Every business owner wants to see their website on the top of the search engine results pages so that more & more organic traffic drives towards it. However, getting on the first page of Google is not a cup of tea. Its algorithm is constantly changing, and you need to stay updated with the latest news.
You will be surprised to know that Google can make around 500 changes in its algorithm every year. Although these updates are very minute, they have a significant impact on your website’s online visibility.
Effective SEO strategies can help to enhance your website visibility on the internet by optimizing the content and HTML pages. And this will ultimately increase traffic as well as your revenue. In addition, the right Search Engine Optimization practices can help you to stand out in the competition.
But, for this, you have to keep your eyes on the latest SEO updates. Digital marketing experts worldwide are aware of the major changes of Google and other search engines and help people rank the website higher. This article will explain three effective SEO strategies that will help you outrank your competition.
Take Time To Understand Google Algorithm
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Before doing anything else, you have to understand Google’s algorithm. As mentioned above, it changes round the clock to provide a better experience to users. For instance, on 10th February 2021, Google has announced a new ranking signal called passage ranking. This approach is crafted to identify and rank relevant sections of the content independently. Apart from this, on 8th April 2021, it launched a product review update. This is related to promoting high-quality reviews that are written in-depth.
You might not know that Google doesn’t always announce when changes are made to an algorithm, sometimes it keeps things hidden. And this becomes a great problem for SEO experts as well as other people who want to improve their website ranking. Don’t worry; you can take the help of Moz, a website that stores all the change history of Google Algo. You can follow it to research the recent changes. Apart from this, you can also use Google’s Webmaster Tool to know the indexing status of your website as well as to uncover the issues that need to be fixed immediately.
Audit Your Website Wisely
After having a deep understanding of Google algo, the next step is to audit the website to identify and fix technical errors. Many SEO tools are available to analyze the website, but it’s vital to choose the right one to generate traffic & quality leads. Let us discuss step by step what you need to look at and fix during the audit.
Meta Titles & Descriptions
Meta tags help search engines as well as to know what your page is about. The meta title is a headline whose length should be between 55 to 65 characters. And meta description is a tagline whose length should not exceed 160 characters. Check out whether you have used meta tags on all the web pages.
All Web Pages Are Optimized
Verify whether all HTML pages of your website are SEO keyword optimized or not.
URL Structure
URL plays a vital role in optimizing a website. It’s like mathematics- it gives the right results when used correctly. So, it should be structured carefully. Try to keep your site’s URL simple & short, and avoid using underscore, special characters, and capital letters. In addition to this, page addresses must be easy to understand by the search engine.
For instance, if a website URL is https://seositecheckup.com/blog/20-google-ads/, you will surely understand that article is about improving Google Ads. But if it is structured like this -: https://seositecheckup.com/blog/archive/2017/05/16/ads/google/20-hacks/post.html, the search engine will take time to understand the topic, which eventually affects your website ranking.
Site Map
A sitemap is a small piece of code that tells Google about all the website pages and how they are interconnected. This makes crawling and indexing much easier and boosts the online visibility of websites.
Include ALT Tags
Putting images on websites is not enough. You need to use the Alt tag in the images so that the search engine can know what the picture is. It is also called Alt description and Alt attributes.
Site Speed
Evaluation of a website’s loading speed is also crucial: if your website takes a long time to load, then search engines will not be able to crawl & index your site appropriately. Moreover, it can also affect the number of visitors. Therefore, your website’s loading time must be less than 3 seconds on a computer and less than 2 seconds on mobile.
Use High-Quality SEO Tools
There are a plethora of SEO tools available in the market to analyze websites for better search ranking. Choosing the best one might be very daunting. However, we have created a list of 5 simple & free SEO tools that can surely help you increase your organic ranking. Have a look
SEO Site Checkup
SEO Site Checkup is a very renowned tool for SEO analysis. It is used by more than 15,000 webmasters and business owners around the globe. It is easy to use and comes with a free 14-day trial. By using this tool, you can instantly analyze your website’s SEO issues. Apart from highlighting technical problems, it also suggests the best possible solution.
WooRank
WooRank is another digital marketing tool used for SEO audit. It will help you to capture motivated buyers and sell your services. WooRank also helps you to monitor your competitor’s strategy so that you can stand in the competition.
Google Search Console
Google offers free analysis services to all website owners. Hence, you can monitor your website presence on search engine result pages without paying a penny with Google search console.
SEMRush
SEMRush is another amazing tool to perform technical SEO analysis. You can find key SEO issues and improve your website ranking on Google with SEMRush. This tool is free but with limited functionality.
Seobility
Seobility is also a free analysis tool. It can compare your site’s domain with the domain of other websites to build a robust SEO strategy.
Conclusion:
There you have it a deep dive into SEO techniques that you can implement right away to elevate your website traffic