As a business owner, you may know by now that in order to be successful you need to rank high on Google. And in order to rank high on Google, you need to follow the best SEO practices. But what are the best SEO practices?
You see, SEO has changed a lot in the past few years. What worked before may not work now. And what works now may not work in the future. That’s why it’s important to stay up-to-date on the latest SEO trends and best practices.
I was once super confused about SEO. I mean, there are so many things to think about – keywords, backlinks, SERP features, etc. And it seems like the rules are always changing. But that my friends, is the whirlwind of living the SEO life. Like so many other things, it’s always evolving, and you have to keep up with the latest trends if you want to stay ahead of the curve.
But don’t worry, this is my jam and I’m excited to share some tips with you to keep you aware of what to think about. In this article, I’m going to share with you the best SEO practices that you should follow in order to rank higher on Google. By following these best practices, you can ensure that your website will rank highly on Google, and attract more traffic. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
What Is Meant by “SEO Best Practices”?
SEO best practices are the actions you take to improve your website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). By following SEO best practices, you can improve your website’s visibility, click-through rate, and organic traffic.
In other words, SEO best practices are the guidelines followed by SEO experts to rank their websites higher on SERPs. SEO is a complex and ever-changing field. And as Google continues to update its algorithms, the best practices also change. That’s why it’s important to stay up-to-date on the latest trends.
What Is Organic Traffic?
Organic traffic is the traffic that comes to your website through unpaid or natural search results. In other words, it’s the traffic you get when someone types a keyword into Google and clicks on your website.
Organic traffic results in a significantly higher number of conversions, depending on the search algorithm and the placement of the link on the page. This traffic is extremely beneficial for building a good reputation, generating good links, and driving more traffic to your site. It can also help you increase the average time on site.
Organic traffic is important because it is the most sustainable source of traffic. Unlike paid ads, that will dip into your budget, and will stop working as soon as you stop paying for them. In comparison, organic traffic will continue to flow to your website as long as you continue to produce high-quality content.
Here are the ten SEO best practices to boost your website’s organic traffic and rank higher in search engines:
- Target a Topic with “Search Traffic Potential.”
When deciding on a topic to write about, it’s important to consider its search traffic potential. In other words, you want to choose a topic that people are actually searching for.
Keyword research may tell you a lot about what people are searching for, but it doesn’t always tell you the intent behind those searches.
To get a better understanding of the intent behind a keyword, you can use a free tool like Google’s Keyword Planner tool. Just enter a keyword into the tool, and it will show you the average monthly searches for that keyword, as well as the competition level. There are paid versions with more accurate and complex information, but either way, you will be in a good place.
Additionally, you can use Google Trends to see how a keyword’s popularity has changed over time. This information can help you decide if a keyword is worth targeting.
One of the best ways to target a topic with high search traffic potential is to use longtail keywords. Longtail keywords are specific, niche-related keywords that have lower search volume but higher conversion rates.
For example, instead of targeting the keyword “shoes,” you could target the longtail keyword “women’s black leather loafers.” By targeting a longtail keyword, you have a better chance of ranking on the first page of Google.
You can use SEO tools for target keyword research in order to gain ideas about more potential keywords as well.
- Google keyword planner
- Ahrefs
- Ubersuggest
- SEMrush
- SECockpit
- Moz
- Keyword everywhere
- KWfinder
- Understand the Search Intent
Once you’ve selected a keyword to target, it’s important to understand the search intent behind that keyword. In other words, what is the person who is searching for this keyword looking to accomplish?
The term “search intent” or the “user intent” is used to define and explain the main cause or the intent of an online search.
For instance, people looking for a “tomato sauce recipe” do not want to see the product pages. They’re searching this with the learning intention and not the buying intention.
Hence it is really important to understand the search intent of your target audience in order to rank higher. Search intent is one of the most crucial ranking factors for Google.
There are four types of search intent:
i. Navigational:
The person is looking for a specific website. For example, they may type “Facebook” into Google.
ii. Informational:
The person is looking for information on a specific topic. For example, they may type “how to start a blog.”
iii. Commercial:
The person is looking to buy something. For example, they may type “best cameras for vlogging.”
iv. Transactional:
The person is looking to complete a transaction, such as buying a product or signing up for a service. For example, they may type “buy Canon EOS Rebel T6i.”
It’s important to understand the search intent behind a keyword because it will determine the kind of content you create.
For example, if you’re targeting the keyword “best cameras for vlogging,” you would want to create a blog post or video review of different cameras. On the other hand, if you’re targeting the keyword “buy Canon EOS Rebel T6i,” you would want to create a product page on your website.
- Write SEO-Optimized Content with Unique Titles and Meta Descriptions
Once you’ve selected a keyword to target, it’s important to create SEO-optimized content. This means that your content should be designed to rank high on Google.
There are a few things you can do to make sure your content is SEO-optimized:
i. Use the keyword in the title of your article.
ii. Use the keyword in the first 100 words of your article.
iii. Use the keyword throughout the body of your article.
iv. Use LSI keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing keywords) throughout the body of your article. LSI keywords are related keywords that help Google understand the topic of your article.
v. Use the keyword in your meta description.
vi. Include images and videos in your article.
vii. Use external links to reputable websites.
viii. Internal links to other articles on your website.
ix. Make sure your article is well-written and free of grammar and spelling errors.
By following these tips, you can be sure that your content is optimized for Google and has a better chance of ranking high in search results.
- Optimize the Loading Speed of Your Site
One of the signals Google uses to rank websites is site speed. In other words, how fast does your website load?
A fast website is important for two reasons:
First, a fast website provides a better user experience. No one wants to wait around for a slow website to load.
Second, Google has stated that site speed is a ranking factor. This means that if your website loads slowly, it could hurt your chances of ranking high in search results.
Page performance is influenced by a variety of factors, including your site’s code, images, and server location.
Google’s Pagespeed Insight tool can give you a basic idea of how your pages perform. Simply enter a URL, and you’ll be given a score between 0 and 100, as well as suggestions for improvement.
You can log in to Google Search Console and look at the Speed report to find a solution. It is an amazing SEO tool and will show you which web pages are taking the longest to load on desktop and mobile, as well as why they are taking so long.
General tips for keeping the loading speed fast:
- Use a fast host or configure a fast infrastructure
- Use Gzip for file compression.
- Use a CDN
- Reduce the number of HTTP requests
- Streamline your HTML
- Minify CSS and JavaScript
- Optimize images for faster page load time
- Clean up your database
- Clean up your media library
- Avoid URL redirects
- Use Expires Headers
- Make Your Image Files SEO-Friendly
In addition to optimizing the text on your website, it’s also important to optimize your images. Image optimization is useful for improving your Google Images search engine rankings. According to the latest Google announcement, optimized photos can boost your page rankings in Google image searches.
When you save an image to your computer, be sure to give it a descriptive file name. For example, instead of naming an image “IMG_1234.jpg,” you could name it “black-leather-loafers.jpg.”
In addition to giving your image files descriptive names, you should also add alt text to your images. Alt-text is a short description of an image that appears when the image can’t be displayed.
Adding alt text helps Google understand what the image is about and can help your website rank higher in Google Image search results.
To add alt text to an image in WordPress, simply click on the image and then add your alt text in the “Alt Text” field.
If you’re using another CMS, be sure to check their documentation on how to add alt text to images.
- Make Use of Internal Links
Internal links are links from one page on your website to another page on your website. They help search engines crawl your website and understand the hierarchy of your pages.
Internal links are also a great way to keep readers engaged on your website. By linking to other relevant articles or products on your website, you can keep readers engaged and reduce your bounce rate.
One of the easiest things to do to improve your search engine rankings is to link to other web pages within your own site. Simply make a connection between two pages on your site by adding a link between them.
However, you shouldn’t just start plugging too many internal links into the network. Internal linking is helpful for Google’s crawl bots that will move from one page to another to boost your site’s SEO.
If you want to maximize the usefulness of internal links, consider the following recommendations.
Use Keyword-Rich Anchor Text: Anchor text is used by Google to determine the topic of a page. The anchor language in these connections, for example, aids Google in determining what each website is about.
Naturally, you’ll want to employ anchor text that contains your target keywords.
Distribute domain authority to pages that need it: You can distribute the link juice (domain authority) of a page by linking to other pages on your website.
This is helpful if you have a page with low authority that isn’t ranking as well as you’d like. By linking to it from other pages, you can give it a boost in search engines.
By linking to a page with a lot of authority, you’re essentially vouching for that page. This can help increase the authority of the page you’re linking to.
Just make sure not to overdo it. Too many internal links can be seen as spammy, and it can actually hurt the ranking of your pages.
- Publicize Your Posts on Social Media
Once you’ve published a piece of content, it’s important to share it on social media. This will help to increase its reach and amplify its message.
When sharing your content on social media, be sure to use relevant hashtags and include a call to action. A call-to-action is an instruction that tells the reader what you want them to do, such as “click here to read the full article.”
Additionally, you can use social media to promote your content in other ways. For example, you can run ads on Facebook or Twitter, or use Instagram’s Stories feature to share a sneak preview of your latest blog post.
You can also share your information on Quora, Slack, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Facebook groups, which are all relevant, high-traffic areas. YouTube videos are also a great way to engage with the audience and build a relationship with them.
- To Help Answer Questions, Try Using Google’s People Also Ask Feature
People Also Ask questions is a feature on Google. You can try to do this as well to increase your website’s organic traffic. Searching Google for your topic of interest can help you dig deeper and uncover the questions people actually have.
Most of the people who ask these sorts of questions are business owners looking for concrete information.
By catering your content to a specific demographic, you can attract that audience’s interest and turn them into regular visitors.
If you’re a blogger looking for content ideas, try searching for questions on Google’s People Also Ask feature.
If you publish content in response to questions your users have actually asked, you will see more traffic on your page. This will also help in local SEO for your web page.
- Create Remarkable Content
One of the best ways to improve your website’s SEO is to create remarkable content.
Remarkable content is content that is truly unique and stands out from the rest and is the signature of your brand. t’s the kind of content that people can’t help but share with their friends and followers.
Creating remarkable content can feel like a challenge, but it’s worth it because it can help attract exactly what you are looking for. You know those special social shares and even asks for others to feature links in your articles. This can all lead to higher rankings on Google.
Not sure where to start? Check out these tips for creating remarkable content:
- Come up with a unique angle on a popular topic.
- Do extensive research and go deep on a niche topic.
- Create something truly original, like an infographic or an interactive tool.
- Tell a personal story that resonates with your audience.
- Publish in-depth case studies or expert interviews.
Whatever you do, make sure your content is well-written and engaging. If it’s not, people won’t want to share it.
- Enhance the User Experience on Your Website
Boosting your site’s UX (User Experience) has direct and indirect effects on search engine optimization. Search engine optimization (SEO) can benefit immediately from UX improvements because Google can tell when users are “Pogo sticking” after arriving at your site from the search results.
If enough people navigate away from your site and into the search engine results page without finding what they were looking for, Google may lower your site’s ranking on the search results page.
Pogo sticking is a sign of weak content and a reduction in ranking. Google Analytics can provide a proxy measurement of Pogo stickiness.
If your page has a high bounce rate, it may be because visitors aren’t finding the information they were seeking.
To some extent, search engine optimization (SEO) benefits from user-friendliness because people are more likely to link to and promote sites that they enjoy using.
So, if your site is difficult to use, has a lot of broken links, and employs invasive popups and adverts, people will not link to it (even if your TV is excellent.).
So, certainly, UX is something that every web page owner should consider.
Final Thoughts!
How do you feel? Do you feel like maybe you can begin to tackle the SEO feat? Just know, by following the tips in this guide, you can be sure that your website is optimized for Google and has a better chance of ranking high in search results. Creating SEO-optimized content, optimizing your images, and promoting your content are all great ways to improve your website’s SEO.
When it comes to SEO, there’s no “quick fix” or easy way to guarantee high rankings on Google. However, by following the best practices outlined in this guide, you can give your website the best chance of ranking high in search results. And remember, SEO is an ongoing process. Google is constantly changing its algorithm, so it’s important to keep up with the latest SEO news and trends, and it is imperative to get the visibility you deserve. Boom!
Consistency and patience is the key to a higher ranking on Google. You got this! We got this together!
In the meantime, if you want to learn more about SEO or you are interested in a curated SEO plan, made just for you, connect with Tamika Carlton, to at the very least, double your revenue! Oh, and coming up with blog content is a task in itself. If you are tired of that life too, no need to stress, sign up for our blog subscription to get consistent SEO-optimized content relevant to your ideal customers!