See our list of the 12 best SEO tips to get your website higher in the Google rankings for any keyword. It is easy to change your rankings.
Let’s get started….
#1 Target the right keywords for your domain (age, no. of backlinks)
When you have a clear idea of who you want to visit your website, it’s much simpler to choose relevant keywords. Is there a specific use for your keywords? Keywords are what people use to find your site in the first place.
If you want search engines to index your website’s content (articles, photos, videos, podcasts, etc.), you need to summarise that information using keywords. The URL, heading tags, meta data, and alt attributes of your website should all include your target keywords. If you’re making your website using a website builder, add the phrases in the keyword fields; if you’re using a web hosting service, get into the control panel and alter the code.
Fine-tuning your keywords is essential for higher search engine ranks. If your website is specialised to selling light bulbs, you should highlight specific keywords in this niche. A search for such phrases will, as you would anticipate, yield up results from other websites. Since this is the case, you should use more specific long-tail keywords in addition to the more general ones.
The phrase “best LED light bulbs” is a good example of a meaningful long-tail word. An extremely specific search like that might give your site an edge over its rivals. Use Google’s Keyword Planner to quickly find the best keywords for your content. However, you should avoid utilising obscure search phrases that only a tiny audience would use.
Effective SEO begins with careful consideration of keywords. Gaining familiarity with the proper use of keywords in writing might increase your readership. The first step in optimising a website is determining its primary and secondary keywords.
The most important keyword for your post should be included prominently. All that is required is that each page focus on a single primary keyword. The content on your website should represent the page’s purpose, brand, products, and services.
Your secondary keywords should be used to support your core ones. You’ll probably need many of these. They represent the tertiary ideas you raise in your piece and are often more particular than the primary keyword. Attempt to include them where they make sense, but feel free to exclude them if necessary.
To paraphrase Google’s webmaster guidelines: “Make pages mainly for people, not for search engines.”
Don’t go overboard with keywords or you run the danger of confusing and alienating your audience.
The primary goal should be to simplify the writing so that it is straightforward and simple to understand.
#2 Ensure your content is well optimized and better than the competition
Search engine rankings may also be affected by the quality of the published material. For example, a blog on hair styles should provide pieces that answer frequently asked questions and provide background on less familiar topics. Articles like “The 5 Best Hair Styles for Teenagers” and “Keeping your Hair Clean and Tidy” are far more useful than broad discussions about hair.
Search engines give more weight to websites that update their information often. Copying and pasting material from another site without permission is unethical. In fact, search engines will penalise you for doing so. Create fresh, engaging material as your first priority.
Articles, artwork, and products should be updated on your website on a frequent basis. Site visitors who feel like they’ve learned something from their time with you are more likely to bookmark you and share what they’ve found with others. Web crawlers are much like any other readers, in that they like reading fresh content.
Linking your site to other reputable online sites is an important step in earning visitors’ confidence. Backlinks from widely visited, high-quality websites like social networking sites are highly valued by search engines. Gaining a link from a reputable source like The BBC website is a great way to boost your site’s search engine results, and you can do this with well-targeted, high-quality content.
This, however, cannot be made to happen by any means. Keep your website up-to-date and relevant by being knowledgeable about your subject matter, making that knowledge prominent, and presenting it clearly. If your site has helpful information, people will flock to it.
Search engines exist primarily to facilitate the discovery of relevant information. The greatest way to attract many visitors is to provide interesting articles, movies, and photographs that your audience will find useful. Keep your information fresh by updating it often.
Additionally, if you have a solid content strategy, you will be seen as an authority in your sector.
Work on your META DATA
It’s possible that your page’s title and meta description will be the very first things that people view when they come across your site. A user’s decision to click on your link or to leave the page might hinge solely on these elements. Make sure they pack a punch, since those few words have a lot of influence.
If you want to change the title or description of a page on your website, you can usually do it quickly and easily using your chosen website hosting platform. For instance, WordPress has two fields for you to fill out: “SEO title” and “meta description.”
A few things to keep in mind are listed below.
- Titles should be between 30 and 60 characters long.
- Make sure your meta description is under 160 characters.
- Be sure to use your desired keyword
- Express the page’s focus and distinguishing features to the user.
- Each page should have its own distinct title and meta description.
Don’t forget about your internal links
The use of relevant keywords in internal links improves the site’s usability. Many web pages go unvisited because traffic is unevenly distributed between sites. There is a huge opportunity here for SEO purposes.
An local SEO expert tested the impact of internal links on SEO by changing the way his site was structured. Seventy-six percent of the posts’ Google rankings improved after internal links were added (without altering the content). Awe-inspiring, right?
Google is better able to understand context through anchor text (the clickable information of a hyperlink) when internal links are used.
One of your articles should be included in a related article display.
But Google’s John Mueller says it might be counterproductive to have too many internal links on a single page. Simply said, if every page on a site is interlinked with every other page, search engines will not be able to understand the site’s hierarchy or the relative relevance of individual pages.
Search engines give more weight to sites that link to yours, particularly if the linking sites themselves are authoritative and well-known. These are known as backlinks, and you really can’t do much about them. Put your best foot forward and keep your fingers crossed.
The internal connection structure, however, is entirely within your command. In order to keep readers on your site for longer, you should include links to similar content. Anchor text refers to the words that readers click on to navigate from one page to another. If you want to boost the search engine rankings of a page that discusses men’s wigs on your site and that page is linked to from a page that discusses how to clean a hair piece, you could include the anchor text “men’s wigs” in the first paragraph of the second paragraph.
It’s important to employ internal links selectively and in a natural way. Due to its poor readability, search engines will ignore any paragraph that has just links. In addition, check that all of your connections are active. Search engines will lower your site’s ranking if they find broken links, which is evidence that you aren’t keeping up with site maintenance. Dead Link Checker is a useful tool for searching your website for broken links.
#3 Grab easy traffic from featured snippets
You may improve the performance of your written content by directly addressing the concerns of your target audience. Focusing on featured snippets is one strategy you may use.
Google now displays featured snippets at the top of the SERPs. Ideally, they should resolve the user’s issue without sending them to a new page. They come before the numerical results, making them easy to see, informative, and likely to draw in organic visitors. Sometimes, search engine results page (SERP) characteristics are used interchangeably.
Digital marketers are competing fiercely for these roles. You may impress one by tailoring your material to their interests. Even if you don’t end up getting a featured snippet, the tactics you use to try to earn one may make your content more useful to readers and boost your SEO.
Follow these steps:
Featured snippet optimization begins with selecting the desired material. Target the search intent and SERP feature of your choice.
Next, do your own search using that term to learn what results are now being highlighted. Take notes on the topic addressed and the author’s style.
Is it a table with bullets or a list with a different kind of format? Do you trust this data? What else is well regarded? Insights like this will help you refine your writing.
It’s time to make some changes to your material.
- Make sure the question and answer in your text match the one asked in the excerpt. After all, research has shown that material that poses a question is more likely to be selected as a featured snippet.
- Use headings and subheadings to organise your page. Use a subheading to aim for a certain SERP characteristic if it makes sense for your page. You may increase your search engine rating by using headers and subheadings to make your content more scannable.
- Last but not least, edit your page’s text for clarity. Avoid too flowery language and instead go for brief, to-the-point phrases (no more than 20 words). You want to avoid writing in run-on sentences and paragraphs, but your paragraphs shouldn’t be too lengthy either.
#4 Be aware of user experience
RankBrain may seem like something out of a science fiction book, so you’d be forgiven for not knowing what it is. Also, it’s a machine-learning strategy that helps Google rank websites more accurately.
To put it simply, RankBrain tracks how people interact with search results and modifies its algorithms appropriately. The percentage of visitors that immediately leave after clicking on a website’s link is known as the “bounce rate“. However, if people click on the result and spend some time on the site, the site’s score will go up (or stay at a higher ranking).
The site’s success is entirely dependent on user input.
Experts in search engine optimization (SEO) and Google’s RankBrain recommend selecting medium-tail keywords. If you optimise your website for a medium-tail keyword and are successful, your page’s rating will increase for that phrase and hundreds of related keywords thanks to RankBrain.
However, when performing its adjustments, RankBrain also takes into account the following:
- How long a person stays on your website during a visit (over 3 minutes is a good dwell time).
- “Click-through rate” (CTR) refers to the percentage of individuals who choose your search result after seeing it in a search engine.
Maintain a webpage that is neat and simple to use. Make sure that anybody who comes to your site knows exactly who you are and what you’re selling.
Put your keywords in the headers and use several headings to make your content more readable. In order to improve your search engine rankings, it is important to have headings that stand out.
The loading time of your site is also a ranking factor. If your site is slow, it will likely frustrate your visitors.
The last thing you need to do is to not have a mobile-friendly website. Websites that are difficult to see on a mobile device will now get a lower ranking in search results.
Reduce website load time
Market study conducted by Google found that 53% of mobile users abandoned a site that took longer than three seconds to load. Don’t waste their time with a site that loads at a slow speed.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights, Test My Site, and Pingdom are three tools you may use to evaluate your site’s performance. These resources provide comprehensive data for enhancing website speed. Scripts or pictures that are slow to load may be swapped out for faster alternatives.
WordPress users should disable any plugins that aren’t absolutely necessary for their site’s functionality. WordPress users may speed up page loads with the help of the caching plugin WP-Rocket.
Slow page loads have repercussions beyond the user experience. It may also have repercussions for search engine optimization. After all, your bounce rate will go up if visitors leave your site because of sluggish page loading times. One of the three Core Web Vitals used in ranking pages is how long it takes for the page to fully load.
Google PageSpeed Insights is a free SEO tool that provides you with a score between 0 and 100 on how quickly your desktop and mobile pages load.
Look for page components that might be impacting your load time if your page is taking too long to load. Is it possible, for instance, that you’ve installed a bunch of plugins on your site that aren’t necessary? Getting rid of these may help your website load faster.
#5 Go for a mix of high search volume and low search keywords
A good organic search strategy requires targeting both high-volume and low-volume keywords throughout the whole visitor’s journey.
Experts in search engine optimization (SEO) have shown that, owing to the greater specificity of the target audience for the latter, the number of searches for wide, early-interest keywords is frequently bigger than that of more specified, later-interest or even purchase-ready keywords. Consequently, if you discover that low-volume keywords have a superior conversion rate, don’t be afraid to go for them.
Blogs housed on the site may benefit from extensive keyword research. Monthly searches vary greatly, from over 120,000 at the high end to about 30 at the low end.
There is a need for creative thinking when using high-volume keywords.
#6 Update content that is close to top rankings
Search engine optimization (SEO) specialists advise finding near-first-place postings and reworking them. These articles may be located in Google Analytics by using an advanced filter to display just the search terms for which your average position (rank) is higher than 10 in the Acquisition » Search Console » Queries section (on page 2).
Rewrite those articles now. You can improve this article by adding more information, better examples, answers, statistics, pictures, and quotations from your contributors.
Focusing on depth rather than quantity is more likely to result in a piece that is both lengthy and effective. Develop the page until you feel so good about it that you want to get it printed and hung on the wall.
We may increase the success of this strategy by following these three guidelines:
- Verify the page’s overall rating to ensure you aren’t hurting the relevance of a superior term.
- Pay close attention to relevant subtopics as you rewrite, since they will show up in the “people also ask” part and the “similar searches” section at the bottom of the search results page.
- Schedule this assessment every three months as part of your content marketing strategy.
#7 Work on your backlinks
In order to increase your domain authority, it is necessary to get high-quality inbound links from authoritative websites and pages. Even while it would be great if “If you write it, people would link to it,” this is not a practical SEO strategy.
Connecting with other sites that have a higher domain or page authority and asking for links to our material is our key strategy for attracting high-quality backlinks.
If you want to rank well for a certain set of keywords, you may use free backlinks. Part of this is to utilise search engine optimization (SEO) tools to identify the websites that link to your competitor’s material, and then approach the most credible of those sites and ask them to link to yours.
Even while the importance of having other websites link to yours is waning, it is still a major ranking factor. Page rank, which is determined by the quantity and quality of inbound links to a website, is still used as a ranking element in Google’s algorithm.
New content possibilities might arise from working with prominent figures in your business. You may increase the likelihood that influential content producers and curators will spread the word about your new material by encouraging them to do so on their own social media channels and websites. If the tone and voice of influential content producers you find in your study are in line with your own company’s, you should give their material more weight than your own, especially if it has a higher page rank. Any website’s page rank may be seen in the Google toolbar’s Page rank.
Find influential people by using sites like buzzsumo.com and followerwonk.com. Get connections from Twitter and Facebook by doing interviews with industry experts or hosting contests.
A high-quality backlink is one that is located on a reputable external website and has a high likelihood of bringing you targeted visitors who are more likely to become paying customers. No external backlink is worth the time or effort if you suspect it will not offer you targeted visitors who are likely to make a purchase.
Be sure to include links back to your website and product pages in the descriptions of your videos on YouTube, as well as your channel pages, Facebook posts, Facebook cover images, Facebook about page, Twitter posts, a Twitter profile description, partners’ articles, and the websites of local media newspapers and magazines whenever they mention your business.
Verify that your affiliates are connecting to the correct product pages on your site. If you own a store inside a shopping mall or centre, for instance, it’s in your best interest to check that the mall’s website has proper links to your store’s page.
Your search engine rankings will improve as more sites connect to yours. Pitch the idea of linking to your site to the proprietors of similar sites. Give them a link to your site and ask them to do the same.
Pay attention to how good the linkages are. More beneficial than a dozen connections from obscure blogs is one that leads to your site from a reputable institution, such as a chamber of commerce or a university.
#8 Find negative SEO
If other sites have spammy links pointing to yours, it will be harder to boost your site’s organic search ranks.
Disavow any spammy external backlinks by using a service like ahrefs.com, Moz Link Explorer, or Majestic SEO to analyse your backlink profile.
#9 Think about traffic from other sources (YouTube)
Some marketers are ignoring the possibilities of video marketing.
We recommend focusing on quality rather than quantity when it comes to search engine optimization. Even if you have a lot of indexed pages, it doesn’t mean you’ll get more visitors from search engines.
To avoid being dismissed as uninteresting focus instead on important content that is genuinely fascinating and makes each reader want to read through the complete article.
Furthermore, video content has a great lot of untapped potential, which makes it useful for SEO and may lead to high levels of user engagement. A one-minute video is more likely to attract attention than a hundred-word article.
There is a huge current market, and future projections show that demand for internet video will only increase. By 2023, online video will make up 80 percent of all Internet traffic, according to Cisco. In addition, despite the plethora of movies accessible, 43% of viewers still say they want more.
Always get the most out of your videos by adhering to these rules:
- Maintain video accessibility by giving your older clips new names and describing what they include.
- Maximize the improvement to the video’s visual and sound quality.
- You need to integrate video into the overall design of the site.
#10 Have your site ready for voice search
Voice search should be persistently optimised. Voice searches will continue to be at the forefront of SEO news as the technology improves and becomes more generally accessible.
If it works with the brand’s goal, geo-targeted keywords are something worth trying out. This is why local SEO is so crucial.
Since the great majority of voice searches are performed at the neighbourhood level, this is particularly significant if you are a local business or if your target audience resides in a certain location.
The relevance of optimising for local voice searches in addition to ranking for both queries and answers. More than half of people are already using voice search for simple online searches, so making high-quality, voice search optimised FAQs might do wonders for the exposure of your content.
#11 Do not miss out on mobile first indexing
This piece of advice comes straight from the horse’s mouth, or rather, Google.
To begin, what does the term “mobile-first indexing” even refer to? As a result, the mobile version of your site is now the one that Google prioritises.
Even if you don’t have a mobile site, people will visit the one designed for desktop computers. If your site isn’t optimised for mobile devices, though, you may see a drop in traffic and ranks.
Google suggests converting to a responsive design if your mobile site’s URL looks like “m.rankersparadise.com.” or anything similar.
This is because, right now, Google only provides annotations for m-dot URLs and does not do a full index of them. By switching to a responsive design, Google can quickly and easily update the annotations to reflect the fact that the site is now optimised for mobile users.
#12 Record all changes and track ranking results
Using free and low-cost tools such as Moz, SpyFu.com, SEMRush.com, and Google Analytics, you can discover more about your website’s SEO performance and your visitors’ demographics (where they’re from, how long they spend on each page, and which search phrases they used to locate your site).
If you want to learn more about the usefulness of an analysis and how to do one on your own, see How to conduct a website analysis.
Keep learning SEO:
#1 Organic SEO Guide to Improve Google Rankings in Days
10 Most Important SEO Google Ranking Factors
Google My Business Optimization – [Improve Local Search Ranking]
Optimizing Site SEO with meta tags: Quick Start Guide
Why does my website have a high bounce rate?
Follow the link to buy backlinks that get proven ranking results.