The 13 best ways to improve your SEO

Where does your website traffic come from?

If you rely on people to find you through a Google search, search engine optimization (SEO) should be at the top of your priority list.

You won't be able to generate leads for your business if no one can find you.

Did you know that 93% of Internet experiences start with a search engine?

What happens after someone does a search?

The best result on Google has 33% chance to be clicked.

This means that if you're not number one on the page, you've missed a third of the potential traffic.

What's even more amazing is that 75% of people won't even click on the second page of the search results.

The reason why other sites rank higher than you on Google is because they are making a conscious effort to improve their rankings.

Luckily, it's not too late to get started.

There are a few things you can do to increase your chances of ranking higher on Google searches.

1. Improve the loading speed of your page

Your page load time is important for a number of reasons.

First of all, if your loading speed is too slow, Google will recognize it and penalize your ranking.

But a slow website also has an impact on how your website visitors interact with your pages.

As a result, these negative interactions will hurt your rankings.

Watch how dropout rates are increasing for websites that take too long to load:

What is a website that is too slow?

Research shows that 40% of visitors will abandon websites if the page takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

What is even more shocking is that 80% of these visitors will not return to this site.

This is terrible for your SEO because it kills traffic on your site.

But on the other hand, if your page loads quickly, people will keep coming back.

Google's algorithm recognizes the popularity of your website and adjusts your ranking accordingly.

If you want to test the speed of your website, there are online services such as GTmetrix available for free.

This will allow you to test your website from different locations around the world.

To learn more about how to improve the speed of your site, you can consult my article 4 tips to make your website load faster.

2. Produce high quality content

How often do you update your website?

If you haven't touched it since the day you built it, you probably don't have a good ranking right now.

To drive more traffic to your website and increase its popularity, you need to give visitors a reason to keep coming back.

Your content should be high quality, fresh, and relevant.

Another factor that influences your SEO ranking is what's called visit time.

It's about how long people spend on your website per visit.

If your site contains fresh, exciting, or current information, visitors will stay on your page longer and improve your visit time.

Websites that provide highly informative content generally have long downtime.

Here's something else to consider.

Google Chrome controls almost 45% of the market share of Internet browsers, making it the most popular browser in the world.

This number will continue to rise, as Chrome has also been the The most popular browser in 2021:

When users bookmark your website from a Google Chrome browser, it can help your SEO ranking.

High-quality and relevant content will increase the chances of your site being bookmarked by visitors.

3. Optimize your images

Images are essential to your website.

But you need to make sure they're optimized properly if you want these images to improve your SEO rankings.

I'm talking about factors like file format and size.

Huge images can slow down page load time, which, as I mentioned, hurts your rankings.

Resize or compress your images to optimize them.

You can also use your images to sneak into keywords by naming them accordingly.

For example, let's say you have a website that sells toiletries or other bath products.

Instead of naming an image like “shampoo1,” you can call it “best shampoo for long hair.”

You can also use keywords strategically in the title of your image as well as the caption or description.

4. Divide your content with header tags

Headers are another way to improve the user experience on your website.

They break down content and make it easier to read or navigate.

Plus, headers make everything more appealing, which is always beneficial.

If your website is just a wall of text, it will discourage people from spending a lot of time on it.

As a result, your SEO ranking will absorb the consequences.

Si your site is on WordPress, you can easily change the header tags.

I use header tags for all of my websites and blog posts.

If you are not using this tool, I highly recommend that you get started as soon as possible.

5. Start blogging

Blogging is great for your business.

It's an exceptional tool for lead generation and helps you engage with your website visitors.

But what most people don't realize is that blogging also improves SEO rankings.

Here's why.

As I mentioned before, producing fresh, up-to-date, and relevant content can draw people to your website and give them a reason to stay on your pages for a while.

Well, blogging is the perfect channel for you to do that.

If you can establish a large number of loyal readers, you can get a lot of traffic to your site on a daily basis.

Plus, you can incorporate other things I've talked about so far into your posts, like images and header tags.

Other elements, such as links, increased readability, and keywords, may also be incorporated into these posts. I will talk about it soon.

All of this has a positive impact on your search engine rankings.

6. Add more than text

Your website content doesn't have to be just written words.

As I said earlier, the photos are also great, but you can add more to improve your ranking.

Consider adding other media such as videos, slideshows, or audio to your site.

All of this can help improve the user experience.

Why?

For starters, consumers want to see more videos.

It is much easier to watch something than to read about it.

But there's a direct correlation between videos and other media sources on your website, and that's SEO ranking.

These features can dramatically improve the amount of time someone spends on your website.

Depending on the length of your videos, users may be on your page for several minutes.

If that happens, it will definitely increase your search rankings.

7. Make sure your site is readable

Keep your audience in mind when writing content on your website.

If you want people to visit your site and spend time on it, speak in terms that they can understand.

Don't try to look like a doctor or lawyer (even if you are one).

Your content should be written in a way that the majority of people can understand.

8. Fix broken links

If you use authoritative websites for your hyperlinks, you shouldn't have to worry about links breaking.

But it can always happen.

Broken links can crush your SEO rankings.

Plus, it doesn't look good when a link you provide to your visitors takes them to an invalid website.

You can use tools like Dr. Link Check to look for links with errors on your website:

You can use it to check your entire website or specific pages.

If you sign up, you can also set up your account to be verified automatically.

Each time a link disappears, you will be contacted immediately so that you can replace it.

You can also use this resource to monitor other websites that are relevant to your industry.

How can this help your SEO?

Well, if a link goes down on another site, you can let the webmaster know about that page and ask them to replace the dead link with a link to your website instead.

You're doing them a favor by letting them know about a problem with their site, so they might be willing to do you a favor in return.

It will drive more traffic to your website. Outbound links from other websites to your page will also help improve your SEO.

9. Optimize your site for mobile devices

As you know, the use of mobile devices is on the rise.

It's rising so fast that it's actually surpassed computers and laptops.

In fact, more than 60% of Google searches come from mobile devices.

Clearly, Google recognizes this and ranks sites accordingly.

Your website should be optimized for mobile users.

There is no way around that.

If your site is not optimized, it will hurt the user experience, which will hurt your rankings.

10. Format your page correctly

Take your time when you come up with a layout for your website.

It should be clean, clear, organized, and uncluttered.

Consider things like your font size and your typography.

Use colored text, bold, and italics.

Things like bullet points and checklists make it easy for visitors to navigate through your content.

Take a look at this example of Square:

It's super clean.

They have a simple image and a reasonable amount of text.

The way text is formatted makes it easy for people to read, especially with bullet points.

As you can see, Square also included various header tags and subtitles on their page.

If your website is cluttered with too many images, ads, ads, colors, and text blocks, it can feel untrustworthy.

The architecture and navigation of your site also fall into this category.

A clean format and design will improve your SEO ranking.

11. Provide appropriate contact information

Speaking of sounding untrustworthy, have you ever had trouble finding business contact information on a website?

For my part, it is a yes.

That should never happen.

All of your contact information should be clear and visible for Internet users to see.

The worst thing that can happen is for people to start reporting your website simply because you forgot to include your phone number, email address, and location.

It crushes your SEO.

12. Encourage sharing on social media

Every business and website should be active on social media.

I am not teaching you anything here.

But what's not as well known is that you can improve your SEO rankings if people share links to your website on social media.

One of the best ways to do this is to include social sharing icons all over your content.

You should also share links on your social media pages.

When this information appears on people's timelines, sharing them is just a click away.

13. Use keywords

Take a look at the components of the Google ranking algorithm:

Keywords play a major role in this formula.

You want to include words that people will search for throughout your content.

But do it in moderation.

If you bombard your site with keywords too quickly, Google will notice, and this will have a negative effect on your rankings.

The keywords should fit naturally into the sentences.

Include them in your header tags and even in image captions.

You should also use long-tail keywords, which are sentences of three or four words that could be found in a search.

For example, someone probably won't just look for the word “phone” when they're looking for something.

But they can type in the phrase “best phone for texting” as an alternative.

If your keywords match their search, your website will have a greater chance of ranking higher.

Conclusion

Search engine optimization is not only a fad that will soon disappear.

This is something your website should focus on now and in the future.

If you're just starting to focus on SEO, you're a bit late, but it's definitely not too late to implement the strategies I just talked about.

Don't get overwhelmed.

I don't expect you to make 14 drastic changes to your website overnight.

Start with a few and move on to the others.

Watch your results.

Checking your traffic and ranking your searches will allow you to validate your SEO strategy.

Very soon, you'll be making your way to the top search results on Google.

Who knows, you might even be able to claim that number one spot.

What have you done so far to improve search rankings on Google?

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