1. Define a keyword list
Now that you understand where your pages rank for certain key terms, you’ll be able to refine and define a keyword list that you can base your website’s content around – in short, you’ll be able to pick the most relevant keywords for your site to bring in related traffic that increases your page ranking.
If you target the right keywords for each page of your website based on what you’re trying to sell, the message you’re trying to communicate and where you expect to meet the customer on their buying journey, you’ll see a vast improvement in your organic search rankings.
To define the most successful list possible, you should use a targeted mix of both broad, exact and long-tail keywords that are specific to what you’re selling and how your users search. You should also ask yourself the following questions…
- What keywords will drive conversions?
- What central topics can my keywords be grouped into?
- What keywords could I generate content on that will result in rankings and traffic?
To go about analyzing and selecting your keywords, you should use the following tools…
- Google Trends
- Type potential search queries relating to your page in Google’s search bar and see what popular relevant search queries popup
- Use Google Adwords Keyword planner
2. Quality copy always wins
Following on from our last point: good copy appeals to humans and as a result, will help you rank better in search engines.
Of course, to work for search engines, you need a quality copy with strong anchor text and clearly defined headlines. Since Google’s Panda algorithm update back in 2011 (where many websites suffered a severe dip in search authority) marketers must focus on creating the best user experience possible to rank well. Good copywriting that incorporates keywords both sparsely and naturally is the key to boosting your organic rankings – allowing you to humanize your brand while creating a better customer experience.
3. Optimize your images
Pictures and other images are great for your website.
But you need to make sure they are optimized properly if you want these images to improve your SEO ranking.
I’m referring to factors such as the file format and size.
Huge images can slow your page loading time, which, as I’ve said, hurts your ranking.
Resize or compress your images to optimize them.
You can also use your images to sneak in keywords by naming them accordingly.
For example, let’s say you have a website that sells toiletries or other bath products.
Instead of naming an image something like “shampoo1,” you could name it “best shampoo for long hair.”
You can also strategically use keywords in the title of your image as well as the caption or description.
4. Diversify your links
There are a lot of different types of links you can get such as blog roll links, homepage links, links from blog posts, directory links, educational links, footer links, etc. SEOs have a tendency to build only one, instead of each, of these types of links.
If you want to rank high, you can’t just focus on one type of link building method such as directory links. Instead, you need to get links to your site from blogs, directories, and sometimes from the homepages of other sites. Just make sure whatever links you are building are also relevant as those links tend to have the biggest impact.
For example, with Quick Sprout, I have a variety of sites linking to me. Here is an example of a news site link, a sidebar link from a popular blog, a link within a blog post, and a link from an educational website, all linking to my site. The diversification of links coming into the site is what partly accounts for over 50% of my monthly traffic from Google.
5. Integrate Social Media sharing buttons in your posts
Most search engines including Google take the help of social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. to determine what reactions a webpage is getting from real users. When you like a link on Facebook, or retweet your favorite blog post on Twitter, or give a post you liked a +1 that means you liked the post, right? Search engines these days give posts with good social reactions more priority in SERPs. A bonus would be increased traffic from those social networking sites for your content. You can implement social sharing buttons on your website and get those advantages.
Bonus Advice: be smart yourself, don’t insensibly trust others
This one is a bit different from the rest of the suggestions but it’s applicable for many new bloggers and site owners. I’ve seen them starting out on knowledge sucking sprees. They try to stuff their brains with as much as random blogging and web development knowledge as possible in as little time as possible. This results in them not sticking to a particular strategy and implementing hundreds and thousands of unimportant and useless things on their sites which not only do no good to them but occasionally also hurt their sites.
References：
Create a Website. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.quicksprout.com/ways-to-improve-seo-ranking/.Gaskin. (2019, March 21). 10 Tips to Increase Your Organic Page Ranking. Retrieved from https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/2017-4-20-10-tips-to-increase-your-organic-page-ranking.Palit, R. (2019, May 16). Boost WordPress SEO – 31 Ways to Improve WordPress SEO. Retrieved from https://techtage.com/31-ways-to-better-wordpress-seo/.
