- 1.1 Focus on Featured Snippets
- 1.2 Check Your Content
- 1.3 Improve Your Backlink Strategy
- 1.4 Enhance User Experience
- 1.5 Captivating Titles And Headlines
- 1.6 Image Optimization
- 1.7 Don’t Ignore Meta Descriptions
It’s impossible to rank your website on top of the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) without optimizing the same. Therefore, a website has to be SEO-optimized from all angles.
It’s no longer a hidden fact that if your website doesn’t rank on the first page, users won’t bother visiting it. No matter how good or excellent your content is, almost 63% of Google users would never click on page two when they are searching for something online.
SEO professionals and digital marketers work day and night to get their websites ranked on top. However, a prudent SEO professional always sticks to time-tested and proven SEO solutions instead of frequently modifying their SEO strategy multiple times based on Google updates.
7 Effective SEO Techniques to Rank Your Website
Here are top SEO tricks and techniques to improve your website’s ranking on SERPs:
Focus on Featured Snippets
The most intrinsic ability of a featured snippet is its flexibility. All websites should aim to get their content featured on top of the SERP in the form of a featured snippet. So, if your content gets published as a featured snippet, you’ll be on top of the SERP. But transforming your content into the form of a snippet is not easy.
The choice of keywords should be perfect in this regard. According to SEMrush, over 55% of featured snippet items have used keywords comprising ten or more words. So, if you are using a single word as your content’s focus keyword, change it and shift to long-term keywords.
Another essential element of a featured snippet is the type of content. It should be written user-friendly, preferably describing all essential points a user may ask. Again, creating content keeping the users’ needs and queries in mind can help.
Check Your Content
In the context of SEO, content is still the king. The more exciting and interactive your content is, the better the results will be. You’ve to spend maximum time on it. Never shy away from writing new content, as it’s the soul of digital marketing and SEO. If you are not generating enough content, your website might lag behind others.
At the time of getting the content published, make sure all internal links and outward links are up-to-date and relevant. It can play a crucial role in getting your content indexed by Google and improving your overall rank.
Improve Your Backlink Strategy
It’s always a good sign when other websites (with high DA scores) use your website content as a reference link in their content. If these websites command high DA (Domain Authority) and PA (Page Authority) scores, they can do wonders for your overall SEO strategy.
Technically, this process is called a link-building exercise. It’s one of the most trusted and reliable ways of building brand authority. You can also contact a guest posting services provider to boost your backlink-building strategy. Guest posting is also a brilliant idea to present yourself as an influencer or expert in your preferred niche and share your thoughts with the world.
For example, suppose you sell fashion garments online, and a reputed fashion magazine mentions your URL in one of their articles. In that case, it quickly helps you grab the attention of the readers who are reading that magazine. Guest posting works precisely in the same manner. So when reputed organizations use your website content as a referral link, it’s indeed a matter of happiness and conviction.
Enhance User Experience
In a customer-centric environment, you can’t ignore the overwhelming relevance of user experience in SEO. If users don’t visit your website or your bounce rate is high, you need to revamp the site or, more possibly, get the site redesigned from scratch.
The message is clear. Your website should provide an enhanced user experience to visitors every single time. Some of the critical technical aspects through which you can improve users’ experience are the website’s responsiveness, smooth navigation panel, page loading speed (should be around 1-2 seconds), HD images, attractive fonts, and informative content that answers users’ intent.
Captivating Titles And Headlines
Titles and headlines matter. When a reader makes a search query online, they get plenty of relevant results on search engines in a few seconds. But the links they click eventually depend upon the quality of the titles. So when the content title is more relevant and specific to users’ intent, the better their chance of getting read and shared will be.
Make your content title short and specific to what your relevant customers might be searching for online. The title should have a focus keyword relevant to the content.
Every time you write an article or publish a blog online, make sure the content is informative and bears a catchy title.
Image Optimization
One of the critical SEO aspects that many marketers ignore is image optimization. You’d be surprised to know that more than 20% of all US web searches are generated on Google Images. Therefore, all images you post on your website must be optimized from all angles.
While selecting pictures, you should go for brighter HD images, preferably with no content in them. The image should be plain but exciting and must be of compatible size. The dimensions of your pictures should not go over 800 x 800 pixels. All photos must carry proper ALT tags and file names.
Don’t Ignore Meta Descriptions
A meta description is a small summary of the content bearing the website’s HTML code. When a user searches for relevant keywords, relevant meta descriptions appear along with the results and meta titles. Try to write an informative meta description in not more than 150 characters, including your focus keyword in it.
These days, most CMS (Content Management Systems) allow you to easily edit the meta description section in a visual mode without any HTML codes! So, if you run a WordPress-based website, Yoast SEO can be the best option for you.
In Conclusion
Keeping pace with Google’s frequent algorithm updates can be frustrating. It’s important to understand that you need not implement all Google algorithm-related updates in one go. Instead, you should try some of the tested SEO techniques mentioned above and see which ones work for you and which ones do not.