranking signals, which can fluctuate in position depending on the type of site you have, and whom you ask. This blog lists some of the optimization issues we have found to be key to building an effective SEO strategy.
Higher Quality Content
Content is vital to SEO ranking as this is what will appeal to search engines to index your pages properly and help rank your site better. Google measures content excellence by reviewing the content & structure of a page taking into account many factors such as incoming & outgoing links, keyword significance, and usability. Higher quality content is well-structured, attractive, and provides value & relevant information by answering questions they may have connected to what they search for. Fresh content is important, as this will activate Google to crawl your site to index its new content and increase your chances of visibility. Not only does higher quality content indicate to Google and additional search engines that it should be ranked high, but quality content helps to involve your readers and helps with SEO ranking features such as engagement.
On-page SEO and Technical Health
On-page SEO involves additional technical SEO which focuses on optimizing essentials such as missing metadata, broken links, and HTML source code for complete website health, as well as optimizing the content on the site. It is important to preserve a healthy site that stabilizes search positions & delivers a foundation on which to optimize to progress ranking. On-page SEO aids organize webpage content to help crawlers index the data they are looking at and rank the page high as a result. Optimizing on-page SEO by following these steps:
- Choose a primary keyword and four related keywords
- Include keywords in 1st paragraph of your content
- Include primary keywords in the URL
- Vary content structure and make it scannable
- Include images with the content and label the images telling what they show
- Add & improve meta descriptions
Useful backlink
Backlinks are links from other sites to yours and are one of the important factors in defining where a site ranks. A link from one site to other is a trust signal and the more quality backlinks any site has, the more likely it is to be measured as an ‘authority’. It is important to identify positive backlinks from toxic backlinks, as all the toxic links can negatively impact your site’s ranking. A good backlink is a link from a pertinent, high-quality site. Backlinks should be natural as possible and should be helpful & engaging to the user.
Digital accessibility & site architecture
Marketing should have a user in mind, whether it is a product or a website. Not only is this significant for users of all skills to be able to navigate your site, but search engines like digital accessibility. This involves ensuring the site architecture is thought-out, with site navigation and internal links having a progression, and taking three clicks to find any page on your site. Long complicated navigation is frustrating for users and will impact how your website ranks in SERPs. Websites that optimize their pages for restricted users will do better. Websites that can be navigated using shift keys include images that have descriptions for impaired users, and content that is readable, and easy to understand will fare better in SEO rankings.
Loading speed
Page loading speed is significant in SEO ranking as it relates to user experience and search engines want to guarantee their users have a greater experience. Load speed can be an important pain point for users if they experience slow load speeds through the website. Slow pages impact crawlers’ abilities to crawl your site’s pages and will lead to a decline in search visibility.
Security
Google recommended that all websites switched from HTTP to HTTPS which is a change that encrypts communications between servers and browsers and made users’ data such as card details or passwords secure. Although this change came numerous years ago now, some sites still use HTTP, which can impact their SEO rankings. Google wants its workers to be secure when they are browsing sites from their search results and will penalize sites that appear to put their users at risk of hacks.
Crawlability
Googlebot is crawling the web to find & index webpages which aid with visibility & SEO ranking. But, the Googlebot can miss sites because they are problematic to crawl or privacy policies block them. Guaranteeing your site is crawlable with good structure, strong content & policies enabled will allow it to categorize and help to improve SEO rankings.
Schema Markup
Schema markup is a form of microdata that makes an enhanced description that seems in search results, and this can help your site to rank high and gain more conversions. When added to a site, schema markup can progress a website’s rankings by an average of 4 positions.
Mobile openness
Google announced that mobile-friendliness was a key factor in ranking, with the majority of all site traffic worldwide being created by mobile users. Even if the popular business still comes from a desktop, it is significant to ensure your site is accessible to mobile users to show you are on top of trends. This involves guaranteeing your menus are navigable on smaller screens, images appear properly, and the font is not small.
Consistent business information
Consistent business listings are important to build trust with budding customers, but an optimized profile goes a long way in helping to rank. Adding as much data as possible to the listing & showing that the profile is active will ensure it appears in SERPs.
