Out of all people on the planet, 1 in 6 use Google. Your website’s search engine placement makes the difference between getting more organic traffic and sales or being ignored.
Internet users perform around 2.3 million Google searches per minute. Each time someone searches for content like yours, it’s an opportunity to increase brand awareness and make money.
Because different factors determine your website’s ranking on SERPs (search engine results pages), you can boost your ranking by making some adjustments. In the world of SEO, even a little bit of effort goes a long way.
Here are 7 ways to boost your SEO ranking:
1. Increase Your Website’s Speed
Your website’s loading time directly affects your Google page rank in multiple ways. For starters, Google’s algorithm factors the loading time of a page into Google rankings.
People are less likely to engage with a slow website. In fact, if a page doesn’t load within 3 seconds, most users will be off to another page. This hurts your website’s average dwell time, bounce rate, ability to get backlinks, and ultimately, your SEO standing.
Google looks at a site’s coding when determining its loading speed. You can significantly increase your page speed by minifying your HTML, Javascript, and CSS.
Minification is the process of removing unnecessary website code. It removes this redundant or unnecessary code without affecting a site’s stylistic/formatting elements. Consider using a program like HTML Minifier, CSSNano, or UglifyJS to make your page load faster.
Here’s another factor that affects your loading time:
2. Optimize Your Images
Overall, images add another dimension to your content that users enjoy. However, if your images aren’t optimized for SEO, they could be hurting your site ranking.
Large images take longer to load. If you have large images on your site, it’ll hurt your loading time. In turn, this will negatively affect your ranking on SERPs.
Instead, optimize your images by compressing or resizing them. JPEG Compressor is a useful tool for this purpose. There are also free image optimizers online you can use.
You can also enable lazy loading. With lazy loading enabled, your site doesn’t load an image until a user comes across it on their screen.
3. Use Your Keywords Wisely
Keywords have a significant influence in determining website rankings. Still, Google penalizes sites for using incorrect or irrelevant keywords. Because of this, you must be careful with your keyword usage.
Keyword density is still a ranking factor. Nonetheless, using too many keywords (or even a single keyword too many times) is called “keyword stuffing.” Google punishes sites for keyword stuffing which hurts your search presence.
If you want to appear in more SERPs, try creating content that involves using long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are keywords that range between 3 to 4 words. These keywords aren’t as popular as single-word keywords, but the traffic you’ll get will be much more exact and fitting for your page.
Plus, the competition is less fierce for long-tail keywords, so using them will help you dominate the SERPs.
Make sure you fully understand a keyword before using it. Misunderstanding certain keywords is one of the most common PPC mistakes that also affects the SEO world. The negative consequences aren’t worth the trouble, so do your homework.
4. Use Header Tags
Header tags are the headings used to label certain sections of your content. They make your content easier to read and digest.
Without header tags, your content is a wall of text. For many people, this creates an unpleasant and overwhelming reading experience. This will drive people away from your website.
Eventually, this will hurt your ranking.
Always use relevant header tags to make your content easier to skim. Including good keywords in header tags here and there will also make your site easier to index and improve your SEO standing.
5. Quality Links
Your site-wide links should consist of internal and external links. The aforementioned types of links and backlinks alike help spiders crawl and index your site faster.
Think of each link as a “road” to your content. More roads equal more ways to find your content.
Your site ranking benefits whenever your website gets a backlink from a quality, authoritative site. That means a single link from an authoritative site is worth more than a hundred backlinks from spammy sites. (Actually, your website would get penalized for having a sudden influx in backlinks from spam sites.)
Create useful, valuable, and unique content that gains users’ trust, then good backlinks will follow. Write guests posts for trustworthy sites in your field in order to gain quality backlinks, but don’t overdo it or you’ll get penalized.
6. Get Secure
Search engines prioritize secure sites over insecure sites. That’s why adding that “HTTPS:” to the beginning of your site’s address boosts your ranking in SERPs.
HTTPS works with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to communicate information safely. Without HTTPS, your site’s information is insecure and more likely to be leaked.
Fun fact: Google actively warns users about visiting sites that aren’t secure. Securing HTTPS means securing Google’s trust, which will boost your ranking.
7. Add Optimized Videos
Search engines love it when you include optimized videos with your content. Videos make your content more engaging and appealing to users.
Pro-tip: If possible, use YouTube videos over other kinds of videos. Many experts think Google prefers YouTube videos because Google owns YouTube.
Include videos with SEO-friendly titles that include relevant keywords. Their descriptions should also contain valuable keywords and phrases. Also, users tend to prefer longer videos over shorter ones.
Learn more about video marketing for PPC campaigns to find out how to use videos to your advantage. It’ll attract users like how flowers attract butterflies.
Your Search Engine Placement Is Counting On You
About 51% of all website traffic comes from organic searches. Advancing your search engine placement means getting more organic traffic and showing up in more SERPs.
More organic traffic will benefit your business. It’s easier to convert organic traffic into leads and sales than other kinds of traffic.
Boost your profits by checking out our PPC management service. Your brand will thank you for it.
