10 Simple Steps for a Solid SEO Strategy
Does it appear like the rate at which SEO techniques are evolving (and their efficiency) is on a steady path? You’re not alone who thinks the same. All the time, Google is getting smarter and more effective. This is happening not only in analyzing and understanding web pages but also in how productive it is to keep people within their system. What is the reason? The more Google answers queries inside the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) or guides users to advertising rather than organic listings, the more money it earns. Unfortunately, for those who rely on Google’s organic search traffic as a lifeline, this makes it much harder.
The SERPs are swapping and for most of us, not for the better. So what are advertisers doing? They are working harder, developing better pages and blogs that are responsive. And they are focused on outdoing their rivals more than ever. In this post, to help you maintain and increase your organic search presence, we have broken down the 10 simple steps for a solid SEO strategy, covering both simple and advanced SEO strategies.
1. Improve User Experience on Your Website
Let’s start things with a quick description of what the goal of Google as a search engine is. Their goal is to find the best possible results for each user’s query, just like any search engine. Users are less likely to use the search engine again if they fail on this front. That said, Google does this very well, which is why it’s by far the world’s largest search engine! When you are optimizing your website for SEO, you will need to think about the constant desire to produce the best performance. Just remember that sites with low quality are less likely to rank. And it’s getting easier for Google to assess site quality. If your website looks unreliable, outdated, unprofessional or is slow to load, potential customers will likely bounce back to the SERPs and click on a different result.
You’ve lost a user and a future conversion, and it’s going to boost your bounce rate. While Google has not publicly confirmed this, there is evidence to suggest that the search engine giant rewards sites with higher rankings that have low bounce rates. The theory behind Google is that if a user spends more time on a website, it’s possibly because they find it helpful. Since Google just wants to give its users the best possible results, it will drive up search engine results for sites with high engagement.
2. Voice Search Optimization
It’s fair to assume that voice search is something that you can certainly factor into your SEO strategy. There are significant variations in how voice search and text search are used and how you can optimize voice search, as well as the outcomes provided to users. A text searcher, for example, could type “horse diet.” A voice-based search, however, tends to be longer, such as “what do horses eat?” Note that the voice searcher is more likely to use a query in this case. And we’re not given a list of results to choose from when we conduct a voice search, we get one response.
In voice search, long-tail keywords have a key role to play, whereas long-tail usually refers to terms containing three or more words. You’ll need to build content that targets them on your website for a chance at ranking for those longer keywords. In addition, using structured data will help improve the odds of using your data to answer a voice question over a competitor’s. There are many types of structured data that SEO experts can use (also known as Schema markup). Both help Google understand a page’s topic and themes better.
3. Optimize for Mobile
Most searches and half of all transactions are done on cell phones. In addition, inside a physical store, 80 per cent of shoppers used a cell phone to look up product reviews, compare prices or find alternative store locations. It has been in the making for several years, but Google revealed in March 2020 that it will now exclusively use its mobile Smartphone user agent to search websites.
This ensures that if the desktop version gets crawled at all, the mobile version of your website will be crawled and indexed ahead of the desktop version. As a consequence, the mobile experience should be centred on every new site you create. Of course, it is still relevant to how it appears and works on the desktop, but mobile needs to be given priority in your SEO strategy.
4. Give Priority to Topic Clusters
Google evolves, and so does the algorithm. The aim now is to understand the purpose of its users, what they expect, what they are searching for, and more importantly, what search results will help their query react best. However, just by creating keyword-focused content, don’t expect your website to appear on Google’s first list. Looking at keywords alone is not enough; we need to look at the meaning surrounding them. You must pay attention to what your users are searching for, which is often referred to as “user intent.” Your audience will focus entirely on the type of content you’ll make. The better you know them, the better the content you make, and the better your SEO.
In addition, note that it is imperative to organize content thematically, but it’s a mistake to fully disregard keywords. Keywords serve as signposts to the spiders of Google, signalling topics and offering clues on the existence of the website content. You discover who is looking for the subjects you want to write about, build blog posts or other forms of content by doing keyword research that addresses specific questions from consumers and improves brand awareness.
5. Try to Write Longer Content
A recent SEO strategy study concluded that longer content appears to accumulate more backlinks, often contributing to better rankings and increased traffic. Writing 2,000+ words for a blog post, however, is not for everyone. Not only is it intense and time-consuming, but typically it’s not necessary. Remember what we said about user intent satisfaction? There are a few search queries from individuals trying to read a lengthy blog post. To get their response, they would just need a few words or sentences. Let’s take the example of “link building tips” keyword.
People looking for that term are probably looking for a detailed link-building strategy guide. On the other hand, people looking for “link building do’s and don’ts” may not be after a comprehensive guide. All they are searching for could be a simple bullet-point list. There is, sadly, no hack to decide how long other than plain old-fashioned common sense the material should be. If they’re using a keyword that you’re targeting, ask yourself what data someone might be searching for, and proceed from there.
6. Get the Most out of YouTube SEO
A prevalent feature in the SERPs is videos, mainly from YouTube. With 2 billion monthly active users watching 1 billion hours of content every day, YouTube is the most popular video platform on the Internet. It is the second most popular site for social media and the second biggest search engine. When they think of search engines, many SEO strategy experts forget about YouTube.
Provided, video marketing isn’t for everybody, or necessarily for every industry. Although there has never been a good time to play around with video content most of us now have effective video cameras on hand. Just like Google’s spiders, YouTube’s algorithm works by gathering and using your video details. All the elements like the video title and description influence rankings in YouTube’s search results. So, make sure you do everything perfectly.
7. Create a Diverse Backlink Collection
Links are already a very significant part of search engine optimization even in 2021. Bear in mind that consistency matters, too. It is doubtful that links from very low DA pages would have a lot of value, though links from older domains have been shown to have more value than those from newer sites. But to make it quick, Google doesn’t like it. Sites with backlink profiles that consist almost entirely of extremely high-quality links can actually be flagged for a manual examination, contrary to what intuition would tell us.
This, luckily, rarely happens. They usually pick up links from smaller sites along the way as sites develop and land links from larger sites. This diversifies your link profiling and ensures the search engines view it as a natural thing.
8. Don’t Overlook Technical SEO
You may be doing all right, but it could well be underperforming if your site is not technically sound. It can be difficult to rank sites that are not secure or even sites with mixed security, i.e. some loads on HTTP and some loads on HTTPS. When visiting non-HTTPS websites, Google has begun to warn users, and if you are yet to make the move to stable, encrypted links, you might be turning away a huge chunk of people willing to visit your website.
HTTPS is the best practice that will help your website improve its SEO presence, remain secure, and make it more difficult for malicious parties to hack into your website and take advantage of it. Your method would probably be less painstaking or time-consuming if you’re a smaller company. Either way, switching to HTTPS is a necessity in a world of cyber attacks and increased SEO and SEM specifications.
9. Target Local Searchers
Almost half (48%) of all Google searches come from individuals who are searching for local data and information. This may include local stores, hours of opening, contact numbers, and addresses. So, you can’t ignore local SEO and listings if you have a local store. These search engines may also not be everywhere at once and often have to rely on additional information from local data sources. These sources include lists of directories, which collect, compile and apply relevant data for businesses in the region.
Bigger search engines such as Google will rely on these service providers to fill in their own databases with blank spots, and will also cross-check data to ensure that details are up-to-date. However, issues occur when aggregators gather out-of-date information, causing a search engine such as Google to list incorrect information, such as an outdated business address or a disconnected phone number. This is why you must ensure that your physical contact information is up-to-date on any online listing you have devised.
10. Check Your SEO Performance
Two vital elements of SEO are monitoring and analytics, both of which are vital to optimizing the overall marketing strategy. Efficient reporting means you can understand important issues such as: What content did your customer really like? Or what section of the website has the most problems with UX? Understanding such complexities (and using them to your benefit to make more enhancements) is difficult without tracking and monitoring your results regularly. By aggregating data (such as rankings, traffic and conversion data) from many sources into a single framework, Google’s Data Studio lets you do just that.
It’s a perfect SEO tool to be used by key stakeholders. It is also a great way for SEO experts to share with their customers fancy reports. But most importantly, with Data Studio, the SEO metrics you can track can help you evaluate your SEO strategy for eCommerce sites’ efficiency and decide whether you need to adjust or change strategies for better performance.
The Final Analysis about SEO Strategy
SEO is, as we know, developing rapidly. Business owners and advertisers have to adjust quickly, but it is still possible to give the edge of your competition to your website. Be sure to spend time on sound content development and copywriting fundamentals, and remain on top of technological developments as well as the effect of topics such as backlinks, web pace and schema. There’s a lot to think about, but remember, overnight, you don’t need to become the top SEO expert in the world. Make the effort to learn even the fundamentals of SEO, and you can see a major difference in the click rates, interaction and, of course, rankings of your website.