You have your website set up and would like people to find you on the internet. Well, how does that work?
A simple answer is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. With an ever-changing algorithm, you need to educate yourself on what practices are best suited for your website to drive traffic. And quickly, might we add.
Optimizing your site for SEO means optimizing the quality of the website, content, backlinks, and appearance so that your website is ranked in a higher place which as a result, gives you more leads. Statistics show that nearly 30% of the people click the top results on Google. And well if you are not on the first page, 75% of people won’t even bother to find you on the second page.
In this short read, you will find how you can make conscious efforts to improve the SEO of your website in the shortest duration possible.
Page Speed Affects SEO
Site speed is very important for the user experience. Reports show that your website should load in under 3 seconds for the user to stay on the webpage. Sites that take a long time to load, kill your traffic, tend to have a higher bounce rate and low average time spent on the website.
80% of the potential audience won’t even return to your website. Therefore, a website with good loading speed gives Google a preference factor for the algorithm to rank your page.
Relevant Content helps with SEO ranking
If your website isn’t updated in a long time and doesn’t contain relevant content, the search engines won’t have enough information to index your website page correctly.
Updating your website regularly with fresh, original, and related quality content that will also solve the user need will help search engines to prioritize your site which in return will improve your site’s visibility, user engagement, and conversions.
Image Optimization for better SEO
If you are using images for your website without properly optimizing them, then you might be missing out on valuable SEO assets.
Visual media is far more engaging and therefore, adjusting your images for the right size format, SEO-friendly alt text, image file structure and correct dimensions are definitely going to earn you some points with better page ranking. All of these factors help the site to load faster and maximize findability on search engines.
Using Header Tags in Content
Using headings makes it easier for the user to read and go through your content. Users can easily skim the content and land on the required information.
Header tags are an essential part of improved SEO ranking as it increases readability. This helps with quick page accessibility and easy navigation. Keeping these factors in view, it becomes for Google to understand your content, crawl through a page and rank it higher on its page.
Outbound Links Affect SEO for Good
You might have heard about internal links that help search engines to give a better ranking to your site. But outbound links are also a secret sauce that helps with organic ranking and site visibility.
An often ignored aspect is one of the strongest on-page SEO strategies. Linking to high-quality sites build readers’ trust, adds value, demonstrates authority which gives a green signal to Google and results in improved page ranking.
To summarize, understanding SEO and employing different tactics can help your website rank higher for the right keywords. In addition, it is also important to familiarize yourself with new trends that will give you an edge over competitors and help you achieve better digital marketing results.
