Search engine optimization (SEO) is an accumulation of strategies and techniques used to increase the number of visitors to a website by obtaining a high ranking in search results.
An important feature of SEO is making your website intelligible for both users and search engine robots.
SEO helps the engines figure out what a particular page is all about, and how it may be useful for users. In today’s high level of competition, it is imperative to be as high as possible in the search results, and that comes with an efficient SEO strategy. However, many aren’t sure of how to rank a new website on Google.
Let’s have a look at the two types of SEO:
On-page SEO and Off-page SEO.
Also read Best free website hosting for WordPress
ON-Page SEO
Here’s the truth:
On-Page SEO is one of the FASTEST ways to improve your Google rankings.
That’s because you can optimize your page in about 2 minutes. And start to see a rankings boost within days.
On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual pages in order to obtain a higher ranking and earn more relevant organic traffic. In this piece, you will find different tips about On-page SEO:
1. Post Long Content:
Studies have shown that longer content helps to improve ranking on Google. A target of around 2000 words should be set in every article with a minimum of 1000 words at least. This would inevitably result in long-tail traffic which would boost your site’s exposure.
Longer content not only helps in adding more keywords to it, but there is also a natural emphasis on information. The authenticity of a post increases with longer text, which means that Google would recognize it as something more relevant than a shorter and concise text. As search patterns are synonymous with long tail keywords nowadays, a longer text also improves the chances of your article/website to be on a higher ranking than others.
The authenticity of a post increases with longer text, which means that Google would recognize it as something more relevant than a shorter and concise text. As search patterns are synonymous with long tail keywords nowadays, a longer text also improves the chances of your article/website to be on a higher ranking than others.
While writing an article that you want to grasp people’s attention with, you must remember to research well before writing the first word. Make sure that all the relevant information is available to you before you start. Good research results in flair, which results in long and comprehensive writing.
Additionally, grammar should be impeccable. Articles riddled with errors indicate incompetence and carelessness.
The perfect piece is both elaborate and grammatically accurate.
2. Image Optimization:
Ensure that the pictures on your website have file names which include the target keyword. Also, your target keyword should be part of your image’s Alt Text. This will improve optimization for your article and also create a clearer picture for the search engines to the relevancy of your article/page. Images are an important component of any website as they make pages visually attractive as well as informative. Optimizing your images should naturally boost your ranking. Also, your image will get a high rank in Google image search.
3. Ensure your site is super fast:
A slow website is not only bad for the end-user, but also for search engine optimization.
Thus, a slow website can cause your site to rank lower in the search engine results. That translates to fewer page views and less ad revenue or customer conversions for you. There are a number of ways to optimize a site for better speed.
First of all, you should upgrade your hosting plan and rethink the plan you started with when you first launched your website.
VPS hosting is probably the option you want to go with. It’s “in the cloud,” meaning it is distributed over multiple computers, sometimes even hundreds. It’s less expensive and more flexible than Dedicated Servers.
Understanding HTTP requests is another way to boost site speed as too many requests invariably slow down a page.
Next, use Photoshop or Gimp to optimize pictures you wish to add to your web page as the larger the images, the slower the site speed. You may change the resolution without wholly sacrificing on picture quality, and this will keep your site interesting as well as smooth.
Plugin clutter significantly slows down site performance by creating too many extra files, thus increasing load time.
It’s best to avoid the use of plugins whenever possible, and though it’s not ideal to get rid of them altogether, there are ways to reduce the overall count.
Regularly review plugins and use alternatives like adding links to your footers whenever possible.
Aside from taking up space, outdated WordPress plugins are often responsible for security vulnerabilities as it’s a third party code package.
So try and minimize on plugins both for speed and security.
Finally, page caching, where web pages store data, allows visitors to access that page more quickly since the database does not have to retrieve each file again.
4. Your website must be mobile friendly:
Mobile-friendly websites should display on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets in a user-friendly way. This implies that when a user pulls the site up on their smartphone, he or she does not have to pinch and zoom in order to read the content and click on links.
This makes it easy to read and easy to use on a smartphone, eliminating any excess effort.
The recommended Google setup is Fluid Responsive Design.
Responsive design describes a website that dynamically resizes to fit the width of the device or browser that it is being displayed on. Responsive design uses a single code base that works across hundreds of devices. Naturally, more mobile friendliness equates to more viewers which means more traffic on your site.
Use the Mobile-Friendly Test tool by Google to see if pages on your site are mobile-friendly or not.
5. Add LSI Keywords To Your Page
LSI keywords are an advanced on-page SEO tactic.
And they’re working GREAT right now.
So: what the heck are LSI keywords?
They’re words and phrases that are related to the topic of your page.
6. Fix broken links.
Having quality links on your website is one of the best ways to boost traffic and establish the authority of your site, but links that bring up a 404 error hurt both your user experience and your search rank. Use a tool like BrokenLinkCheck or Dead Link Checker to find any broken links.
7. Use H1 and H2 header tags.
Not only do headers make your content more readable and easier to understand for humans and search engines alike, there is a strong correlation between Google search rank and the use of header tags in the body of your content. Header tags are also a great way to show the structure of your content and emphasize your key points.
8. Improve your website’s user experience.
According to a study on ranking factors by SEMrush, the top four ranking factors are website visits, time on site, pages per session, and bounce rate. All four of those are directly related to the experience your website is providing your users, which Google recently emphasized with its Page Experience update. It’s pretty simple: If your website is easy and enjoyable to use and offers valuable information, you’ll get more visitors, who will stay longer on your site and visit more pages, and that will improve your search rank.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to the techniques that go beyond a website. People associate off-page SEO with link building, however, it is more than that. The different tips related to this are:
9. Build high-quality backlinks only:
Link building is the most important – and the most challenging – SEO strategy. The truth is, without any high-quality backlinks, your website won’t rank for competitive and high traffic keywords.
The websites with the most valuable and relevant backlinks will ultimately rank over the rest. But, the tricky part is how you will get those quality backlinks? Well, today I’m going to show you one of my favorite tactics to get the high-quality backlinks
10. Answer on Quora:
Quora is a website where users generate the content entirely. They post questions via threads and other users answer them. It’s basically a yahoo answers type social network that works like an internet forum. Both threads and answers can receive “upvotes” which signify the answer was worthy and popular. The answers with the most upvotes are put at the thread’s top.
Quora is great for:
- Websites that rely on traffic for revenue (Ad publishers, affiliate sites, content publishers).
- Websites that sell information products.
- Websites that sell products (SEO tools, children’s sneakers, coffee grinders).
- Bloggers that want to establish themselves as an authority on their subject matter.
11. Blog commenting:
Commenting on blogs helps to create backlinks, which in turn create traffic for your blog. Most of these links are worthless and thus carry little value, but the process is still helpful. For new blogs, comments – user generated content – will help get a website indexed faster. Commenting helps drive referral traffic to your blog.
However, it is important to post a valuable comment. Regular commenting is the best way to connect with any blogger personally. While it can take the time to create these connections, you will be noticed by the site’s administrator and other co-bloggers which can be profitable in the long run.
12. Be active on social media
Although Google doesn’t hold much stock in social media as far as ranking is concerned, you can actually improve your site’s popularity and traffic by being active on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter. The more you post links to your blogs on social networks, the higher the chance people will visit your blog, thus increasing traffic.
