Some Brilliant SEO Tips to Remember for Great Search Engine Rankings

Search engine optimization or SEO, as it is widely known, is essentially an  umbrella term. It encompasses all the methods used for ensuring the highest possible visibility of a website and its content on search engine result pages (SERPs). SEO is an extremely volatile industry and gets a bit more complicated with each passing day. This is due to the fact that Google tends to change its algorithm periodically and doesn’t reveal what the changes are. This means that the algorithm that’s in place this month may not be around for the next. This constantly evolving algorithm encourages SEO experts and specialists to keep on their toes and keep well-informed about any changes and updates.

Some of the essential SEO tips that every website owner and specialist should remember for great search engine rankings are listed here.

On Page SEO Essentials

There are some things that haven’t changed in the world of search engine optimization and this includes optimization of your website loading speeds, structure as well as its title tags. The structure of the site is of the utmost importance because it aids in showcasing your products and services and also assists in providing a seamless and smooth navigational framework for your visitors. Mobile browsing is gaining momentum, which has made loading speed more crucial than ever. Most visitors leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. As far as title tags are concerned, they should be optimized for relevant and target keywords.

Quality Content Remains King

If you have done any research on search engine optimization, you would have come across the phrase ‘content is king’. But, what does it mean? In simple terms, your website has to have engaging and quality content for the audience and it is not possible to overstate its importance. This is because the content impacts your conversions, the time visitors spend on the site and ultimately search engine rankings as it is more likely for engaging content to be shared and approved. Therefore, you need to devise content that’s focused on your keywords and should also have links pointing to other pages.

Good User Experience

User experience and SEO greatly connect. Site architecture, site speed, quality content, user metrics, fonts and colors and other features all factor into the website’s overall usability. Only certain aspects of visitor behavior can be assessed by search engines like user metrics. If they see a high number of users bouncing back from your website to search results after hitting it, they will not investigate why. This factor will be useful in deciding your rankings. You need to figure out what causes this behavior and provide a better user experience to get better rankings.

Moving From HTTP to HTTPS

For over two years, Google has been encouraging websites to get HTTPS encryption. Webmasters have now seriously begun to consider it due to rising threats. The shift is not just necessary because Google has made it so. But it is vital for protecting the information of your visitors. HTTPS should now be a default practice, particularly in case of an ecommerce website. HTTPS ensures the visitors that they can enter their sensitive data without worrying about disastrous consequences. They will feel more secure when browsing. Yes, the shift from HTTP to HTTPS involves a lot of work. But it is worth it because it can do wonders for your SEO efforts.

Go for Mobile Optimization

Google removed the label ‘mobile friendly’ from Google’s search results in 2016. The search engine’s team said that this was because 85% of the websites that exist in the mobile search results are in accordance with the required criteria and boast the label. It didn’t see any need to label them anymore as most of them already were. This indicates the importance of mobile optimization. The number of desktop searches has fallen considerably as mobile usage increases. Any website not optimized for mobile is going to see its organic traffic decrease in huge numbers. This is because mobile searches have become mainstream and are going to get even more common.

Google’s Rich Answers

Search engine optimization is no longer about getting the top position in search results. There is a special place that Google has reserved in result pages for any local results. This also includes content optimized for rich answers. Basically, Rich Answers extracts the metadata from the website’s content. Then it uses the information for displaying it in a visual ‘Answer Box’. This can be used in a number of forms such as maps, recipes, charts and schedules. The concept behind offering rich answers is to give all visitors definitive and quick answers in the search results. You can boost the relevance of your content by targeting keywords. These keywords should start with how, what, who, where and what when researched. Google Search Trends and Google search recommendations can also tell you what users are asking these days.

The Era of Voice Search

Halfway through the previous year, Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, disclosed that 20% of all the queries made on its mobile app as well as Android devices are voice searches. Users are becoming more and more comfortable with speaking when it comes to doing a search. Especially when virtual assistants like Microsoft’s Cortana and Apple’s Siri are under continuous development. Thus, if you need your website to rank well in search engines, you have to work on voice searches. You need to rethink your strategy for keywords and put more emphasis on question-based queries boasting a conversational tone. Practically, this means that you create question-and-answer based content such as Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).

Any SEO campaign requires you to follow the essential tips outlined above. These tips will be effective and enable a website to stay ahead of the competition. You can devise a successful SEO strategy by combining the aforementioned elements.