Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a newbie to search engine optimisation, knowing the search engine optimisation (SEO) tips that help your content achieve higher rankings is absolutely essential. Getting your content onto the front page of Google or Bing and boosting brand awareness and profits is the holy grail of SEO. Here are 7 powerful SEO tips that, if you follow them, will help you increase traffic to your site exponentially.
Use the right keywords in the right places
You know that you need keywords in your content. It’s not just about having the right keywords – you actually need them in the correct place if you want to boost your search rankings. You want to place keywords at least once in the title tag, once in the page URL, and at least once in the first 100 words of your content. This will help optimize your content – there is no fast and hard rule as to how many you have in the rest of your page but including them in the right places is crucial.
Add related keywords to your content
On-page SEO isn’t just about including keywords a few times on the page. You also need to add synonyms and other related keywords. This is because of Google Hummingbird, a search algorithm that attempts to understand your content’s topic. After all, that’s what a human reader does. Simply by adding in variants of your main keywords you can make the algorithm work for you.
When you enter a search term into Google, you will notice that at the bottom of the results page a “Searches related to…” function. Take note of the terms listed and add them into your content. Do not keyword stuff though – include them naturally into your webpage.
Keep users on your site for longer
It’s not just about getting the traffic to your site – you need to keep people on it. If your content is not good, your customers may do what is termed “pogosticking”. Pogosticking is when a user clicks on your link and then immediately returns to the results page and looks for something else that actually helps them. This tells Google that they do not like your content and, as a result, Google will downgrade your site.
Make your content easy to read by including subheadings and bullet points. You may have the best content, but if people cannot read it easily, they will not stick around.
Update old pages
Is there a lot of content gathering dust on your webpage? Then it’s time to update your old pages. Add more external links to authority pages, organize messy content onto sections, and write a new description and title.
Doing these three simple things if you notice content performing poorly will boost them back up the search rankings, and as long as you publish on the same URL, you don’t have to worry about duplicate content.
Use outbound links
Not using outbound links is one of the biggest on-page SEO mistakes you can make. Adding links to related pages shows Google that your site has tons of quality info and helps the algorithm work out your page’s topic. A good rule of thumb is 2-4 outbound links per 1000 words. Make sure the links are useful and relevant. Try to link to authority sites wherever possible.
Improve your organic CTR
Improve your organic click-through rate and more people will click on your site. It is as simple as that. Strategies vary, but if you can implement them properly you will see a huge boost to your traffic. One powerful strategy which requires little effort on your behalf is asking a question in your page’s title. Recent analysis of Google’s CTR showed a 14.1% boost to titles that asked a question instead of making a statement.
Speed up your website
Google penalizes slower sites, preferring to show faster loading sites to users. There are a couple of reasons that a website loads slowly that are worth checking regularly. For one, using a CDN (content delivery network) can cause issues. This can be due to insufficient hardware and network problems, amongst other factors.
Another common issue that causes websites to load slowly is the presence of third-party scripts. Indeed, they are probably the number one cause of websites performing poorly, which leads to a negative user experience. It is worth checking which scripts are installed on your site and deleting the ones that are not important.
The lowdown
A poorly performing website with bad content can cripple your brand. If you are not attracting and retaining your potential audience, you will lose authority and potential revenue. Implement these tips often to boost your site to the top of the rankings in next-to time with the minimum of fuss.
