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10 Important SEO Tips to Drive Organic Traffic


INTRODUCTION

Search engines are getting smarter and more powerful at analyzing and understanding web pages. Relying on Google’s organic search traffic as a lifeline can be a bit tasking. In addition to creating a better page and a faster website, you also need SEO techniques to increase your search presence.

In this blog, we will explain ten effective SEO techniques to help you increase your organic search presence.

1) Enhance User Experience Across Your Entire Site

A search engine’s major goal is to find the best possible result for the user’s query. To optimize your site for SEO, you will need to think about the search engine’s constant desire to show the best result for a query. Search engines know how to determine site quality, which is why poor-quality sites rank less.

If your website looks trustworthy, up to date, skillful, and is fast to load, potential users are more likely to keep going on your page and not bounce back. While Google has not officially acknowledged it, sites with low bounce rates may be rewarded with better rankings. Google’s rationale is that when a user spends more time on a site, it is most likely because it is useful for them. Sites with strong engagement will get pushed up in the search engine results page because Google only wants to deliver the best possible results to its users.

So, to enhance user experience and give your exciting content a boost in the search engines, here are 5 SEO improvement techniques:

A) Make Your Posts Easy to Read

You have to take a step further from “formatting for the web” and “enhance content for readability”. To do this, the following formatting tips can help improve the readability of your content:

  • Write quality content: Formatting matters but so does your writing. Your writing has to include error-free grammar and spelling, great ideas, and captivating delivery.

  • Shorter paragraphs: A paragraph is a group of related sentences that support one main idea, make your paragraphs 3-4 sentences at most.

  • Mixed sentence lengths: Long sentences must be used cautiously because they are hard to follow on a mobile device or computer. You can mix long sentences with short sentences for optimum readability.  

  • Sub-headers: You want to boost the time users spend reading on your site by including informative subheadings. This helps readers to scan content quickly and still get a good understanding of what the article/blog is about.

  • Bullet points: The general rule is if you are listing three or more items, use bullet points. In a paragraph, you can have lots of data – ideas, stats, facts, and/or examples – having all of that in bullet points makes it easier to read.

  • White space: In addition to bullet points and sub-headers, breaking up large chunks of text with relevant supporting media, including graphs, photos, and videos can help prevent visitors from getting overwhelmed by too much text.

  • Images/screenshots: Having an entire blog post without any images would be boring. So, your blog post and articles should have several images or screenshots to illustrate the points, numbers or steps you are discussing.

B) Use Bucket Brigades to Keep the Flow

Bucket Brigades, in the writing sense, means keeping the flow of your ideas to hold your reader’s interest. A bucket brigade is a sequence of words that bridges one idea to the next to keep the flow.

Here are some different examples of bucket brigades:

General bucket brigades:

  • Do I have your attention?

  • Think about that for a minute…

Introductory bucket brigades:

  • Do you want to learn how to…?

  • Have you ever found yourself… ?

  • Imagine what it would be like:

Content body bucket brigades:

  • Let's get started:

  • Let's dig a little deeper:

  • Let me explain:

  • Let me show you how:

Conclusion bucket brigades:

  • In short:

  • Let's recap:

  • In a nutshell:

  • But don't take my word for it:

C) Use the Inverted Pyramid Style of Writing

Inverted pyramid style of writing means giving away the most valuable information at the top of the article, with less important information appearing below. Often readers flick through articles which means they rarely reach the bottom of the page, so it makes sense to give them what they want as soon as they land. 

D) Increase Website Speed

One of Google’s ranking factors includes website speed and your website speed can make or break your site’s performance in Google’s search results. Fortunately, Google has introduced a few SEO tools to help improve site speed.

Here are a few ways you can boost page speed for better rankings and more conversions:

  • Decrease unnecessary code on your page

  • Defer JavaScript loading

  • Trim down server response time

  • Pick the right hosting option for your needs

  • Allow browser caching

  • Allow compression

  • Reduce images to cut down page size

2) Optimize for Voice Search

Voice search is garnering more audience and that is something you should factor into your SEO strategy. 25% of U.S. adults now own a smart speaker and the stats are expected to hit 55% by 2022.

As humans, we talk more than we write. So, it is important to pay special attention to voice search because voice search and text search are used differently, and results are given in different formats.

Here are a few points worth keeping in mind when optimizing for voice search:

A) Use Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are keywords containing three or more words. You need to create content that targets longer keywords on your website for a chance at ranking. And to do this you can follow this process:

  • Firstly, identify one long-tail keyword. For example, “how to get rid of a stain on clothes”.

  • Secondly, find lots of semantically related keywords (words /phrases that are related to each other conceptually). For example, “Low price best stain remover” and “quick tips for removing stain”.

  • Thirdly, create a blog post and ensure that those semantically related keywords are strategically used throughout. When creating your content, you want to make sure that it is significantly better than the current ranking for your target keyword.

  • Finally, format the content for readability, using subheadings and bullet points where appropriate.

B) Use Structured Data

Structured data (also known as Schema markup) can help increase the chances of your information being used to respond to a voice query over a competitor’s. Structured data helps Google to better understand the subject and theme of a page which can in turn give a boost up the ranking.

You can start by checking out Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to find out if you have applied schema markup to your page. And if you haven’t, Google’s guide to Schema markup explains the type of code you need, and how to implement it.

3) Design for Mobile First

It is important to note that the majority of searches and half of all purchases occur on mobile smartphones. More notably, Google has gone mobile and it’s been some years in the making, but in March 2020 Google announced that it will now primarily use its mobile smartphone user-agent to crawl sites. This means the mobile version of your site will be crawled and indexed before the desktop version, that is even if it gets crawled at all. Therefore, when building your new site focus on the mobile experience. And of course, how it appears and performs on a desktop is important, but mobile needs to come first.

4) Focus on Topic Clusters Instead of Keywords

Google is evolving along with its algorithm. More than ever Google wants to understand the intention of its users and what search results would best help answer their query.

Creating keyword-focused content does not necessarily mean that your website will appear on the first page of Google. The context around the keywords also matters, you must pay attention to your users’ intent. Here are three things you should consider:

A) Know Your Target Audience

Knowing your audience – their age, interest, location, etc – will help you create better content and increase your SEO. This simply means the type of content you will create will be influenced entirely by your audience.

Understanding your target audience will help you avoid the risk of creating a broad term content, which means, you will be able to zero in on topics that matter to your readers, while also playing down the chances of creating content that fails to get results.

B) Organize Content into Clusters

Instead of focusing on standalone keywords, organize all your content into different themes. This entails having pillar pages - these are your site’s most important pages you expect to rank for a broad range of keywords – and cluster pages - these are pages that answer questions or cover topics related to the pillar page.

This strategy will help you meet with user intent since they will be getting easy access to more detailed information on their topic of interest. The cluster pages have the potential to drive additional traffic to your site and rank themselves.

C) Do Your Keyword Research

At the end of it all, keywords still matter, and it will be a huge mistake to ignore keywords entirely. Keywords act like signboards to Google’s spiders, providing suggestions and signalling topics to the nature of the content on the website.

Doing keyword research will help you create content that answers readers’ specific questions, find out the target audience that is searching for the topic you want to write about, and increase brand recognition.

There are lots of keyword tools, so when considering which one to use, look for something that is categorized by related themes and allows you to examine a high volume of keywords. Moreover, the best tools allow you to track all of your competitors.

As for keyword ideas, the Google search engine result is an easy way to discover related search ideas.

5) Write Longer Content (sometimes)

This all boils down to knowing your target audience because writing 2,500+ words for every blog post is not for everyone. It is intensive, time-consuming, and rarely necessary. Users might only need a few words or sentences or a simple bullet point list to get their answers. And the good old-fashioned “common sense” is the only hack to determine how long or short your content should be.

Start by asking yourself what results would someone be anticipating if they are using a keyword that you are targeting. And yes, it is possible to target multiple types of search queries in one post.

But then again, if the long post is a necessity and you are struggling with it here is how you can create long-form content with less stress:

Refresh Your Old Content

Expanding an existing page is one way to create long-form content, if you are struggling to find the motivation to write. Existing content might already have an established readership and authority. So, you can boost an existing post’s performance in the search results rather than writing from scratch. This can be done by rejuvenating it with revised information and extra content.

For the existing content to update, you can consider choosing a time-sensitive content, as well as posts that are getting some organic traffic but have the potential to get more.

6) Take Advantage of YouTube SEO

We often tend to forget about YouTube when we think of search engines. And although video marketing is not necessary for everyone or every industry, this is a time to play around with video marketing.

After creating a great video here is how you can get in on the action:

A) Make Your Video SEO-Friendly

YouTube’s algorithm works just like Googles' by gathering and using information about your video. YouTube’s search results rankings can be influenced by the filename, the title, and/or the description of your uploaded content.

Here are a few tips to make your video SEO friendly:

  • Video Title – your video title should be captivating to make it SEO friendly and clickable to increase your click-through rate. Include keywords as well as power words to increase your chances to get clicks and shares. As a minimum, your title should have 4+ words and include a general target keyword. This will help you get more clicks on YouTube.

  • Video Description – Your video description is what YouTube relies on to determine your content because it cannot “read” videos. Your video description can be short or long, but it must describe your video content in detail. You can also make your video description a script for your entire video.

B) Create Custom Thumbnails

If you have a high click-through rate, that means you must be offering something of value to your users, and improving your video with a fascinating thumbnail can help. Create a great custom thumbnail that contains a title card along with an attractive image, that should tell viewers exactly what the video is about.

C) Create Video Playlists

Users can be encouraged to stay on your channel longer and interact with more of your content with your video playlist. A playlist is breaking down a topic or story into a series of videos.

When users are enticed by your playlist and they return to your channel to watch your next upload, it increases their interaction with your channel. Once YouTube’s algorithm picks up on this it compensates you by recommending your videos more often and positioning them higher in the site’s search results.

7) Create a Diverse Backlink Portfolio

Having a diverse link profile ensures that your link profile looks natural to search engines. Considering that sites grow and land links from bigger sites, they will typically pick up links from smaller sites along the way. And although links from older domains have been shown to pass more value than those from the newest sites, links from low DA sites also pass some value. Keep in mind the spammy sites can cause more harm than good.

Then again, there are things to remember to make sure your link portfolio follows the sort of pattern Google expects to see.

  • The smaller site can also offer value, so when promoting content, do not only target the big sites. Small sites are responsive and niche-specific as well.

  • Err on the side of caution if you are going to renounce links. Renouncing too many links can be more harmful than renouncing too few.

8) Never Overlook Technical SEO

Your site can be tagged underperforming if it is not technically sound.

In that light here are advanced SEO techniques you need to consider relating to technical SEO.

A) Ensure that Your Entire Site Loads on HTTPS

These days, a secure website is essential and sites that are not secure or have mixed security can struggle to rank. HTTPS is one way to stay secure, make it harder for malicious parties to break in, and take advantage of your website. Moving to HTTPS is a prerequisite in a world of cybersecurity threats and heightened SEO and SEM requirements. Switching to HTTPS requires a multi-step process, but it is safe and better to have secured and encrypted connections on your site.

B) Enable Accelerated Mobile Page for Mobile

Accelerated Mobile Page allows publishers to easily create responsive, mobile-optimized content, which means pages get shown according to the device from which they are opened. Proposed as a way to quickly provide content on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, AMP combines three components: HTML tags, AMP JS, and AMP Cache. Google has a guide to help implement AMP to help cater to mobile searchers.

C) Correct Your Semantic Markups

We have discussed Semantic markups earlier. We said they help Google to understand your site, but you have to keep in mind that this works only if they are correct. They are HTML tags that help accentuate key information on your site, which means if they are not correct you could be losing users.

D) Fix “Page Not Found” 404 Errors by Redirecting URLs

Trust us, no one likes to be stuck in a dead-end and a link that leads to a 404 page with the text “Error: Not Found”. This can disengage your users; the best solution is to fix these broken or missing pages and re-engage your users as soon as you can. You can download backlink profile tools, to highlight backlinks that are pointing to a pesky 404 error page. Then use an SEO plugin like Redirection to redirect URLs of broken links to the next most relevant page to ensure users are not frustrated with landing on a different page than they expected.

9) Target Local Searchers with Landing Pages and Listings

Nearly half (46%) of all searches on Google are from people looking for local information, which could include: local shops, addresses, opening hours, and so on. So, here are three SEO techniques to win potential customers who live locally.

A) Double-Check Your Directory Listings

We cannot emphasize this enough, having the wrong directory listing is bad business. Sometimes you might have to rely on additional information from local data sources. Bigger search engines rely on them to fill in information from their databases and verify the information to make sure facts are up to date.

However, if these big search engines collect outdated data you could lose your potential customer. This is why it is vital to ensure that your physical contact information is up to date on every online listing you have created. And on your part, always remember to change all local listings if something changes, especially when you switch telephone numbers or move offices.

B) Build and Optimize Local Landing Pages

A local landing page targets people who are looking for something within a specific location. For example, “massage parlor near me”, “best lounge and bar in Kitchener”. Create your landing page and you can start targeting local searchers:

  • Perform keyword research to find local keywords linking to your product or service.

  • Build a new page on your website and make sure to optimize those local keywords. This includes mentioning the phrase in your meta title, meta description, page title, heading tags, image alt text, and on-site content.

  • Develop links from local directory listings to that page to intensify location-based keyword rankings.

C) Technical SEO for Local Search

Execution of technical SEO for local search is a related process to the one talked over earlier, and here are some useful terms and procedures to make sure that you boost your business for local searches.

Schemas are mainly short extracts of data that offer extra information to search engines and users. Schema markups do not require any coding know-how and can be injected through Schema.org, a rare alliance between Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

You can also add in a JSON (Javascript Object Notation) injection through Google Tag Manager if you want to go a step further. JSON injections can help implement and put structured data in place proficiently and simply. 

10) Measure SEO Performance

To improve your overall marketing strategies, reporting and analytics are two critical elements of SEO to use.

Here are three tools you can use to regularly monitor and report your results:


A) Data Studio

Google’s Data Studio helps you to tie online data back to offline data to allow you to get full 360 views of how your content and marketing are performing, by aggregating data from numerous sources into a single interface. It is a fantastic SEO tool for internal teams to use and SEO agencies to share fancy reports with their clients.

SEO metrics tracking with Data Studio can help you ascertain the value of your SEO strategy and evaluate if you need to hinge or change tactics for better results. 


B) Wayback Machine

Wayback Machine is a great tool to learn how your competition has changed, what techniques are working for them, what mistakes have they learned from, and so on.


This tool allows marketers to gain access to petabytes of archived web pages. You can track the evolution of your competitors’ brand and web presence and this will ultimately allow you to take note of factors such as variations in UX design, discrepancies in copy from one web version to the next, and/or actions of key page elements.


However, you should not execute something just because your competitor is doing it, you have to use your industry knowledge in addition to common sense, before proceeding to copy their changes.


C) SEMrush

SEMrush is an SEO tool that is used by marketers to track ever-changing keyword ranking positions in different search engines, which means you can easily find out which of your keywords are driving the most results.


D) Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a critical piece of artillery in any SEOer's toolbox, and it should be checked religiously. Search Console will be the first tool to let you know if Google does not like something about your site.


CONCLUSION

Understanding the basics of SEO is very important. So is having solid content and staying on top of technology trends. You need to understand the impact of backlinks, schema, and site speed on your website’s click-through rates, engagement, and ranking. 


Contact Us if you want more personalized tips on how to improve your website.

 
 
 























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