Does it feel like your website is not ranked high enough in search engines? Maybe you want to appear on the first page, but it seems like your company’s website has been on the second page for some time now. Either way, it all boils down to how well you are handling your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. SEO is the process of improving your site to increase its visibility for relevant searches. This means that the better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business, according to Search Engine Land. As a marketer, it is important that you understand the basic concepts of SEO and have an SEO-friendly website.
To get you started on the right track, we have compiled six effective tips that will help improve your search engine ranking!
Create Quality Content
One of the most effective things that marketers can do is prioritize creating quality content that people love. In fact, great content can increase organic traffic growth and engage visitors. The more that site visitors love your content, the longer they will stay on your page—whether it is an informative blog post, long-form content, infographic or listicle. Because this type of content is engaging, your audience is more likely to share it. Plus, it also better helps your audience better understand your company.
Optimize On-Page Elements
One essential SEO task that marketers must complete is the optimization of on-page elements. While small but overlooked, page titles, meta descriptions, URLS and header tags can significantly impact your search engine ranking and must be optimized. According to Search Engine Journal, “on-page SEO is important because it helps search engines understand your website and its content, as well as identify whether it is relevant to a searcher's query.” A few simple things you can do include clear, catchy page titles, meta descriptions with target keywords, and short and descriptive URLs.
Enhance User Experience
User experience means everything when it comes to SEO. Believe it or not, user experience can have a serious impact on your search engine ranking. Bad user experiences can lead to increases bounce rates that negatively affect your site performance. You will want to make sure that you have a reasonable page load time, and all clickable elements are working properly. Additional factors that can positively influence the user experience include the page layout, color scheme and typography.
Ensure Mobile Friendliness
From apps to websites, mobile friendliness matters for almost everything in the digital world. But did you know that mobile friendliness is crucial to SEO? Studies have shown that almost three quarters (72.6 percent) of internet users will access the web solely via their smartphones by 2025, according to CNBC. This means that with mobile searches being conducted daily, you can lose out on potential visitors and lower your visibility if you do not make mobile SEO a priority. Not sure if your website is mobile-friendly? Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test can help!
Improve Your Backlink Profile
Your backlink profile, a description of the sites that link to your website, speaks volumes about the credibility of your website and information when authority sites link back to you. For example, “Google monitors which sites link to you, trusting their visitors to you and that reputable sites are going to link to other reputable sites while spam sites likely link to other poor-quality sites,” according to BrightEdge. When search engines like Google notice that you are receiving several links form high-authority sites, they will assume that your website has credible and useful information. Therefore, you must remove all bad backlinks once you are aware of them.
Leverage Social Media
Social media is easily one of the most popular ways to promote content and increase site traffic. It has been used to reach mass audiences while gaining loyal followers through engagement and building credibility. All that you must do is be present on social media, promote your content, and encourage your followers to share your content with their network or followers. Social media tools like Planoly, Buffer and CoSchedule can help you analyze the performance of your posts, best times to post, and analytics so that you can reach your audience in the most effective way.
