Every blogger wants to have high Google rankings because, after all, it’s a surefire way to attract advertisers, traffic, awards and a lot of money. But wishing isn’t enough. Having that high SEO ranking requires a lot of work, knowledge, experience and expertise. This explains why a webmaster might choose to hire an SEO company to help accomplish this goal. On the other hand, many webmasters choose to do all the hard work themselves: they figure out SEO good practices and implement strategic, content-focused tactics.
Below are my top 5 tips for improving the SEO of any site or blog.
1. Use Keywords Tactically
Everyone who understands the slightest thing about SEO has heard about keywords or anchor texts. However, many a webmaster forgets to conduct proper keyword research before they launch their SEO campaigns. If for instance, you are in the cryptocurrency business and you want to attract traffic to your site, using vague keywords like ‘bitcoin’ or ‘altcoin’ is not a strategic way to influence the search engine algorithm. While a number of people, who need data on cryptocurrencies might use those words, a specific keyword such as ‘buy bitcoin’ or ‘buy ethereum’ might do a better search engine optimization trick.
As much as possible, use keywords those are specific to your business or organization. Make sure to opt for a conversational keyword or a marketing pitch. During your keyword research, wonder what words you would use if you were to make the same search.
Again, if you publish a large number of groundbreaking content, which naturally include specific keywords, chances are that the search engines will favor your site. This is because long-tail traffic mostly comes from specific keywords that are unlikely to be found during the manual research projects. If you want better conversion rates, focus on approaching keywords the right way.
2. Optimize your site’s load speed
Most webmasters do not realize that a site’s load speed influences their search engine ranking. But the ranking algorithm considers the rate at which the pages load on each website. According to some research studies, forty percent of visitors give up on a site if the loading time goes beyond three seconds. It is incredibly important to put enough effort into optimizing the page loading speed of your website.
SEO tools such as Pingdora provide comprehensive information on the page-loading speed of websites. Webmasters can use this software to make better decisions such as optimizing photos, videos or program codes that might be responsible for the long loading periods. Alternatively, you can change your web host. Instead of using a shared server, opt for a dedicated or a virtual private network (VPN) setup. Most website owners have testified about the effectiveness of dedicated servers. So if you want to improve your site’s SEO ranking, start by optimizing the page-loading speed.
3. Improve Your Website’s Usability
When designing a website, usability is often at the bottom of the list of important things. But studies have shown that website usability influences page ranking and conversion. So how can you tell a website has high usability? First, it is easier to navigate and the URL is easy to remember. Other features include effectiveness, efficiency, learnability and absence of errors on pages.
The ranking algorithm of search engines favor sites that are user-friendly. While it is fantastic to ensure that your site is rich in keywords, it will be a huge mistake to neglect the role of usability. Your site should be built in such a way that users are encouraged to surf on, possibly clicking and clicking on pages.
To increase your SEO ranking, take steps to increase usability the site’s usability.
4. Layout and formatting
The human eye is trained to appreciate aesthetically designed and arranged pages. Studies have shown that people are more likely to read pages that are well-formatted. Smart webmasters use a lot of paragraphs and headers to improve the reader’s experience.
My advice to you is: don’t underestimate the power of a fantastic layout. Take steps to make your content readable, digestible and pleasant. As much as possible choose a great font type and a legible font size. If you must include coloured texts, do so tactically and with good reason. Is your purpose to highlight important information you don’t want the readers to miss?
Research has shown that content with numbered lists attracts a lot of traffic. And don’t forget to use short simple paragraphs. The brain feels bogged down by long walls of texts. Don’t be scare to leave a lot of spaces. This will make your readers comfortable.
Remember that the idea is to improve your websites usability and SEO ranking. It is important to use relevant header tags that include keywords. This is likely to boost your SEO ranking.
5. Don’t Neglect the Power of Social Media Shares
Social media platforms have a great influence on the amount of organic traffic your site receives. Again, more Facebook shares, Instagram shares, Twitter tweets and retweets, as well as Pinterest pins can improve your SEO ranking,
Webmasters must ensure that they install functional social sharing buttons on their website. This makes sharing easier for users.
Increasing your rank is easy if you pay attention to your social media shares.