Keeping up with the competition nowadays is getting harder due to the fact that a majority of businesses moved to the online world. This has forced many people to understand how search engines work and what are the best steps that they can take in order to rank high in result pages.
Only a couple of years ago, it was completely possible to manipulate a variety of search engines, but as the algorithms have become much more sophisticated, manipulation is off the table and new rules have been set. Ranking high is hard to achieve nowadays, but, it is still possible. There are several specific things that you should pay attention to if you want to increase the flow of organic traffic to your website.
Table of Contents
Technical issues
A website’s technical issues were not something that was taken into account in the past, however, after numerous algorithm updates, it has become a very important element.
Loading time is something that is affected by both hosting providers and bad website optimization. Ensuring that you have a good web hosting provider is a great step, but making sure that your website is well optimized is an ongoing process. For example, if you have a WordPress website, it is important not to clutter it with a variety of different plugins, as this can badly affect the performance.
The first problem that is going to appear are higher bouncing rates, as people do not want to waste time while your website takes time to load. All of this data is picked up by the search engine’s algorithm. Bad data means worse ranking; good data, on the other hand, means, positive ranking results.
Another technical issue that is tremendously important to prevent is the appearance of malware on your website. This kind of infraction can cause serious problems such as de-indexing, making it impossible for people to find your website. So, if this type of problem occurs, it is important to react immediately and find a solution as fast as possible.
Always look for any possible technical issues that you might be having with your website and work on solving them as soon as possible.
Performing keyword research
Keyword were a very significant factor in the past, as they were used by the search engine to determine the focus and topic of your blog. However, as this system was abused by millions of online websites, the way that keywords now function has greatly changed. Don’t get me wrong, they are still important, but stuffing them will bring no positive results; on the contrary, you are looking to be de-indexed as this practice is not punishable.
Additionally, algorithm updates were more focused on finding semantic and contextual structures which are going to answer people’s questions in a much better way. This was done to ensure that users always have the best experience. Therefore, focusing more on long tail keywords and creating titles that can be considered as an answer to a particular question is a much better approach that brings higher amounts of traffic. This means that keyword research processes should be performed with focus on longer expressions that people are using. The questions people are looking for will point to which type of content you should be creating.
Actively working on content
Website activity is another factor that is also used in the ranking process. This means that you cannot post on your website’s blog once a year and have good results. The engine is looking for activity to ensure that the website is active and therefore useful for its users. So, actively creating content greatly helps with ranking, especially in the long term.
If you are wondering how often you should post, it all depends on the niche of your website. Also, if you are producing too much content, you can also be flagged as a spam website, which will negatively affect your ranking results. In short, the number you should be looking for is somewhere in between three blog posts per week, up to two posts per day. It all depends on the nature of your blog. Avoid posting only once per month, as this might lead to your website being labeled as an inactive one.
Content relevance and quality
Creating content regularly is important, but it also has to be of high quality so that users keep coming back to your website. All this behavior is taken into account by the search engine.
For example, a person comes to your website, finds awful content, and immediately leaves. This increases bounce rates. However, if your content is of high quality, and the user remains on your website for a longer period of time, the algorithm picks up this behavior as good, because the user has found something interesting and important that made him or her stick around. As the search engine is created to offer a flawless user experience, it will rank your website higher if its users find it useful.
Create meaningful content for your visitors; it will demand more research, but it will incredibly pay off over a longer period of time, as you’ll become a person with authority on a particular topic.
Design and functionality
When it comes to the bounce rates and user satisfaction, the design is one of the main elements that affect this data. Forming a great first impression is something that can be achieved only by a great design and easy user navigation. Therefore, make sure that you are using a design that is easy to follow without introducing many elements that can take away the visitors’ attention. On the other hand, navigation through the website should be natural. This is achieved after some time spent monitoring your website’s performance.
Keep in mind that a majority of people use mobile devices to surf the web nowadays, so make sure that your website supports all the different platforms present in the market today. All this is also picked up by the search engine and is considered especially important nowadays, as more users are going mobile.
Working on engagement and links
Achieving engagement is very important and there are two types of engagement that you want on your website.
- On-site engagement – this type of engagement includes people who are communicating in the comment section. This is very important, as it provides feedback. Plus, it gives indications that your website is up and running.
- Social signal engagement – social media networks have become an omnipresent part of our lives and billions of people use them every day. They have also become an important part of the search engine indexing and ranking system. Make your content valuable for general masses and implement prominent sharing buttons next to your content. It will affect your ranking results in a positive way.
Achieving engagement is possible if you fine-tune your content to provoke the reader to state his or her opinion on a particular topic. So, make sure that you draw in your visitors and stimulate them to communicate with you.
When it comes to linking, reaching out to influencing bloggers to share your content is important. Additionally, you can register on a variety of blogs that allow promotional guest blogging. These are some of the strongest elements that are still affecting your ranking, so make sure that you invest your time and dedication into your guest blogging strategy as well.
Measuring performance
Performing all of the above steps is somewhat pointless if you are not monitoring the results. Monitoring user behavior and a variety of visitor data will tell you where you did a good job and where it is necessary to fine tune your content to further improve its performance. Luckily, monitoring data is nowadays very simple, as there are plenty of best SEO software reviews for a variety of software solutions that will help you pick the right tool for your SEO strategy.
Measuring performance is a task that is performed continually, so make sure that you collect data every single month. It is vital for the future, making it much more efficient. So, focus your attraction on organic traffic.
These are some of the most important factors that are taken into account by a variety of online search engines. As you can see, simple keyword research is not going to be enough for you to rank well. Thinking about various other factors will yield much better results, so make sure that you actively pay attention to all of them.This content is shared by Megri Outreach