Search engine optimization is ever-changing mostly due to Google continuously upgrading itself to serve searchers better with more relevant, good quality search results. So, a business needs to constantly adopt and adapt so as to improve its search engine ranking. They should seek the latest and best techniques to improve website authority and ranking, and then devise a search engine marketing strategy that can give results.
There are many ways to boost SEO but there are things that should be taken into account. Here are a few tips that can help you in your SEO journey.
Content that adds value
Content is king when it comes to SEO. Google emphasized it with the Panda update, rewarding high quality content or relevant content that actually adds value. Google wants the searchers to find relevant content that is useful for them, and have a good experience finding them. So for a search engine marketer, knowing the audience is key.
This way, the marketer can make sure to provide content that are useful to that audience, get the search engines to notice it, and subsequently raise their rank in search engine result pages.
Here are a few tips to add value to content.
- Research and identify the most popular topics relevant to your business and your audience
- Find questions that the audience seek answers for pertaining to the topics you selected
- Prepare a high quality content with infographics, and publish them at the right time
Website that gives impressive browsing experience
User experience is a critical factor for search engine optimization, and it starts not from the moment users visit a website but from the moment they search for the website.
So it’s important to make sure that the website gives a great experience to visitors. To do that,
- Fix broken links
- Test navigation to make sure the users can browse through pages with ease
- Make the interface and the content appealing to keep them engaged
- Test page loading speeds
- Make sure the website is responsive, and get started with AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)
Extensive research
One of the biggest mistakes a search engine marketer can make is to think like a search engine to understand how the search engine ranks websites. At present, they should think like readers to identify what the reader wants or expects from a website, and then provide it.
It’s wise to monitor keywords, user engagement, and website statistics to figure out what users expect from your website. This research should be extensive and requires significant time investment, because if you don’t know your users, you will never be able to give them what they need. The research can even expand to online communities where users discuss issues, and seek solutions.
Visual content optimization
Visual content adds to the website’s overall appeal, and affects the website’s loading speed. It also supplements the textual content in the website, and plays a role in keeping users interested enough to completely go through the content.
Such content including infographics and videos should be optimized for search engines. This optimization can include SEO-friendly titles, alt text, metadata, file size etc. The content should be unique and shareable, and should load as fast as possible even if it’s image/video heavy.
Up-to-date online footprint
Though your website is critical to your online presence, it’s not the only factor. The more online presence the website has, the more value it will get from search engines. This is why it’s important to make sure that your online footprint is up-to-date across various platforms including the popular ones like Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc.
Building online presence involves sharing valuable content to various platforms, and then promoting them to attract readers. The end goal is to ensure that the details you share should be accurate, and make it easier for users to find more about your business. You can either monitor the online presence yourself or hire a SEO consultant or an online reputation manager to do it for you.
Conclusion
SEO is a long process that wouldn’t get you results overnight. As for 2017, there is still time to start fixing your SEO and keep publishing good content so your website can have a great start next year with a higher rank in search engine results.
