Is that a yes?
Every minute of the day, millions of people all over the world are searching the world wide web for products, services and information of their interest.
And you would like Google to suggest your site to visitors who are searching for something related to your product or service. Wouldn’t you?
The challenge however is that in addition to the vast existing repository of information on the internet, an enormous amount of new content is created and uploaded every moment making this an extremely crowded space.
The goal of being found by Google or any other search engine and shown as one of the top results of any organic search can therefore be quite a challenge.
Is it difficult? Yes, but not impossible!
The best way to ensure that you show up on those searches is to consciously improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rankings. A host of factors ranging from your content quality, the headline you choose, and even page structure can have a significant impact on your SEO efforts.
What is SEO?
In simple words, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process that helps your content/ website rank high on a search engine (like Google search) and show up as one of the top results when anyone searches for a certain keyword that they are exploring.
Even though it is not formulated in any fixed way, you can keep in mind some basic facts along with the adoption and implementation of a few simple modifications to help improve your SEO ranking results considerably.
Read on to understand how best to improve your SEO capabilities.
Tips on Improving SEO
Regularly Produce and Upload Good Quality Content
Good quality content that is informative, accurate and recent enhances the site’s authority and relevance. This can go a long way in helping your site be discovered and promoted up in terms of SEO rankings.
Gone are the days when all you needed was to stuff keywords even if the content did not make sense. Search engines algorithms have smartened up!
Recently Google made the following announcement – “Several times a year, we make significant, broad changes to our search algorithms and systems. We refer to these as “core updates.” They’re designed to ensure that overall, we’re delivering on our mission to present relevant and authoritative content to searchers”.
Create content to enhance the customer experience at the website rather than just to rank high on search engines.
In order to keep the site and its content useful and relevant, it is also wise to update your content periodically at regular intervals. This will give the visitors a reason to come back to visit your site, making it more credible to Google.
Always keep in mind that readers prefer easy to understand content that is written with their needs and requirements in mind. In that sense, blogging can also be a great way to engage with visitors to the website and improve traffic (and thereby SEO rankings).
Use the right Keywords
“Keywords” are basically the words or phrases that people type into the search bar when trying to search for information on whatever they are looking for.
Every piece of content is identified by the Keywords used and hence a good amount of thought and research should be dedicated while coining the best keywords related to your content. Thankfully, there are many resources – free as well as paid ones- that are available on the web to assist you in doing effective and efficient Keyword research.
Using carefully thought out and specifically targeted keywords for the URL, the headline, and for every page of the website is strategic and can have a considerable influence on its SEO rankings. So think of an answer to the question – “what words do I want to be found for?”. Those are your keywords. Keep a long list and use a few of those strategically. Remember, the keywords will change for different articles, product descriptions, or headlines you write. However, continue to stay relevant to your product or service offering when you choose them.
Make use of unique and relevant Meta descriptions
Meta descriptions (that is basically a HTML tag used to summarize the web page’s content) are extremely important as they provide more information about the content of the page to the visitor. This applies both for the Title metadata that shows up as headline within search engine results, and even the Description metadata that provides an interesting and engaging description of the contents of the site that could prompt the visitor to explore further.
Title tags that show up in the tab of the browser and alt tags or alternative text descriptions to describe your visual and video media should also be well optimized and used strategically.
Search engines sometimes pick up these meta descriptions in search results and this makes it that much easier for you to be found online!
Add Links
Inserting relevant links (from one website to a page on another website) into the text also adds value to your readers and helps improve the site’s SEO capabilities. You could also add internal links that can help direct visitors to other pages on your website.
While using links is a smart option, it is important to make sure that such links are of good quality, that they are adding value, and have been made to the right resources. Being supportive of each other can go a long way in boosting business opportunities and thus encouraging other related and trustworthy and authoritative sites to link you is a good idea.
https://blog.goshopmatic.com/get-yourself-discovered-online/
Leverage Social Media
Using Social media engagement strategically (by sharing links and improving brand visibility) can have an impact too. As more people share, like or comment on your content on social media, it creates a buzz and interest that indirectly has a positive effect on SEO rankings.
Utilize Web Analytics and SEO
No one can look away from leveraging Web Analytics to improve SEO rankings in this data-driven age. Most ecommerce platforms like Shopmatic can provide the necessary and relevant analytics data, and Google Web Analytics can provide some useful insights for SEO.
https://support.goshopmatic.com/shopmatic-support/business-intelligence-data-analytics/
Analysis of data related to the website traffic and also the user experience at your site can help you make the necessary changes that could positively impact search rankings.
Another data point to look out for is the “Bounce Rate” (the number of visitors who enter your site and then leave it soon). Sites with high bounce rates are typically not ranked well on Google searches.
Maintain a Well Optimized Site
Research reveals that people expect the site/ page to load within 3secs. Anything beyond that is considered slow and visitors would rather move on than wait for the page to load. Moreover, slow loading pages have an adverse impact on rankings by Google.
Large pictures and image files sometimes take very long to load. There is a need to size them right and optimize them. Remove anything that slows down your site to improve your SEO rankings.
With more than half of all Google searches coming from mobile devices, the relevance of your website’s mobile compatibility can’t be overemphasized. This is another area of optimization that you should ensure for good SEO results.
Visitors prefer a clean and well-organized website that is well formatted and easy to navigate and an improvement in website traffic helps in ranking the site higher on Google searches.
Appearing as one of the top outcomes (or even on the first page) of a Google search while not easy is not impossible either.
It is a continuous process and the outcomes of every change implemented on traffic to your website and search rankings should be monitored to help validate the success of your SEO strategy.
Today, it’s not about ‘Get the Traffic’ — It’s about ‘Get the Targeted and Relevant Traffic.’ – Adam Audette
So go get them!
