I know that most of you have no idea what SEO stands for.Don’t worry you will be made aware of everything in few minutes.
I was trying to improve my websites SEO ranking from a long time.During this process, I googled 100’s of websites and have shortlisted some techniques that really work.I have tried them on my website and the results have been amazing.
Search engine algorithms not only rate the relevance of your keywords on pages, but they also evaluate information such as the duration visitors stay on your site, bounce rate, broken links, pages viewed, inbound and outbound links and so on..
Getting the users to stay on your website for a long time can boost your website ranking.
Before we jump into the tricks, let’s look at the 5 questions that you should always ask yourself before writing a blog post
- Effectiveness: Are the users getting the information they are looking for on your website.
- Efficiency: How quickly are they able to find the information they are looking for?
- Learnability: Are the users able to navigate through your website easily?
- Memorability: Are you able to make the experience a memorable for the user?
- Error Prevention: Is your website free of errors (eg: 404 Error..) ?
Now that you have the basics clear, let’s dive into the tricks I was talking about.
1. Header Tags
Everyone loves to read a well-formatted writing.In fact in school, whenever I had no clue about a question asked in an exam. I used to write a well-formated paragraph answer.Even though it was not the expected answer to the question, my teachers used to give me marks for my presentation skills.This is how you score good marks đ
So, the moral of the story is have a well formatted blog post.
2. Page Load Time
Google takes page-loading speed into account in their website ranking algorithm.
Users will close the browser tab if they have to wait for more than 3 seconds for a page to load.
That would hurt your dwell time, increase your bounce rate and reduce the number of pages viewed â all of which could hurt your SEO ranking.
Make sure that your code is clean and streamlined, optimizing image sizes and reducing the number of plug-ins.
3. Image optimization
Many bloggers do not completely understand the importance of the image file name, alt tag, title, description and caption.
I was one of them but now I am a changed person after looking at the improvements that it has brought to my blog.
So do not leave them empty when you add images to your post.
4. Top Quality Content
âDwell timeâ is the amount of time visitors spend on your website and it can affect SEO ranking.
It’s crystal clear that if you keep your content fresh and interesting then people would stay on your site for a longer duration.So keep your content interesting and engaging for a higher dwell time..
Another reason to create highly useful content is that when visitors bookmark your content on Chrome, it will boost your Google ranking.
5. Outbound Links
Linking out to well-respected authority sites will not only increase the relevancy of your content and time readers spend on your site, but it is also believed to send trust signals to Google and improve SEO ranking.
6. Multimedia
Images, videos, slideshows and audio can help enrich the user experience.
Itâs found that websites using videos can achieve a 4.8% higher conversion rate, compared to a 2.9% average on websites that donât use videos.
7. Broken Links
No one likes to see a 404 error.In fact if a user spends 20 min on your website and if he encounters this error then believe me its the only thing that he will remember about your website.
Bottomline is that it will can impact your SEO ranking.
I use these tools to avoid broken links
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Google Webmaster Tool
W3C Link Checker
8. Contact Us Page
According to this Google document (p.98), websites that have sufficient contact information are considered to be more trust-worthy and therefore may rank higher by search engines.
Including a Contact Us page on your website and putting the link in the navigation not only makes for good user experience (especially if you have an ecommerce site) but can also potentially earn you some Google juice.
Itâs found that a well-designed contact form increases user participation in a companyâs online presence. It also helps generate new business opportunities, capture new leads, improve customer service, and more.
9. Mobile Optimization
As of April 2015, Google has started to penalize sites that are not mobile optimized by bumping down their search engine ranking.
More and more users are consuming content on mobile devices, and not being mobile optimized is going to affect user experience and conversion.
It is particularly important for B2B marketers. Research has shown that 77 percent of executives use their smartphone to research a product or service for their business.
Business executives use mobile devices to research products and services for their businesses.
10. Social Sharing
The number of Facebook shares, Tweets, Pinterest pins and other social media mentions can influence SEO rank.
Installing social sharing4 buttons on your website not only makes it easy for users to share your content, and thereby improve user experience, it can also help you rank higher on searches.
Social sharing also helps drive purchasing behavior: Nearly 4 in 10 Facebook users report they have gone from liking, sharing or commenting on an item to actually buying it, while 43% of social media users have purchased a product after sharing or liking it on Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter.
In this case study, a pest control company boosted organic traffic by 15% in just 2 weeks after running a campaign aimed to increase social sharing.
To get you started, here are a few social share button plug-ins to try:
SumoMe
Shareaholic
WP Social Sharing
Resolving the conflict between usability and SEO âbest practiceâ
So, these are some of the tricks that I have found valuable in my blogging journey.
Now that you know all these hacks, open your blog and start applying them.
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