Search Engine Optimization (SEO) forms a crucial part of the digital marketing strategy of any business. Statistically speaking, over 90% of a website’s traffic originates from a search engine. Therefore, where your website ranks in a search result can be the difference between a thriving business and a surviving one. How you rank for certain keywords will depend on your domain authority, which not just depends on your keywords but also on other important aspects. Moreover, popular search engines like Google, Edge, and Safari constantly make changes to their search algorithm to provide the optimum search experience for the user. Therefore, it becomes crucial for business owners and marketers to stay updated on the latest SEO techniques to maintain and improve their business’s ranking in search results.
In this article, I have made it easy for you. Below listed are a few effective SEO tricks that you can utilize in 2019 and beyond to improve your rankings and increase organic traffic to your website.
Speed up your website: Both Google and Edge consider your website’s page loading speed in their ranking algorithm. According to Google, 53% of the visitors immediately leave a webpage if it takes over 3 seconds to load. This leads to an increase in bounce rate and a decrease in the number of pages viewed. Some ways to increase website speed are to optimize image size, streamline the code, minimize plug-ins, and reduce redirects.
Secure your website: HTTPS is a more secured version of HTTP and enables the website to communicate more safely. This offers a secure experience for website visitors. HTTPS also helps in your SEO efforts. Statistically speaking, 93% of the traffic arriving on Google-owned websites comes through HTTPS websites. Moreover, since July 24, 2018, Google is warning visitors to an HTTP website that it is not secured, leading to increased bounce rates.
Make the website responsive: Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past decade, you will know that mobile devices account for a large portion of website traffic. According to research, mobile traffic accounts for over 52% of overall website traffic. Moreover, since May 2019, Google has added mobile responsiveness as a factor in its ranking algorithm. You can use Google’s ‘Mobile-Friendly Test’ tool to test your website’s mobile-friendliness.
Improve user engagement: There are a lot of statistics that suggest that Google favors websites that have strong user engagement. In SEO, user engagement is measured by the amount of time that a visitor spends on your website. Therefore, the more time a user spends on your website, the more likely they are to be engaged with your content.
Create valuable content: The amount of time a visitor spends at your website is greatly influenced by the content you provide. When you provide valuable content of high quality, the user will stay longer on your webpage. Therefore, content must not just be of high quality and usefulness but also must be longer as it enables you to retain the visitors for a long time.
Enhance content readability: Even if your audience is well-educated, nobody will want to decipher a Ph.D. thesis-like content every time they want to read your blog. Making your content easy to digest makes it useful for the users. Moreover, you should also use headings and bullet points to make it easy to scan. There are a lot of free tools on the internet that help you increase your content’s readability.
Enable social sharing: The number of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest shares your blog gets can greatly influence your SEO ranking. Installing social sharing buttons not just makes it easier for the visitors to share your content but also helps you rank higher on searches. Moreover, it also helps in boosting sales as 43% of social media users have bought a product after liking and sharing it on social media networks.
Build a keyword list: Keywords are the link that connects a search engine result to your website. Therefore, it is advisable to spend some time researching keywords that are the best relevant to your target audience. One thing to keep in mind during keyword research is to always aim for long-tail keywords, as they contribute to 80% of search engine traffic.
Provide different multimedia: Having different multimedia content on your website like images, videos and slideshows can help enhance user experience and conversion rate. Moreover, they also act as a signal of good quality content to search engines. Videos are the most proven form of multimedia that gets visitors to spend more time on the website.
Diminish broken links: No one wants to find the dreaded 404 page after clicking on a link. These types of links are called broken links and make for bad usability. Moreover, websites with a large number of bad links are perceived by search engines as old and neglected. This can have a negative impact on the website’s SEO ranking.
A lot of companies struggle to create an effective SEO strategy that can successfully improve their SEO ranking and organic traffic. This leads to a loss of precious time and budget. With these 10 tips in mind, you’re ready to update your website and optimize it for SEO. Overall, a great SEO strategy can be broken down into steps that are simple and easy to implement.
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