Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of improving your website’s ranking on Google and other search engines by using keywords, links, and content.
The practice has become increasingly complex in recent years as search algorithms have grown more sophisticated.
While there’s no surefire way to guarantee your site will appear at the top of all search results, you can take certain steps to help your SEO efforts and boost your SERP rankings—and this article will tell you how to do just that.
1) Add Visuals
Nearly half of U.S. internet users are visual learners, meaning they’d rather look at a picture than read a text block.
While written content still reigns supreme in search engine optimization (search engine optimization is still very much reliant on website content), visual content can be a powerful tool that complements your strategy.
One way you can use visuals on your website is by adding images with alt tags that answer commonly searched questions, such as What time does your store close?
If you sell products online, infographics can also be great assets—if they’re optimized for search engines.
2) Get Listed in Local Directories
Local directories are a good place to start if you’re looking for a source of quick citations. While these listings won’t help your rankings (citations take time to accrue and impact), they can be good traffic sources.
Make sure you fill out all your information on each listing – phone number, hours, etc.
Then try connecting with them via social media, so they know who you are when someone looks for your business on their site.
3) Link Out To Authority Sites
Some of your competitors will have already built up authority in their niche. If you can link out to them, you’ll begin establishing yourself as an authority by association.
Just be sure that when you do so, you offer real value to your readers—don’t just link out willy-nilly.
Ensure your content provides real insight or analysis before pointing folks off to someone else’s site. Always link back, too—it strengthens your inbound links and helps prevent Google from penalizing you for bad inbound link practices (which they regularly do).
And don’t forget that there are two sides to every link: When you gain an authoritative backlink from another website, it also helps push their domain name up in Google rankings.
4)Improve Your Page Loading Speed
In 2014, Google’s search ranking algorithm began favoring fast-loading sites over slow ones.
You may need to look at your page speed if you’re not seeing much movement in your site rankings. Page loading speed is critical for several reasons:
A quick load time sends a clear signal that you care about user experience, which can potentially give you an edge in SERPs. And when users find what they’re looking for quickly, it positively impacts their perception of your brand (and even boosts conversions).
If your site loads slowly, don’t panic: there are many optimizations you can make (both onsite and off) that will reduce load times significantly without adding any additional effort or code.
5) Add Schema Markup
Optimizing your content for search engines is hard work—but a lot of that hard work actually happens behind the scenes.
A good example is Schema markup, which lets search engines know what your page is about without needing to include many terms in your text.
By utilizing structured data in your website’s source code, you can effectively remove some of the burdens from Google’s crawlers, who don’t have time to read every single word on every single page.
6) Set Up Google Analytics
The Google Analytics plugin for WordPress is one of your most valuable tools for making informed changes to your website’s structure. You need at least one Google Analytics account, whether you use it or not because Google sets a cookie when you visit their site.
Because of that cookie, Analytics can tell what search queries are sending traffic your way. Knowing these numbers will allow you to effectively tweak your content and website copy for search engine results pages (SERPs).
But first, we must set up our tracking account with Google Analytics. Here’s how
After completing your Google Analytics setup, you want to get into as much detail as possible.
Do you want to know what post gets what traffic? What city do most of your traffic come from? These questions—and more—are all answered under Acquisition>Traffic Sources > Channels.
This section will show how often people click through from different locations on web pages such as directories and ads versus direct navigation straight through to your website content.
All those clicks increase over time and give clues about why some posts perform better than others in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
7) Use Keywords and Headings Correctly
There are two main factors to consider when thinking about keywords: what words your audience is using and what words search engines are looking for.
If you have a plumbing business, you might want to include keywords such as a plumber, pipe repair, or sewer backup.
Think about how someone searching for your services would use these terms.
This can help your ranking on Google if you get enough of these searches. However, it’s also important that you aren’t keyword stuffing—or using an unnatural amount of those keywords on your page—so that search engines don’t see you as spammy.
It’s best not to repeat a single keyword more than 3-5 times per page; including the most frequently used phrases in your copy once per paragraph is ideal.
If you want to appear higher in search engine results pages, you need to focus on both onpage and offpage SEO. Onpage SEO includes optimizing your website for certain keywords and phrases, as well as making sure your site is easy to navigate. Offpage SEO, on the other hand, refers to things like link building and social media engagement. By following these tips, you can boost your SEO and start climbing the SERP rankings.