SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s one of the most important digital marketing strategies practiced by both big and small businesses, aiming to attract new customers and increase sales. Companies hire agencies that offer professional SEO services or have in-house teams that focus on this.
SEO concentrates on improving the ranking of your site on search engines, such as Google. Instead of using technical terms, let’s take a look at an example.
Suppose you want to buy headphones on the Internet and you have no idea which site sells them. What will you do?
You’ll probably type “best headphones for sale” or something along those lines. You’ll likely explore the first couple of sites and not bother with others. If we exclude the websites that have paid promotion and focus on the regular results instead, you could say that the first couple of sites have done the best job in terms of search engine optimization.
SEO is not rocket science, but it’s not easy. Still, there are several things you can do to improve your current rankings, even if you’re not an expert on the subject. Let’s take a look at them.
Improve Your User Experience
One of the main reasons sites fail to reach the first page on Google is the subpar user experience.
You need to assume the role of first-time visitors to your site and think how much time they would need to achieve their goal of finding the necessary information. If your site is unfriendly, it will result in a high bounce rate.
A bounce rate refers to the number of users who just load the site and leave soon after, not being able to find what they are looking for.
In order to improve this, you’ll need to reorganize your site to make it as friendly as possible. Feel free to test various designs on new users and ask them about their opinion.
Optimize Your Site for Mobile Users
Many businesses don’t realize that the number of people who browse the Internet using mobile devices rather than their PCs has increased. So, if your site hasn’t been optimized for mobile users, that could be another reason why they are leaving your site. This often happens with older sites that were built before the smartphone era.
Therefore, access your site from a mobile device (ideally from both a phone and a tablet) and see how it looks. If things aren’t as they are supposed to be, it’s time to make some basic changes in order to improve the site for mobile users.
Organize the Content on Your Site
Google considers the content on your site its basic product. It’s the first thing that your visitors encounter when they visit the site, so it needs to be well-written and engaging. It’s always wise to hire a professional content writer to help you optimize your site in this regard.
However, it is not enough to just post content on your site. You need to pay attention to what people search for on Google and other search engines, and adjust it accordingly.
Google has become smart, meaning it has an ability to recognize the meaning of written content. Sites that have clearly defined topic clusters usually rank better than those that don’t. That’s why it’s very important to organize your content properly, especially if you have plenty of pages and blog posts.
Optimize for Voice Search
Many users around the world don’t bother typing anymore. Instead, they use voice search to find adequate results. Therefore, it’s important to take this into account as well, as voice searchers usually have a different approach to finding the results they need.
Simply put, if they wanted to buy headphones, they would ask, “Where to buy headphones?” which is a slightly different keyword compared to the one from the introduction. Therefore, you should focus on long-tail keywords and structure the data on your site accordingly to meet the needs of voice searchers as well.
Get High-Quality Backlinks
Every site and page is ranked by Google and other search engines. High-quality sites with many visitors have a high domain authority (DA). If a platform with a high DA has a hyperlink to a site with a low DA, it will automatically boost it a bit.
Increasing the DA of your site ultimately results in better rankings on Google. One of the ways to improve it is to get backlinks from high-quality websites. This type of SEO strategy is usually referred to as backlinking, and it’s considered an off-page SEO tactic.
Final Thoughts
To sum up, SEO has become an integral part of every business that markets its products and services on the web. If you have a website representing your business, the chances are you’ll need to apply at least some basic SEO strategies, which will ultimately help you increase your revenue.