Having a good search engine optimization plan is an important aspect of any online marketing strategy. As a business owner, it is important that you make your website visible enough for search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. These search engines have billions of daily visits. Having a good SEO will ensure that you easily attract and retain visitors.
Google is the go-to search engine for people around the world.
However, these search engines are constantly updating their algorithms. This makes it difficult for businesses without a strong SEO strategy to retain the top position on Google and other search engines. This article is written to show you 4 SEO tricks that you can apply right now.
1. Make your website faster: According to Neil Patel, four out of every ten visitors will leave your website if it takes more than four seconds to load and 80% will not return. The whole point of doing SEO is to attract and retain clients. If you are scaring them away before they check your content, you are not doing your business much good. To further impress the importance of site speed, Google included site speed as one of the most important site ranking criteria.
There are a few factors that contribute to site speed. One of the biggest factors is the size of your images. If your images are compressed, it will reduce the size of your pages by up to 40%. As a result, your website will load faster. Apart from optimizing your images, here are a few other things to consider:
a. Reduce plugins. Identify plugins that are not useful for your website and deactivate them. The beauty of running your website on WordPress is that you can install several plugins. However, too many plugins may slow down your website. If you are not running an e-commerce store, you do not need a timer or any of the other urgency plugins.
b. Review page elements. Review all the elements on all your site to ensure that only the necessary elements are on each page. Trim your website pages to the essentials widgets by decluttering your sidebar. When it comes to site speed, minimalism is the way to go.
c. Enable browsing cache. Browsing cache stores data in a temporary storage. This helps returning visitors access site pages that they have visited before faster.
What are you doing to increase the speed of your website?
2. Link to relevant websites: The future is shared. If you want to boost your sites SEO, you have to link your content to relevant authority websites. Linking to outside content will take people off our website. However according to top SEO expert, Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, when you link to other websites, especially authority websites, it makes your website more valuable and trustworthy. Trust is critical to your website growth.
3. Improve traffic and engagement metrics. When it comes to SEO, engagement is measured by the amount of time that visitors spend on your website. It is one of the strongest metrics that Google uses in ranking a website. The more visitors spend time on your website, the more they will enjoy and engage with your content. Typically, the amount of time spent by visitors on your website will determine your organic ranking placement. When visitors spend a long-time on your website and there is a low bounce rate, it suggests to Google that people are enjoying your content. And since Google wants to supply users with valuable content, they are more likely to rank your website higher. To improve your site traffic and engagement metrics, here are a few things to bear in mind:
Always track metrics to know what’s working and what isn’t.
a. Use relevant images. When you use relevant, compelling, and quality images on your website, you keep the audience engaged. The cliché, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” should actually say, “a good and relevant picture is worth a thousand dollars in SEO.”
b. Create easy to read content. Your content cannot just be informative—it has to be entertaining. It does not mean you have to crack jokes or use pictures of Seinfeld in your posts. You have to create content that is easy to read. Mix short sentences with long sentences. You should break your content into paragraphs and do not forget to use a lot of white spaces in between your posts. Make your content easy to scan.
c. Provide value in your content. A good SEO strategy is to provide value throughout your content. Most importantly, provide value at the beginning of your content. This will keep viewers glued to the blog. You can create value by writing content that answers your followers’ questions.
4. Focus on user experience. Write for humans, not Google. This is called SEO copywriting. Instead of stuffing your content with keywords, you should focus on providing useful and engaging content. When you focus more on how you can help people engage with your brand and services, you will be automating your SEO. The goal of SEO is to reach more people who have wallets and are interested in the solutions you offer. Instead of writing short-tail keywords for search engines, write long-tail keywords for humans.
Always write for humans. Not for Google or Bing.
Real-life examples of companies applying SEO in their marketing
If you search for the keyword, “fitness company,” the first website on the Google search results belong to Fitco. Fitco integrates the keyword, “fitness company” in its website description. Fitco is actually an abbreviation of a “fitness company.” What really sets Fitco apart is the site speed which is less than four seconds. With a blog that actively focuses on providing comprehensive content and compelling images on fitness, Fitco rises to the top of Google ranking for “fitness company.”
Famous Footwear does a great job including keywords for their industry. As an e-commerce store for shoes, Famous Footwear consistently uses high quality and highly compelling images of Nike, Adidas, Roxy, and Converse footwear. The website is designed to ease the user’s navigation.
Time Doctor does a great job including quality backlinks to other authority websites. As a top website in time management, Time Doctor consistently publishes tips on productivity, outsourcing, and other articles that include long-tail keywords.
Nonstop Signs & Printing focuses on using long-tail keywords on their popular pages. By proving content that offers value to the users, they improve their search engine ranking. In addition to using long-tail keywords, the site is fast and visually appealing.
Utilizing SEO in your online business marketing strategy does not have to be frustrating. If you begin to apply these SEO strategies, you will begin to experience massive growth in your site engagement traffic, search engine ranking, and ultimately, a bigger email list.