In this competitive era of digitization, Search Engine Optimization or powerful SEO techniques play a crucial role to establish the most significant impact on website rankings, increased traffic, and improved conversion rates. Search engine optimization is one of the much-discussed topics today. It is proved that optimizing a website for natural search is beneficial for business as it continues to drive a considerable amount of traffic.
With several internet marketing strategies available in the market, digital marketers prefer to use SEO marketing techniques for successful conversion. The core of Search Engine Optimization is to enhance the entire structure and content of a website and further help a business to grow and escalate sales performance.
SEO strategies mainly include two fundamental parts – on-site or on-page SEO, and off-site SEO. Both are different in their approach and upgrades the site for ranking and conversion in varied ways.
On-page SEO assists optimizing various parts of a website while off-page Search Engine Optimization technique aims at developing the authority of the page domain by incorporating links from other sites. Off page SEO focuses mainly on making a website domain more authentic amidst its competitors. Although on page and off page SEO work together to improve the position in a complementary way yet, on-page SEO strategies seem to have a more notable impact on a website’s ranking factor.
Mentioned below are 5 simple steps to master for implementing productive SEO strategies for successful website ranking of the year ahead:
Step 1: Create high-quality content and enhance the Website ranking
Contents are essential segments of any website. Over the years, Google has laid down strict principles regarding appearing on a website at the top of search engine. A site that features relevant, informative and useful materials ranks on top of any Search Engine while a web page with poor quality articles gets lost in the crowd.
But how to determine the quality of content?
Researchers analyzed that there are three stages of evaluating content.
Stage one, whether the content is unique and original –
Content can be in the form of texts, videos, images or infographics. Documents that do not resemble any published item and is not similar to other existing contents on the internet are considered unique.
Stage two, determining the quality of the content –
Articles/blogs that are well researched and provide useful, informative and relevant information rank better among its competitors. Content length is also one of the vital ranking factors and this equates with creating content of a particular stretch. Websites with long articles reach the topmost position.
Stage three, if it is valued by users or not-
Web page visitors are the focal point of any business. They are the main contributors to the success of any online marketing portal. Thus, the contents that engage the users and impress them with error-free information attain the top grade. Therefore, articles that are detailed, engaging and satisfy the reader’s quest are better optimized.
Step 2: Switch your website to HTTPS protocol and improve page rankings
With several changing realms of Google’s algorithms, of late, there is an official announcement that switching a website over to HTTPS will give the site an enormous boost and affect SEO marketing.
HTTPS or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure enhances the security of a website and improves the site’s ranking determinant. Although it won’t impact on site SEO directly, instead this SEO technique will increase the strength of a site’s URL and further encourage the site’s ranking.
Many websites require filling up of forms or signing up with email IDs and for this reason, every internet user prefers such web pages to appreciate their privacy and confidentiality. Recent surveys show that websites that do not have any security feature cannot earn the trust of its users, and as a result miss out a lot of organic traffic. Hence, switching a website to HTTPS protocol from HTTP is one of the essential steps towards maximizing SEO efforts.
Changing your site from HTTP to HTTPS will secure the connection with the user and protect their details by encrypting their sensitive data. When visitors know that it’s safe to use a website they engage with the portal spontaneously and eventually, these web visitors will turn into potential customers.
Step 3: Focus on improving the site speed
Website loading speed is one of the major ranking factors used by Google. Additionally, Google spends a large sum of money to make websites faster.
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Web visitors do not want to wait for long while they search information online. They want the internet to provide valuable knowledge regarding their query instantly. As users are indispensable to the success of any online business, a slow-loading site would create an adverse effect on the organization’s sales. So, it is necessary to satisfy their needs entirely.
Every marketer should optimize each effect and format of the website. It’s also necessary to eliminate loosely structured links and irrelevant data that mainly slow the downloading time.
Step 4: Build Mobile Friendly sites for better SEO marketing
Mobiles are the in thing today. This technology has made information access more comfortable. With cellular marketing, any organization can take his business to a broader sphere.
According to 2016 report, almost 60% of the research in Google came from mobile devices. Thus, if a website is not mobile friendly, it’s already losing half of the potential traffic.
Creating a responsive website along with accelerated mobile pages (AMP) are the vital steps towards SEO.
In 2015, Google programmed an algorithm which states that a webpage appearing in mobile search results will be prioritized among others, and will rank higher. However, it’s also essential to look for those mobile SEO mistakes that might sabotage mobile marketing effects and rectify them accordingly. To excel in the method, a businessperson can use the ‘Mobile-Friendly Test tool’ by Google to determine whether a page is mobile-friendly or not.
Step 5: Focus on building quality links
Link building is another proven SEO techniques among the top 3 ranking signals. According to Google’s search algorithm, creating relevant backlinks is considered as the most effective ranking signals.
A link from the relevant and high-quality website is the most profitable one. Quality link building process enhances the status of the page and attracts more organic traffic to the site. The higher the amount of pertinence between the original content and backlink content, the more excellent useful are the backlinks.
Before creating compelling and important links, the initial step is to understand the searching pattern of the users. Identifying visitor psychology can help webmasters generate better links with proper keywords.
However, one must build backlinks according to the Google Penguin algorithm. Penguin penalizes websites that provide low-quality and useless backlinks to a website.
Final Thoughts
The year 2018 will witness several innovative changes regarding SEO methodologies, techniques, and strategies. Hence, a marketer should not be satisfied with his Search Engine Optimization laurels; he must master specific SEO methods to make the online business more successful in the coming years.
