This is a guest post by one of our guest bloggers.
Given the benefits of ranking higher in SERPs, it’s no surprise that 61% marketers are always looking to improve their SEO.
However, ranking higher in SERPs is no easy task, especially for new webmasters. Do you know why? Because things change rapidly in SEO. Which makes it difficult to understand which practices you should use to improve search engine rankings.
Fortunately, there are some easy ways to understand SEO strategies. These can help you drive organic traffic to your website and rank better for relevant keywords.
So, if you’re a webmaster looking for easy ways to understand SEO strategies, read on. This mini guide will help you easily dominate SEO in 2018.
Let’s dive right in.
Set Up Google Search Console
First things first, set up the Google Search Console.
This will help you monitor and analyze your website’s performance, identify SEO issues, and discover backlinks to your website. In addition, this is where Google will notify you if anything goes wrong.
Now that you have set up Google’s Search Console, follow these tips to improve your site’s visibility and drive home torrents of traffic:
Choose How Your Domain Shows Up
Take your pick of how your site shows up with the www prefix or without it in search result pages.
Make Improvements in HTML
Look for any recommendations pertaining to improvements to your title tags and meta descriptions. Also, look out for non-indexable pages on your site and remove them.
Get Backlinks to Your Site
You probably already know links are one of the most important ranking factors for Google. That’s why it makes sense to constantly build high-quality links to your site and monitor them. Look for websites that link to your site to see what kind of content they publish. Don’t forget to analyze your most linked webpages. Also, check for your competitors’ link profiles and steal backlinks from them.
If you think that stealing backlinks could land you in trouble with search engines, rest assured. Stealing backlinks is among the most popular ethical SEO strategies used by websites to increase their SERP rankings.
Focus on Audience Targeting
Select your preferred website audiences based on their geographical region and their country. Keep analyzing your audience segment to make sure that you’re targeting the right audience at all times.
Check Index Status
Check out how many of your web pages Google has indexed. Look out for any webpages that have been blocked or removed and fix them.
Study Crawl Error Report
This is perhaps the most important thing you must do. Check your Google crawl error report to understand the errors that were found when your site was crawled by Google.
Use robots.txt Editor
Look out for errors and warnings and edit your robots.txt files.
Set Up Google Analytics Dashboard
Google Analytics is the free, flagship analytical tool offered by Google. It helps webmasters track website traffic, user behavior on their site, conversions, and much more.
Set up your Google Analytics dashboard to check out the demographics of site visitors. Look out for the performance of your content by analyzing the dwell time (time spent on page) and bounce rate. Don’t forget to check which websites are referring the most traffic.
Optimize Your Website Speed
Brian Dean of Backlinko found a very strong correlation between average page speed and Google rankings.
Image Source: Backlinko
Sites with faster load times are preferred by Google. So it definitely makes sense to optimize your website’s speed. Here’s how you can do it.
Use responsive templates and embed your site resources in HTML. Optimize cache and CSS script. Trim JavaScript parsing and remove all redirects. And don’t forget to optimize the images on your website.
Once done, check Google’s site speed test tool to see how quickly your site loads. Check out the recommendations by Google and implement the changes to optimize your site speed.
Optimize your Website for Mobile
In 2015, Google rolled out their mobile-friendly update. And soon afterwards, approximately 50% of non-mobile friendly sites witnessed a steep drop in their SERP positions.
That’s why it makes sense to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly. Use Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool to see whether your site is mobile-friendly or not.
Here are some quick tips to optimize your website for mobile:
- Only use mobile-friendly images
- Use large and legible fonts
- Keep links and content uncluttered
- Ensure that your site is scalable
- Add a mobile sitemap
Optimize Meta Description and Title Tags
Your meta description tells search engines what your webpage is all about. So, it makes sense to craft meaningful meta descriptions that talk about your target audience’s needs, and optimize them for searches.
Follow these 3 easy tips:
- Add relevant keywords in your meta descriptions
- Craft engaging, readable, and meaningful copy
- Never duplicate meta descriptions
Let’s talk about title tags now.
Title tags are super important. Why? Because they are the first thing that people will see in search results. More importantly, search engines try to match a user’s query with these titles and display the most relevant ones at the top.
So start by adding your focus keywords to your title tags. Try to add exact match keywords in your title tags. Exact match keywords appearing in title tags have strong correlation with Google search rankings.
Image Source: Backlinko.com
Here are some other title tag best practices you need to follow:
- Keep your title tags not more than 50-60 characters (including spaces)
- Don’t duplicate title tags
- Write relevant title tags
- Don’t stuff keywords in title tags
- Ensure that your headline tags are different from your title tags
While you’re putting in the effort to optimize your website for searches, don’t forget to keep track of your rankings. Without measuring your results, you’ll have no way of knowing whether your efforts are helping you or not. Tools like Pro Rank Tracker can help you keep track of your search rankings efficiently. You can even monitor how you’re showing up in local searches or on mobile.
Over to You
Now you know 5 easy ways to understand SEO strategies. Now go ahead, use these tips to get and stay ahead of your competitors this year.
Are there any other SEO strategies that webmasters need to understand and use? Please let us know in the comments below.
About the Author
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in sales funnels, targeted traffic, and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.