How to Improve SEO Ranking on Google

You’ve probably heard of the term “SEO.” However, even if you haven’t you’re far from alone. SEO, or “Search Engine Optimization,” refers to a very complex and broad process optimizing for search engines, which entails a number of important steps. It is a process that relies on continuous work and intelligent changes.

Search engine optimization has become a critical concept with the integration of the Internet into everyday life. Every day, millions of people are using search engines such as Google and Bing. These web users are looking for products and services, keywords and terms, and many other things.

By optimizing a website for search, SEO increases the visibility of that website. SEO can have profound effects for businesses and individuals. With the use of search engine optimization techniques, any website or blog can improve its rankings in search engines. Increased website visitors can potentially mean an increase in customers.

SEO has the potential to make an unseen website popular and financially successful.

Given that 95% of search traffic lands on Google’s first page, search engine visibility is crucial. There are numerous ways in which to improve such visibility. With the help of basic and advanced SEO tools, you can dramatically improve your search engine traffic.

Basic SEO Techniques To Boost Online Visibility

Too often, designers of websites overlook the basics. While it is true that advanced SEO tools can significantly help, you cannot succeed without the fundamentals. When creating your website, ensure that your website has good infrastructure. Your website should always be ‘user-friendly.’

There are a number of ways to ensure that your website is functional for visitors. If your website is clunky, complicated, or illogical, the Google crawlers may struggle to make sense of it. If Google has trouble crawling your website, your rankings will plummet. Additionally, if visitors have trouble browsing your website, they will likely go elsewhere.

It is important to remember that there is no single solution to boosting online visibility. Google relies on countless factors to calculate the ranking of a website. Addressing these factors takes time, and you should never expect massive results overnight. The best strategy is to work consistently and proactively.

In fact, the majority of top-ranking web pages are at least one year old. It takes time for keywords and other relevant terms to factor into Google’s algorithm, and in turn for various SEO strategies to establish top rankings. SEO is not a short-term game. It is a long-term affair, and it takes patience and perseverance.

Optimizing For A User-Friendly Experience

When thinking of your user, consider what they are seeking. Are you a law firm providing certain legal services? Are you a website offering videos on specific topics? Are you offering links to news headlines and articles? What is the purpose of your website?

First and foremost, your web pages should offer immediate functionality. When a visitor lands on one of your pages, that visitor should be able to effortlessly acquire the kind of content they desire. Design your page with this in mind. Have clear page links that deliver the desired information. Don’t make the page cluttered or confusing.

Present a clean, clear layout that is ideal for the user’s experience.

Secondly, it is important that you consider how the website visitor expects to interact with your page. Visitors want an experience that is efficient. There are countless websites floating out there. If a search engine user doesn’t like your web page, he or she can and will go elsewhere.

In the same vain, be sure that your site is optimized for mobile phones. Many people scroll and search online through their smartphones. If your web page performs too slowly on a mobile device, Google will rank you lower under its mobile search engine factor.

You can boost your site speed in a number of ways. Use image compression and optimization tools. Never use images that are too chunky or over-sized for your particular image space. Also be sure to use browser caching to prevent unnecessary loading. You can achieve this by adding code to the web host/server .htaccess file. There are also certain plugins that can accomplish this.

Scripting is also an important factor to consider for search engine optimization. But before you include a bunch of fancy scripts in your website’s code, be sure you really need them. Remember, all types of files can slow your website’s performance and hurt your rankings. If possible, try to merge scripts into single files.

Finally, be sure that your links are not broken. There are numerous “link checker” tools that will identify, diagnose, and correct such links.

When designing links, ensure that they use compelling, relevant descriptions and titles. Use internal anchor texts to quickly move about your website. If you are concerned about optimizing, Google themselves actually provide an incredibly useful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide.

Overall, you want to create a website with content that is descriptive, compelling and clear. You should never ‘keyword-stuff’ simply to have more keywords. Your website should read cleanly. It should attract organic traffic (traffic originating from search engines). Never use keywords that don’t apply, as Google may penalize you for misleading information.

Don’t be “spammy.” Communicate the topic and nature of your webpages clearly, briefly and descriptively. Meta descriptions can help you with this. If you aren’t familiar with meta descriptions already, you need to be. Put simply, meta descriptions are short blurbs that accurately describe your website’s content.

Using Meta Descriptions And Schema

When determining which information to display in a search result snippet, Google has two primary methods. Firstly, Google will use the page content to locate relevant information. If that page content is not determined to be the most relevant, Google will rely on the meta description.

The meta description must be manually written by the web designer. It is typically around 160 characters in length. A good meta description hooks the web user. If the description is relevant, the searcher is more likely to click on the link.

Like meta descriptions, schema are also helpful in boosting the visibility of your webpages. Schema, from Schema.org, is a type of microdata. When added to your webpages, this markup enhances the snippet that appears in search results.

Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others all use schemas in their search engine results pages (SERPs). In fact, roughly a third of all Google search results use snippets with schema. If you are not using schemas, you are missing out. You can create a much richer description with this microdata markup.

With all of this in mind, it is still important to remember that Google’s methods for ranking are still highly complex. The large percentage of their search engine algorithms remain a mystery to the public, with Google itself asserting that it makes daily changes to it. Nonetheless, Google has announced a number of major algorithm changes over the years.

In 2014 and 2015, Google updated its algorithm to include important new considerations. In April of 2015, Google prioritized mobile-friendly websites. In the future, sites may even be penalized for failing to adapt to mobile interfaces.

In July of 2014 Google also began incorporating local search results. This update helped to target many area searches and specific keywords. Google even integrated Google Maps to help find services, products, and search results particular to certain locations.

If you feel like you’re overwhelmed by all of these SEO techniques and strategies, you’re not alone. Fortunately, there are many free and inexpensive services that can help. In fact, there are countless ways to track your website’s progress and performance.

You can learn about the effectiveness of your links, texts, and keywords. You can see who has visited your web pages, as well as what kind of performance metrics your competitors are using. These are only a few of the numerous ways to assess and improve your SEO results, by extension boosting your online visibility and driving organic traffic.

Advanced SEO Tools & Technologies

Before using various tools and programs to analyze and improve SEO, you should fully understand the two main types of SEO: on-page and off-page. 

Generally, on-page SEO refers to everything you can do to affect your actual web pages. This category includes: the quality and relevancy of your content; the descriptions, titles, and headers you use; your meta tags and other HTML add-ons; your page performance through speed and functionality; your layout, your tags, and the overall ‘feel’ of your website.

Simply put, on-page SEO includes a lot.

Off-page SEO is slightly different. This encompasses inbound links and keywords. It includes your social media presence and your greater online reputation. It includes your location, country, and search engine history. It also includes any negative consequences you have encountered, such as blocking or censoring.

Together, on-page and off-page SEO complete the package—you need both to succeed. Even with a functional and easily navigated website, if you don’t have a strong social media presence you may be missing out on a lot of potential traffic. Conversely, if you have a lot of shares on social media but your web pages are slow-loading and unappealing, you’ll struggle as well.

This is why it’s important to analyze and improve your SEO with the available tools.

One important metric to consider is where your site ranks on specific keywords. If you’re targeting certain content keywords, you can use SERPs.com to assess your rank. All you have to do is type in the keyword and the URL of your site.

You will learn:

1.  How your site ranks in SERPs for a given keyword
2.  The page of your site that ranks highest for the keyword
3.  Your average searches per month
4.  Your average cost-per-click for the keyword through paid programs

In addition to checking your website performance for specific keywords, you should also check your website’s speed performance. Slow websites rarely convert new customers and clients. Moreover, slow websites rarely rank highly. You can use Google Page Speed Insights to check and improve your site speed.

Another important aspect to consider is the user-friendliness of your site. Remember, Google is prioritizing mobile-friendliness in determinations of SEO rankings. If your website is not conducive to mobile scrolling the results of your SEO efforts will likely suffer.

Fortunately, you can quickly check this by using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Simply type in your URL and you will receive a whole list of issues associated with your site.

Overall, there are many ways to improve your SEO and increase organic traffic to your site. If you have a business, you should naturally want the best for your potential customers and site visitors. You want search visibility and online presence. Your website is your baby, so don’t neglect it.

If you need help with the complex and overwhelming nature of SEO, we are here to help. Contact the consultants at SEO Process USA today.