People use the internet every day to read product reviews, do product research, and find local businesses. Your consumer base will grow if you make it easy for people to find your business online.
Because organic search results drive the majority of traffic to websites, ranking as high as possible in search results is crucial. Google recently unveiled the helpful content improvement, which prioritises the needs of readers. The revision honours articles that primarily seek to answer readers’ questions while also being informative for readers.
Maintain a focus on your area of expertise; your website should give users the information they need and address their concerns.
Here are some tips to help your business appear higher in search engine results so that both current and potential customers may find your website.
1. Refresh content often
Search engines will crawl your website more regularly the more often you update the content there. Fresh content will be found more quickly and ranked higher the more frequently this happens.
Periodically refresh your content by including elements like:
- News about a product or service,
- client success stories and testimonials,
- product videos, and
- business news.
At least once every six months, review the current website material. Before adding new content, outdated or irrelevant material should be removed.
Blogs
Another excellent way to update content is through blogs. The secret to blogging is to consistently publish new, high-quality material. A new index page is created every time a blog article is added, aiding search engine optimisation (SEO). Consider writing a blog post with relevant keywords regarding business, industry, products, and events. Old blog postings should be updated over time and reposted to add new content.
To generate fresh leads, encourage readers to share these content on social media. For years, a well-written blog can show up in searches.
2. Make link building a priority
Making wise use of internal and external links is another way to improve your search engine rankings.
Internal linking encourages website users to click on the page’s highlighted anchor text and read other blog entries. Search engines crawl these links while they search websites for new pages. To ensure that readers will comprehend the material on the linked page, include pertinent keywords for your anchor text.
External links go to pages outside the domain of your website and should reference reputable news sources, trade publications, official websites, and educational institutions.
Additionally, since broken links might harm your search engine results, you should fix them on a regular basis. Services like Dead Link Checker can scan your entire website or specific pages for broken links if you don’t have the time to manually check all of your links.
3. Produce high-quality content
Making content for humans rather than information that is focused on search engine rankings is a component of Google’s helpful content upgrade. In order to guarantee that material is people-focused, Google has shared the following questions:
- Has your website a clear purpose?
- Will the content satisfy the audience?
- Will visitors to your website get any new knowledge?
- Does your content demonstrate first-hand familiarity with and knowledge of your commodity or service?
- Do you have a target market in mind?
- Is material created with people’s needs in mind, or solely to boost search engine rankings?
Content should be uploaded to your website because it is relevant to your industry, not because it is a popular current topic. Your website’s material should be educational, practical, and relevant if you want visitors to come back. This will enhance the user experience.
Knowing your target audience and focusing your posted information based on your industry, business, and consumer needs will help you produce high-quality content. Check your content for duplication because they can hurt your rankings.
4. Optimize on-page SEO elements
There are other factors that can support SEO.
Videos and images
Images and videos add more details to assist readers comprehend a topic. Utilising SEO-friendly videos and graphics will also help you rank higher in search results.
To use photos to increase your SEO:
- Instead of using image_1.jpg as the filename, use website_design.jpg.
- Put an alt element in the HTML that explains the image, such as “man creating webpage.”
- Reduce the size of the images to speed up site loading.
- Add captions beneath the images to enhance user experience.
With videos, you can boost your SEO by:
- On the landing page for the video, include the transcript.
- To tease viewers and preview the video’s content, create a thumbnail.
- To enhance user experience and draw attention to keywords in your video, provide a title and a description.
Meta descriptions
Although meta tags are invisible to users, they provide search engines with information about your page’s content. Search engines, however, might show your meta on the results page. The major keywords characterising the subject matter should be included in a clear description of the website’s content.
Contact information
Make sure your company contact information is prominently displayed and simple to discover to give the impression that your website is trustworthy, which is a consideration in search engine ranking.
Don’t forget to include a call to action that instructs readers on what to do next. For illustration, “Call us at 1.800.123.4567 for a free consultation.”
Headers
Headers can assist with the styling of your page for search engine optimisation. Because they make it simple for people to quickly scan a website, heading tags carry more weight in search engine rankings. The first element a visitor to your site sees is the major heading, often known as an H1 tag. Because they help organise the page, subsections are also advantageous for search engine positioning.
5. Improve page loading time
Search engines will penalise you if your website loads slowly because of this. If a website is excessively slow, visitors will also depart. According to a study by Digital.com, 50% of online customers leave a website that doesn’t download in six seconds or less.
Visit Google’s PageSpeed Insights page to assess how quickly your website loads. Your site’s loading speed will be displayed in this report, along with suggestions for improvement.
The following elements can influence how quickly a page loads:
- huge picture and custom font page sizes,
- plug-in issues with content management systems, and
- insufficient bandwidth.
6. Ensure your site is mobile-friendly
Statcounter estimates that mobile devices account for 60% of all internet traffic. Because of this, mobile-friendly websites will perform better in search results.
To check if your website is mobile-friendly, go to Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. It will let you know if your website is successful or needs work. A site’s responsiveness to mobile devices is significantly influenced by how rapidly it can load. Page design, font size, and navigation can also affect how mobile-friendly a website is.
Making a website mobile-friendly involves:
- Avoid Flash animation and pictures because mobile devices do not support it;
- To prevent a sea of blue text, space out your links;
- reduce the number of photos and image sizes to speed up page loading;
- not to create a “wall” of text;
- employ a large typeface that can still be read on a little screen;
- To accommodate scrolling with a thumb instead of a mouse, make the buttons bigger and place them closer to the bottom of the screen. Also, prioritise basic designs.
To make sure the material is simple to read and navigate, test your website frequently from a mobile device.
7. Research keywords and use them appropriately
The words or phrases people enter into a search engine to locate a website or company are known as keywords. They. Use keyword phrases on your website that are pertinent to your services, company, and region to make it easier for clients to find your website. In your content, page titles, title tags, and picture names, use these words.
Keyword research tools
You can plan your content using the following examples of free keyword research tools:
- Semrush,
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- Keyword Surfer
- Google Keyword Tool
Be careful not to use jargon that buyers might not use to search your industry.
Avoid keyword stuffing
When websites utilise keyword stuffing, or overusing keywords, Google penalises the sites. The language you employ in your writing should read naturally and be appropriate for your target audience.
8. Use local SEO
In the past year, 91% of people used the internet to research local companies, finds BrightLocal’s 2022 Local Consumer Review Survey. Businesses can appear in local results such as Google map results, local business listings, and organic search results by implementing a local SEO plan.
To make sure that your company shows up when local users search for a term related to it:
- Make a location page for your website and incorporate phrases like “Houston web developer” into your content to draw in local traffic;
- Claim your Google Business Profile, keep it updated frequently, check that your name, address, and phone number are consistently mentioned on different web pages, and reply to any reviews, positive or negative.