If you are interested in increasing your overall traffic and brand awareness, you will have to understand the key concepts of search engine optimization (SEO). For example, there are literally thousands of people who are looking at content just like yours, at any given point in time. You can help out by guiding them to your site to create a win-win situation for everyone!
According to a research survey conducted by HubSpot, around 80 percent of a website’s traffic usually begins with a search query. That’s why learning the proper SEO techniques so very important.
However, staying on top of the SEO game takes a whole lot of research and trial and error. Google’s algorithms are updated every few weeks, so it is important to stay tuned into the very latest news.
Gone are the days when peppering a few short-tail keywords was all it took to generate hits. Google is evolving and getting smarter day by day and it requires a totally new approach to your SEO strategy. Keeping this in mind, let us check out the various SEO methods and techniques that you can use to turbocharge your SEO efforts today:
1.) The Need for Speed
Always remember that the slower the site, the lesser the chance of the visitor staying on your site long enough to make a purchase. If the site lags a bit, the potential customer will simply move on to a faster one and your competitors will win out in the long run. Apart from that, Google does not like slow sites and punishes them accordingly.
In July 2028, Google launched a speed update that rewarded sites that loaded faster by placing them on top of the search engine rankings. A study was conducted that showed that pages that rank at the top of Google’s first page were loading much faster compared to sites that rank on the bottom of page one.
As of now, speed is one of the most crucial factors when it comes to gaining access to that coveted top ten list on Google’s main page.
Another important reason to increase speed is that it will cut down on your bounce rate. If a visitor does not stay at a site for more than a few seconds, he is said to have bounced off. Google checks the bounce rate of a site and if it is high, the site is automatically demoted in its rankings. You can always test your site’s speed at webstest.org to get a general idea of the overall speed of your page.
Here are a few helpful pointers that will help speed up your site:
- You should compress your website’s images and pictures
- Move to a better host if your current one shows signs of latency
- Reduce your web page’s file size
- Delete all unnecessary 3rd party scripts
2.) Content Is King
Do you update your website regularly?
If you are using the same stale content since the day you launched it, you won’t be ranking very high in terms of SEO rankings, right now.
It is very simple really. If you are truly committed to driving your target audience and other traffic to your website, you will have to give them a reason to keep coming back again and again.
The only way to do that is to ensure that your content is of very high quality, and it is also fresh and relevant. If it is interesting enough, it will increase your dwell time. This relates to the total number of minutes that people will spend on your website, per visit.
If your site is constantly updated with exciting and newsworthy information, your audience will spend a long time browsing your site and this will lead to an improvement in your dwell time. The longer an individual remains on a site, the higher will google rank it in its list.
3.) Optimize Your Pictures and Images
There is no doubt that a picture is a lot more attractive when compared to simple text, and this is why great visual imagery plays such a key role in the success of a website.But you will need to make sure your images are optimized properly so that you will be able to improve your SEO ranking. A really large file will look awesome, but it can also slow down your site as it loads, and you really don’t want that.
You should resize or even compress your pictures to optimize them. Apart from that, you can also use alt titles and descriptions to sneak in the appropriate keywords that will help google to zero onto your site.
For example, let us say you have an e-commerce website that deals in apparel and other fashion wear. Instead of naming your product pictures as hoodie1 or hoodie2, you can name them as the most fashionable hoodie for this winter.
You can also use short keywords in the main title of your image and use long-tail ones in the caption and description.
4.) Use Multiple Headers
Headings are another great way to improve the overall user experience on your site. Properly placed headers can easily break up the monotony of your content and make it much easier to skim or read. Plus, well-presented headers can also make everything lookthat much more appealing and can lead to longer dwell times.
Suppose your site is just a great big chunk of text, do you really think people would want to spend a lot of time reading it all? The short answer is no, the vast majority of the people would simply move on to other sites. Unfortunately, your search engine optimization efforts and ranking will start to suffer. Changing and adding headers every few paragraphs is an easy way of shoring up your SEO efforts.Always remember that you have only seven seconds to grab the visitor’s attention. If you can do that, the odds are that they will stick around for a whole lot longer.
5.) The Virtues of Blogging
Let there be no doubt about it. Blogging is absolutely great for your business website! In fact, it is an outstanding tool when it comes to lead generation and helping you engage with your target audience. While this is all well and good, few people realize that blogging has the potential to really ramp up your SEO rankings.
People are attracted to fresh and relevant content and they linger on the site long enough to consume it. Here blogs are by far and large, one of the best mediums to accomplish this.
If your blog becomes popular enough to establish its own fan base of faithful readers, you will be able to get plenty of traffic with high dwell times on a daily basis.Throw in named images and multiple header tags and you can increase your traffic a whole lot more.
6.) Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions act as small magnets to catch the attention of a person scrolling the web and looking for a certain type of information. Think of it as a mini-snippet that can stop a person’s web browsing for a few seconds. If the description has been written properly, the visitor might click on to your site to read the whole article or blog. In both cases, it will lead to an increase in the activity levels of your site.
7.) Keyword Still Remains the Key
In the recent past, many SEO strategies used to revolve around focus and meta keywords and the like. Yes, it is true that to this day, keyword density plays a vital role in a well-rounded SEO strategy. However, it has been progressively outshone by an increasing reliance and focus on using the correct keyword and repeating it the right number of times.
Simple words and short tail keywords are now being discarded in favor of targeted keywords that will enable Google to zero onto your website.
Here, it is very important to understand that user intent is more important when compared to a simple volume. For example, just writing SEO as a keyword will not suffice due to the massive number of sites related to this topic. After all, the average web surfers today are both net savvy as well as knowledgeable enough to write long-tail keywords in the search box. They know exactly what they want and how much they are willing to pay for it.
For example, if you sell shaving kits, using the term razor won’t be good enough. You will have to include the specific attributes of your razor into the mix, along with its uniqueness. The best triple-blade razor in the US is a much better keyword. It highlights the fact that you have a triple-blade razor and it is available in a specific geographic location. This way, anyone looking for a really good shaving system in the US, will be able to reach your site by typing in this long-tail keyword.
8.) Fix Broken Links
If your site has multiple links and most of them are broken, it will create a really bad impression on the visitors. When you direct your visitors to an invalid website and waste their time, they will log off instantly, and your SEO rankings will nosedive accordingly.
Dead Link Checker is a very useful tool that will search for dead links on your site. You can also manually keep checking your site to see that all of your links are in working order.
9.) Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices
The era of the desktop has been overshadowed by smart devices. Today, more people are now logging onto the net from their tablets and smartphones instead of their laptops and PCs. In fact, the vast majority of Google searches are actually taking place on mobile devices these days.
Google both recognizes this, and also ranks websites accordingly. If a site is not optimized for mobile devices, not only will you lose a very important part of your target market, but Google won’t be happy either.
It will demote your site because any site that has not been optimized for mobile devices can significantly hinder the user experience. At the end of the day, there is no way around this. Desktop only devices are just too old now, and they rarely make it into the top ten of any category.
10.) Provide Contact Information
Names, addresses, and other relevant contact information may be considered a sign of trust and if it is not there, people just might start flagging your site as unreliable. If that happens your SEO efforts will go down the drain.
You should make sure that you have a dedicated and up to date page that contains your contact information only. It will lead to greater interaction as people will be encouraged to write or talk to you and they will spend more time on your site. As dwell time will increase, so too will your rating be promoted on all of the popular search engines.
11.) Share Your Site on Social Media
Social media is becoming the medium of choice in today’s wired world where almost everyone has a smart device and a fast internet connection. It is now also possible to increase your SEO ranking by getting people to share links to your site on multiple social media(SM) platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. The more they will like and share your site, the higher will be your SEO ranking. This is why you should consider placing those small SM buttons on all of your web pages.
Moreover, if your site or product is shared and re-shared often enough, it might go viral and give an added boost to your SEO strategy.
12.) Write Great Titles
The title is the very first thing people see when they come to your site. If it is boring, they won’t bother to go through the rest of the content. However, making the title really eye-catching can get the job done and increase traffic.
Conclusion
The above SEO techniques can go a long way in creating a target oriented SEO strategy that will pay rich dividends in terms of all of your search engine optimization efforts. And, while you can certainly do it yourself, it’s something you need to be constantly working at. Many business owners who simply don’t have the time will offload that work to companies who specialize in SEO services. Yes, it comes at a price, but the return on their investment tends to make it well worth that price for most.
SEO efforts, SEO strategy, SEO techniques
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