Four Ways to Improve Your Site's Ranking (SEO)
Businesses create websites to showcase their portfolio and attract new customers. There are many ways to generate leads for a website, but SEO tops them all. All other forms of marketing might generate leads but nothing compares to the organic leads generated using SEO, this is exactly why there is fierce competition in digital marketing. Research from Databox shows that Google receives approximately 75,000 search results per second, this might be a huge number, but this is how the modern world works. People use the internet to find information, purchase products, or order needed services. People search the internet for various queries and SEO addresses these queries by displaying the most relevant information on the first page.
Research from the same report shows that almost 60% of people find what they are looking for on the first page of Google. This is the reason why businesses compete fiercely to rank at the top of search engine result pages. Various reasons outweigh SEO in attracting more potential customers than other marketing strategies. One of the key benefits of SEO is once your site is ranking on the top page, it is much less likely to get the ranking drop significantly. This is a long-term solution for businesses to attract potential customers consistently. If you are here, your website is likely struggling to get ranked on the top pages, which directly impacts your business revenue. In this blog, let us discuss 4 ways that can help you improve your website ranking and help you attract potential customers, build brand awareness, and establish trust among the customers.
Behind the scenes of how Google ranks a website?
There are no shortcuts to directly reach the top of Google’s search results page. Google verifies various parameters of the websites and then ranks them based on relevance and accuracy. Here is a detailed guide on how Google’s ranking algorithm works:
- Google’s web crawlers continuously roam the internet to discover indexed web pages gather data such as images, text, and videos and verify how relevant it might be to different search queries.
- When a user types their query into the search box, Google verifies its organized library of indexed web pages and displays the most relevant results.
- Google’s algorithm considers more than 210 known factors to determine the order in which the results appear on the SERP.
Some of the important factors include
- Relevancy : how closely a web page's content matches the user’s query.
- Authority : the web page’s credibility and trustworthiness.
- Usability : whether the page is user-friendly? Does it load quickly? Is it mobile-friendly?
- Context : factors like location, language, and personalization.
Now that you have understood how Google ranks websites, let us use these key factors and understand how to improve your website’s visibility and ranking on the SERPs.
1. Relevance
Every business has its own target audience, relevancy is optimizing the website’s content to match the target audience’s user queries. Here are various critical factors that can impact relevance both positively and negatively.
Keyword optimization
Do
Use relevant keywords naturally in your content that aligns with your target audience. This also includes adding relevant titles, headings, body text, and meta tags.
Don’t
Do not Stuff the keywords unnecessarily or unnaturally into the content and focus on the readability.
Content quality
Do
Content plays a key role in the ranking of your website, crafting high-quality and informative content that directly addresses user queries.
Don’t
Never settle for thin or low-quality content just for the sake of having more pages.
User intent
Do
Understand the intent behind your target audience search queries, create various use cases and tailor your content accordingly to address these queries effectively.
Don’t
Do not start keyword research or insert the keywords without considering the target audience and their expectations.
Topic Focus
Do
Always stick to the specific topic or theme on each different page to maintain relevancy and consistency.
Don’t
Do not talk or club unrelated topics anywhere in the content.
2. Authority
The authority of the website refers to how trustworthy or reliable your website is in your respective industry. Here are various critical factors that can impact authority both positively and negatively.
Backlinks
Do
High-quality and relevant backlinks from established and authoritative websites allow Google’s algorithm to determine if content is valuable. So invest in acquiring these backlinks to improve the authority of your website.
Don't
Do not practice spam back-link building, this can negatively impact your website’s rankings.
Domain authority
Do
The overall authority of your website’s domain impacts the individual pages’ domain accordingly. Build your site’s authority gradually through quality content and backlinks.
Don't
Building domain authority is a continuous process, so do not expect instant results.
Social signals
Do
Your brand’s engagement on social media can also impact the authority, so be active on relevant social media platforms, interact with your customers and establish trust.
Don't
Neglecting social media engagement is one of the most common mistakes that businesses make, the world is changing and so should your business, never neglect social media.
Experience and expertise
Do
Showcase the number of years of experience and expertise of your business across various platforms to improve the authority of your website.
Don't
Remember to never mislead users with inaccurate information.
3. Usability
The usability of a website focuses on providing a seamless user experience across the site. Some of the key factors include:
Page speed
Do
Page loading speed is one of the crucial factors that impact the user experience and the rankings. Ensure every page on your site is optimized to load fast. You can use google page speed insights to check your website speed and performance.
Don’t
Never ignore slow-loading web pages, this increases bounce-back rates even if your website ranks.
Mobile-friendliness
Do
More than 50% of internet users browse using their phones. Make sure that your website is mobile-responsive and loads seamlessly.
Don’t
Do not neglect to make your websites responsive. By neglecting mobile-friendly websites, you are losing a significant audience.
Clear navigation
Do
Navigation plays a key role in user experience, ensure that each page has easy-to-follow navigation functionality to help users find what they are looking for easily.
Don’t
Do not include complicated designs that confuse the audience and ensure that the website does not have any broken links.
Readability
Do
Make sure to use clear and legible fonts, and ensure proper spacing, and clear formatting to improve the readability of your site.
Don’t
Do not overcomplicate sentences by using complex terminology.
4. Context
Location
Do
Local SEO plays a key role in attracting the audience from specific locations. Focus on using long-tail keywords and ensure citations across various sites.
Don’t
Do not stuff too many location-based keywords in the content, this can negatively impact on the ranking part.
Personalization
Do
Consider crafting personalized search results based on user behaviors, and keep testing A/B testing strategies to understand which works better.
Don't
Never assume everyone sees the same results.
Device
Do
The search engine result pages differ from desktop to mobile. So make sure to optimize for both versions for better engagement.
Don't
Do not ignore device preferences, as this may impact negatively on the rankings.
Temporal content
Do
Regularly update the content on every page with new information to keep it relevant and updated.
Don't
Do not rely on outdated information.
Conclusion
Ranking on top of the SERPs does not happen overnight, it is a continuous process that involves innovative approaches and hard work. All of the above-mentioned factors combinely impact the ranking of the website. So if you are wondering why your website is not ranking on the SERPs, one of the above reasons might be affecting your site. Now that you have learned everything about what impacts your website’s ranking, incorporate the necessary changes and wait for the results.
