Top 9 SEO Tips to Boost Your Search Ranking

Understanding SEO is essential to boost your search ranking and traffic. People today are more likely to look up for products and services on the web before making a purchase, and hence, you need to rank among the first few results of Google’s search. 

Once your website reaches there, you will have better visibility among your customers leading to more traffic, more conversions, and ultimately, an increased revenue.

Most of your website traffic is going to come from a search query, and that’s why optimizing your website for search engines is so important. However, that doesn’t happen overnight. 

To be on the top of your game, you need to invest in a lot of research and experimentation as well as be mindful of the constant updates that Google’s algorithms go through. Keeping this in mind and along with a bit of practice, you can improve your SEO game.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at the top 9 SEO tips to help you drive quality traffic to your website the right way.

1. Write for humans first, search engines second

Sometimes, bloggers and content creators tend to resort to the old methods of SEO, where the mere use of keywords could rank your pages irrespective of whether your content was engaging or valuable or not. But now, that simply won’t work.

Presently, you have to focus more on how people engage with a particular brand, product or service.
Understand that your number one priority should be the actual humans who are going to read your blog or consume your content instead of creating content to manipulate search spiders and search engines to rank you.

Search spiders are just bots that crawl the website to collect information for search engine indexing. They can’t buy your products or engage with your brand on social media and become a loyal customer. Therefore, always put your readers first.

So, how do you create content for users first before search engines?
Well, you can start with the intent of helping someone with your content and forget that search engines like Google exist. Funny enough, when your focus is on your users first, you will actually end up writing helpful content that search engines will reward.

2. Make sure your site is fast and remove anything that could be slowing your site down

Slow-loading site is a ‘big NO’ in SEO and the marketplace of today. If your page is slow to load, it can frustrate the user experience as well as increase your bounce rate. Ultimately, this will discourage people from buying your product.
Even a delay of one second in your page load time can result in significant loss of conversions. In the mind of your prospects, a site that loads slowly is untrustworthy. Period.

Hence, improving your page speed is critical to both your users and search engines. Long ago, Google too had mentioned that it considers site speed as one of the important ranking factors. This means that if your pages are slow to load, you will lose the chance for top organic listings even if your web page has the best content or professional website design.

Also, take care to get rid of unimportant elements that might be slowing your website down. If you use WordPress, you may want to deactivate plugins you have installed and activated, but don’t need. You can also declutter your sidebar and let only essential widgets stay there.

3. Blog regularly

Blogging is quite effective to grow your organic site traffic. Although it isn’t a ranking factor in itself, blogs help with several essential things.
When you regularly update your site with high-quality blog posts that cover topics relevant to your target audience, the overall performance of your website in the search engines becomes better.

Google wants its users to get the best information that is out there. Regular blogging signals search engines that the website is alive and offering updated and fresh content. Moreover, your website gets indexed more often and stays in the radar as well.

Users immediately lose some trust if they find information that hasn’t been updated in a long time. It could be possible that the company went out of business or providing information that’s debunked after the last update. So, a blog is a practical tool to add fresh content to your website regularly.
Besides, when your audience likes your posts, they’re more likely to share it and bring more traffic to it. 

They might even subscribe to your email list and come back to read more of your content. More traffic and repeat visitors indicate Google that people like your website, and consequently, it raises your authority level in their algorithm.

4. Use long-tail keywords

There might be a lot of popular keywords in the market and in your list which you would want to use for your blog. But, don’t go with it. You should rather go for keywords that are more specific to the product or service that you are offering.

It’s just a matter of time before Google and other search engines alike will recognize your website or blog as a source of relevant information about that particular subject and rank your content in SERPs to allow the ideal customers to find you. 

It is essential to note that ranking among the top results of Google is all about setting a stronghold on a particular niche topic and owning that area. Let’s take this blog for example. 
It talks specifically about what websites can do to boost their search ranking by increasing the inflow of organic traffic to their posts. It isn’t targeting a broad area of every SEO-related keyword that is out there.

Targeting long-tail keywords is an amazing SEO tactic because long-tail keywords are more specific and users will usually type a long-tail keyword when they are searching for something. Although long-tail keywords get less search traffic, they can bring in higher conversion value. Using long-tail keywords will ensure that your website gets new and motivated-audiences.

5. Answer questions on Quora

Quora is a question and answer site where people post questions on a variety of topics or answer them. It is an excellent platform that you can use to answer questions in your niche, and in the process, build your authority on the particular subject and generate traffic for your website.

Answering questions on Quora can literally help you accumulate thousands of views on your answers which can translate into traffic and sales to your website. 

But now, the question that arises is how exactly do you market yourself on Quora?
The answer to this question isn’t very tough. All you have to do is spend some time finding the right questions, and once you have the questions ready, start answering them.

To find the questions or pages on Quora that receive the most traffic, you can take the help of Ahref’s Site Explorer. Here’s the link. If you answer these questions, your answers will show up on the SERPs, and hence, send you more referral traffic.

You can also try out one more strategy to increase your traffic. It’s called the Quora Ads hack. For that, you need to set up an Ads account, select ‘Questions Targeting’ and then enter a relevant keyword. You will then receive suggestions about the questions you can answer by Quora.

6. Update your content every now and then

If it’s been a while since you have started blogging, you would have several content or blog posts in your archives that you can update and repurpose. Some of the blogs might also be bringing a good amount of organic traffic to your website. You can improve these blogs and their authority so that they can rank higher in the SERPs.

Start by creating a list of all your content that is performing well. Then log on to Google Analytics and look for the best performing content from three to six months ago. Once you have the list, here’s what you can do to make them fresh and popular again.

Step 1: Work on the headlines: The headlines of your blog are probably the first thing that your users are going to read. If it’s not good enough to hold their attention, they might bounce back from your blog. So, it is essential to write a catchy headline that also briefly tells your reader what your blog is about. Also, remember to add the SEO keyword in the headline.

Step 2: If you can, try to add user testimonials: User testimonials can work wonders for marketing success. A piece of content with a customer or user testimonial has a higher chance of success. Customer testimonials show that people have followed your information and have gained some sort of benefit from it. Let’s see it this way – if you are the one who’s saying how beneficial your products are, a potential buyer may not jump on board, but if its actual public who are backing up your product, your authority and influence reach new heights.

Step 3: Replace old data and images with fresh ones: Data is ever-changing. The data you have included in your earlier blogs may have changed now. So, take care to keep your data correct and reliable.
You will probably have to update your blog with new and fresh images as well so that everything is in line with your current branding.

Furthermore, Google keeps changing its algorithms and indexing rules periodically. Updating your post will ensure that blogs still perform good and readers don’t find outdated info on your website.

Other things that you need to update as well are old citations, broken links, keywords that you want to rank for, case studies, etc.

7. Create SEO optimised landing pages

A landing page that is SEO optimized and has a great design can enhance lead generation and sales. Your landing pages act as the gateways that bring up more search traffic and capture new users. So, it is recommended to go the extra mile to create a professional, clean, and modern layout with your landing pages. The following are some of the key elements that make a landing page great.

Avoid navigation. Your users need to stay on the page Post useful and informative content
Use a call to action – it could be asking them to sign up for your email service, download a product or any other type of action
Landing pages are capable of generating good income for you. Researches have shown that businesses that have about ten to fifteen landing pages have 55 percent more conversions than businesses that have few or less-optimized landing pages.
You can follow the tips mentioned below to SEO optimize your landing page.
Step 1: Use long-tail keywords throughout the content on your landing page. Remember that the keywords should occur naturally throughout the content to avoid keyword stuffing.
Step 2: Use a professional and clean design for your landing page. Your website will fail if your design isn’t great regardless of whether your content is good or not.
Step 3: Add links to your landing page from your existing content. Google considers links as a huge factor for ranks. Without quality links, there is a high possibility that you won’t rank very well in the Google search.

8. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

Currently, a significant part of user engagement comes from mobile devices. So, it has never been more important to optimize your site to work well on mobile devices.
In May 2016, Google launched an update to its search algorithm that improves the ranks of websites that are mobile-friendly and responsive.

Besides, sixty percent of all daily searches are now being done from a mobile device. Looking at these statistics, you cannot just simply ignore the importance of having a mobile-friendly website. Having a mobile-friendly website is not a luxury anymore, it’s a basic standard now.

9. Post valuable content on social media

If you think that creating great content only can land you on the SERPs, you are mistaken. People won’t find your content if you are not proactive. And one of the best ways by which you can increase traffic to your website is by promoting your content on different social media channels.

You can try posting short and tempting links on Twitter or use Google+ promotion to let your site show up in personalized search results. If you are dealing with B2C products, social sites like Instagram and Pinterest can bring you great traction.

You have to target relevant communities on the web where your target audience spends most of their time. Some of the places where you can find those communities are Facebook groups, Slack, Reddit, Forums, etc.

However, you can’t just barge in a group and start spamming the users. You will actually have to be active in those groups and gradually build trust and relationships within the community. Eventually, you might build a group of loyal audience who will be more inclined to say ‘yes’ when you try to promote something.

Final Thoughts

SEO and its importance are growing by leaps and bounds. It doesn’t matter if you have a huge business or running a small one. Having an online presence is what matters and the actual demand of the modern-day technology-driven world. More and more people are on the go and hooked on to their mobile devices. Moreover, mobile devices have also become powerful enough to do most of the jobs that a computer can do.

Therefore, if you wish to grow your business, you have to bring a lot of traffic to your website. This is possible if you work with the rules of SEO. SEO is a vast field, and the above-mentioned tips are a few of the things that you can do to boost your website traffic and grow your business at the global level.

Author Bio

Name: Pramendra Singh

Pramendra singh is an SEO analyst and a learner with a curious mind to learn about a wide range of SEO topics. His experience in SEO and writing and reviewing content gives him a solid base to approach several subjects that are valuable for businesses and websites looking to build a strong presence in the market.

When he is not writing, you can find him enjoying and playing music. Reach him at digirock17@gmail.com.