The World Wide Web has millions of websites that are jostling with each other to get ranked at the top of search engine result pages. With higher rankings, businesses can get more website traffic, leads, and conversions. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a technique utilized to achieve this goal. The most popular search engine, Google, keeps updating its algorithms to make search results more relevant to users. As a result, SEO techniques also change over time, but the basics remain the same.
In this blog, we will discuss ten current SEO best practices that can catapult your business to great heights.
#1 Title Tag Optimization
The title tag is nothing but what Google and users see as the title of your page in search results. Technically, it is an HTML code that allows the publisher to give a web page a title. The text is placed between <title> and </title>. Google has clearly stated that it is important to have high-quality titles on web pages.
Search engines give a lot of importance to the words used in the title tag, especially those that begin the title tag. It is recommended that you begin your title tag with the target keyword. Sometimes, starting the title tag with the keyword may not be possible as it will make it look weird. In that case, include it as early as possible in the title tag. At the same time, do not stuff the title tag with more than one keyword. It should compel people to click on it to learn more.
If you are clueless about title optimization tactics, consult the best digital marketing companies guidance so as to get your tactics right in the first instance.
#2 Use Appropriate Headings
Titles and headings are not the same and occupy different parts of your web page’s code. Every page should have a visible H1 heading. Headings should clearly state what the article is about and should engage the visitor to read the content. At the same time, use the keyword so that search engines also know what the article is about. Use a secondary keyword in the subheading to indicate to the search engine that the content covers the main topic and other related topics and analyzes it from different perspectives.
Search engines look for high-quality content that covers the topic well and are looking for a one-stop source of information.
#3 Use the Main Keyword Early & at Three Places
There is no doubt that you want to use your keyword multiple times on your page, but the location of the keyword also makes a difference. To be more specific, you should use your main keyword at least once at the top of the page. The main keyword should be used at least three times in the article, once in the title tag, once in the heading (h1), and once in the URL. Google gives more weightage to terms appearing at the top of the webpage.
#4 Optimize the Site’s Loading Speed
Google has talked about site loading speed as one of the ranking factors, and that is why you should optimize your website to load as quickly as possible. There are several tools that can give a detailed report about your site’s loading.
Images should be compressed to improve your loading speed as they make up the bulk of a page’s size. Bulky WordPress themes also load slowly and should be replaced with themes that load faster. Loading is another way of improving loading speed, in which images show up as the user scrolls down the page.
Another option is using a Content Delivery Network (CDN), a geographically distributed network of servers to deliver faster internet content from a network location closest to the user.
#5 Include Several Internal Links
You may give backlinks to other relevant and authoritative sources, but internal links are also important. Google crawls each and every page to see whether you are linking to other articles related to the article you are writing. Do not link haphazardly; keep the search in mind when choosing the anchor text. You should try that the anchor text contains the primary keyword the article is based upon.
There is no fixed number of internal or external links to be added, but it depends on the length of the content. It is recommended that you use several internal links at the beginning for clarity purposes while introducing new concepts to the visitors.
#6 Create Quality Content
While focusing on SEO best practices, the most important thing that marketers forget is that without original, quality content, it is impossible to rank higher on Google. Generating quality content requires an investment of time or money.
#7 Build Backlink
Backlinks have always been a Google ranking parameter since the launch of the search engine. As per Google, if other prominent websites on the topic link to the page, that is a good sign that the information is of high quality. Your goal should be to build backlinks from authoritative and relevant websites. You should first focus on content formats that tend to do best for backlinks.
You can reach out to other site owners and ask them to link to your page. You can also go for guest blogging for other sites and insert a couple of your webpage links in there. Broken links are another option for backlink building. Broken links are nothing but web pages that no longer exist. All you need to do is identify those links using tools, reach out to the site owner, and offer a replacement with some worthy content. Sometimes, your brand is mentioned on a webpage without linking to your site, so you reach out to the site owner to make the mention a clickable link.
#8 Optimize Meta Description
The Meta description tag is what searchers see on the results page of search engines below the title. It is placed in the head> tag of each page’s HTML code. It gives a brief idea of the content of that page. So, write a good meta description, keeping in mind what would convince the user to click on the link to read more.
However, Google frequently rewrites meta descriptions after analyzing what the searchers are looking for. Although meta description is not part of the ranking algorithm, the click-through rate from search results is. Hence, writing attractive meta descriptions is always an advantage.
#9 Focus on UX/UI
A website’s UX/UI directly or indirectly affects its ranking in search engines. If visitors just bounce away from your site after just a few seconds, Google will come to know that they are not getting what they are looking for, and your ranking will go down accordingly. You can get information about the high bounce rate from Google Analytics.
User experience can also help directly with SEO as people will share and link to user-friendly sites. If your website is difficult to navigate and has disturbing pop-ups, ads, and broken links, people are not going to link to it, even if the content is good. The design should be responsive both on desktop and mobile.
#10 Optimize Your Images
Image SEO is not just for good ranking in Google Images search but also for web searches. The image’s file name helps Google understand the content of the image. Google has clearly stated that they primarily rely on alt text to understand images. You should focus on creating alt text that uses keywords appropriately and should be useful and informative to the user. Specifically, this is more useful for visually impaired people who use screen readers.
At the same time, keep the image file size as small as possible, as you want your pages to load as quickly as possible. Google Lighthouse can help you to find images that can cause slow loading. Page loading is part of UX, and if Google finds that your page loads slowly as compared to a competitor who provides more or less the same content, the latter will be given a higher ranking.
On a Closing Note…
So, we have discussed 10 SEO best practices for businesses, which they need to follow to rank highly in search engines. However, search engines, especially Google, keep updating their algorithms to improve search results, and businesses need to adapt accordingly, but SEO best practices like quality content, earning backlinks, and good UX/UI will always remain part of the ranking parameters.
