Have you ever wondered how your visitors are finding your website? If you rely on people finding you through search engines like Google, then search engine optimization should be your number one priority. 93% of journeys on the internet start from search engines and the top 3 results on Google’s search results have a 30% chance of getting clicked. So, if your goal is to generate more leads for your business then you should prioritize your SEO. Having the ability to appear on the first page of Google’s search results gives you a huge advantage over your competitors, as 75% of people usually won’t even click on the second page of the results. Here, I will discuss some ways and methods that can help you better your SEO ranking.
- Content is king
When was the last time you updated your website? If it has been a while since your last update then there is a good chance your SEO ranking isn’t as good as it should be. To increase your site’s traffic and get more visitors, you need to give them a reason to want to do that and make them attracted to your website. Your content needs to be high quality, relevant and up-to-date. This helps increase the dwell time on your website, which basically means that people will spend more time on your site in each of their visits. Another thing that helps you increase your SEO ranking is getting bookmarked, and having high-quality content will increase the chances of that happening.
- Know your target keywords
One of the first steps of formulating a solid SEO strategy that aligns with your business goals is identifying the words and phrases that represent your brand and content. By using the tools that are available for keyword research you can find words that are relevant to your target audience, and this will help you build a solid foundation for your strategy so you can reach more people with your content. A good rule of thumb is to create your content with 1-3 keywords, this may seem like a small number but putting more keywords in your content can hurt your SEO as search engines consider that keyword stuffing.
- Optimize your loading speed
Your page loading speed is important for various reasons. Firstly if your loading speed is slow Google will recognize it and your SEO ranking will be affected. But not only is that bad for your ranking it also affects the way users interact with your website, and those negative interactions will harm your ranking as well. Experts at Team-X, who offer the best SEO services in Melbourne say 40% of visitors will leave a webpage if it doesn’t load within the first 3 seconds, and that is bad for your ranking because it will decrease your website’s traffic. On the other hand, if you have a fast-loading website you have a higher chance of getting visitors which in turn will improve your SEO ranking. Google recognizes popular websites and adjusts their search ranking based on that parameter.
- Your site should be responsive
Mobile phones are taking over, and it is at a point that they have taken over laptops and computers. Over 60% of Google searches come from phones and what that tells us is the majority of internet use is done on mobile devices, that’s why you can’t have a website that isn’t optimized on phones. Google will find out if your website doesn’t work well on phones and ranks your site accordingly, plus if your site doesn’t have a good user experience you will lose out on a lot of potential traffic which will not have good results for your ranking.
- Use optimized images
Good pictures and images can make your site feel fresh and lively. But you need to make sure they are optimized correctly so that they improve your SEO. Factors such as file and format are very important to having optimized images, as large images can slow your loading speed which can hurt your SEO ranking. Resize and compress your images to optimize them. You can also rename your images to put related keywords in them. If you have a website that sells clothes, instead of naming your image “shirt1” you can name it “grey shirt for men”. Keywords can be used in captions and descriptions of images as well.
- Blogging
Another great tool that can help you generate leads and engage with your audience is blogging. Since I already talked about the importance of content, you can understand that blogging can help improve your SEO. Fresh and new content can attract visitors and drive traffic to your site. If you manage to attract consistent readers to your blog it can greatly affect your SEO ranking. Having a blog will also give you a channel to incorporate other things such as headers, links, images, and keywords into your content to help with your SEO.