There has been competition for space on search engine results pages. The primary purpose of Search Engine Optimization is to rank websites on the Search Engine Results pages. Every website owner should strive to have his website appear on the search engine results pages’ first page.
The good thing with having your website on the top is that you stand a high chance to attract more visitors to your website, generate more leads for the website, and increase your conversion rates. SEO is hence a vital marketing tool with which every website owner should strive to achieve.
To get the ranking that is required, website owners should have proper SEO strategies. There are crucial ranking factors that ought to be followed.
I have compiled a list of ten SEO best practices that website owners should follow in order to get the best rankings. Ensure that you follow these practices if it is your wish to be on top of your competitors.
Optimize Your Website Speed
A little long ago, before the advancements that have taken place on the internet, you would be comfortable waiting for close to five minutes for a popular website to load fully.
Today that is not the case. Users only wait for an average of fifteen minutes for the website to load. Slow loading speeds can be said to be the kiss of death for most websites.
A 2016 Q2 Mobile Insights Report shows that if load time decreases by 100 milliseconds, conversion rates can drop by 7%. One of the most crucial factors considered when ranking a website is how fast the website loads.
A website with a slow loading speed will be ranked lower than a website with a higher loading speed. To appear on the first page of the search engine results pages, you will have to optimize your page loading speed.
Make Use of HTTPS
Google’s major concern is the user experience and the security of the web users. Google wants the website owners to take full care of the security of the users.
To make sure that this is attained, in the year 2014, google rolled a new piece of algorithms that saw HTTPS websites rank higher than HTTP websites.
To further strengthen the HTTPS factor, in 2015, Google announced that HTTPS would be used as a tiebreaker in a situation where two or more websites have equaled in all other ranking factors.
That said, the big question now is how to have an HTTPS website. An SSL certificate is what makes the difference. A website with an SSL certificate will have its URL starting with HTTPS, while a website without an SSL certificate will have its URL starting with HTTP.
Match the Search Intent
This is also one of the critical factors as spelled out by the latest google algorithm. Search intent sometimes referred to as user intent, is the reason behind all search queries.
One of the utmost priorities of google is to ensure that the search results satisfy the search intent. If you intend to have your website appear on the first page of the search engine results pages, you will need to understand what the search intent is and then come up with content that fits the search intent.
Invest in Relevant and Catchy Content
Another essential tip for increasing your ranking in the search engine results pages is to create catchy and worthy content. One that will harness the attention of your readers and keep them coming for more.
Captivating content, created specifically for your website visitors and free from flaws, will invite more traffic to your site. Traffic increases the relevance and the authority of your site, two very crucial ranking aids.
Relevant content takes into consideration the keyword factor. You should identify and target a specific keyword phrase for every page that appears on your site.
Regularly Update Your Content
You now realize the weight and stress that I am giving to content. Search engines also give such weight. As I have mentioned earlier, how much relevant a website is will dictate where the site falls on the search engine results pages.
To make your site relevant, you will have to update it with new and fresh content continually. Website visitors want to find something new each time they visit your website.
Failing to update the website will make them leave and not visit your website, which is not a good thing for your traffic and your site rankings, for that matter.
Aim to Improve the Visitors’ site experience
a study conducted SEMrush on search engine ranking factors found that the top ranking factors considered when ranking websites are; the bounce rates, time spent on site, pages per session, and the number of website visits. All these factors can be looked at from one angle- they all are about the experience that your website will give to your web visitors.
Work to get more Backlinks to your website.
Backlinks are links from other pages to your pages. Having backlinks is one of the highly valued search engine optimization factors.
When you have highly reputable websites linked to your website, it shows that your website can be trusted. A trusted website will invite more traffic, which in turn improves your Search Engine Rankings. You should always strive to have backlinks for your SEO purposes.
Optimize Your Images
Optimizing your images is essential to improving the speed of your website. As explained earlier, the faster your website’s speed, the higher your ranking in the search engines.
Optimized images are also quick to be noticed by search engines. So as to make sure that you rank high in the search engine results pages, you will have to start thinking about optimizing those images.
Give appropriate Titles to your website pages to help your users as well as search engines.
To know what your website is all about, search engines will have to read your title tag or meta title. The title tag is that blue link that everyone sees on the search engine results pages.
It is different from the bold heading that appears on the page itself. You should make sure that you include the keywords that users are likely to look for in the title tag.
Use videos
The use of videos is one of the best forms of content that can help with your search engine optimization strategies. Videos are best when it comes to delivering a large amount of information within the shortest period of time.
From the search engine optimization point of view, the longer your visitors spent time on your website watching those videos, the better chance you stand to increase your search engine rankings.
