In the age of digitization, Google is no less than a personal assistant with answers to all our questions. Whether you are looking for restaurants near you, need reviews for your favorite films or are searching for specific service providers in your vicinity, Google guides you every step of the way. This has substantially increased people’s reliance on search engines over the last few years.
Let us quantify the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engines in general by looking at a few key statistics:
The digital giant Google received a plethora of searches in 2021 from users across the world. This clearly implies that your existing and potential customers are highly active on Google. The data here also implies that businesses around the world had 360 billion opportunities of generating leads and earning loyal customers. It is stats like these that make every ambitious organization look for the best SEO company to improve its visibility online.
- Fifteen percent of all the searches made on Google are new to the platform (Source: Google)
As a good chunk of searches made on Google, it implies that the preferences of customers around the world are dynamic. This makes it important for companies to stay updated in terms of the latest SEO techniques to be used. Along with being found on Google for the keywords that are already popular, it is important to focus on the keywords used for making new Google searches. At the end of the day, it is all about staying in sync with the ever-changing Google environment.
- The first five organic results on the first page of Google account for 67.60 percent of all the clicks (Source: Zero Limit Web)
When it comes to SEO, it is often said that not getting ranked on the first page of Google is as good (or bad!) as not having a site altogether! The attention span and patience of internet users are reducing with time, making them too lazy to click on the second page of the search engine results pages (SERPs). This makes it important for organizations to battle it out through SEO to get the best spot on the first page of search results.
Major Dos For SEO
Here are some of the most important activities you should perform to get your website ranked high on the SERPs:
Measure Your Performance Using Analytics
Even if you are using the best and the latest SEO techniques, it is always important to quantify the results you obtain. Use the right SEO analytics tools to measure the performance of your website before and after implementing SEO. SEO analytics helps you ascertain what works and what doesn’t for your website. Analytics reports provide you with an objective view of your SEO campaign and help you make changes that matter.
Use More Long-Tail Keywords
A keyword is a yardstick that helps your existing and potential customers discover your business on the internet. It is these words that internet users type in the Google search box to obtain relevant results. To have a successful SEO campaign for your business, it is always advisable to focus on long-tail keywords.
As the name suggests, long-tail keywords are the keywords that contain more words and are, therefore, more specific. These keywords help you narrow down the searches made by internet users and show them a shorter route to reaching your website.
For example, if you are availing yourself of SEO services for marketing your local supermarket online, targeting keywords like “online supermarkets in Mumbai” would yield better results than merely targeting keywords like “online supermarkets”.
When the searches of your audience become more specific, they are more likely to find you on the first page of Google search results.
Weave Content Around the Targeted Keywords
Once you have finalized the keywords to be used for SEO, make sure that the content created and posted on your website revolves around these words. For best results, make sure you use the primary keyword in your title and your meta title. These are the two elements visible to users as they make a search on Google. You have to grab their attention and persuade them to click on your website with around 160 characters. This is why it is important to create content that is unique and engaging.
When it comes to writing content for the body of your website, keep the copy relevant to your services. Make sure the readers go through the entire content (just like you are right now!) and don’t end up bouncing off to another site shortly after landing on yours.
Thanks to the ever-evolving technology, search engines today are able to understand the conversational tone of your content and its context. Make sure the content you create does not force the keywords into the write-up and is able to keep the visitors engaged as long as they stay on your website.
Use Internal Links
Internal links help site visitors navigate within your website easily. When it comes to adding links to your content for SEO, focus on the quality of links instead of quantity. Without stuffing your content with links, make sure that you link the internal web pages of your site for better SEO. For best results, it is advisable to link the home page of your website to your product/service pages.
Use the Right SEO Tools
SEO is an ideal combination of art and technology. While it is the art of understanding the specific requirements of your audience and churning out creative content, it requires the right use of proven tools and technologies to obtain the required results.
To create a successful SEO campaign, it is always important to use the right SEO tools. These tools help you understand the potential of your website to be ranked high up on the SERPs and provide you with valuable insights into different aspects of your SEO campaign.
When you choose the right SEO tools, you can analyze the targeted keywords, the content created, the backlinks obtained, rank received and much more. In other words, SEO tools provide you with a report card about your SEO campaign to help you make the right decisions.
Provide Links on Your Social Media Accounts
It is a common belief that there is no connection between SEO and social media marketing. However, that is certainly not the case – linking your social media profiles with your website helps you improve your site rankings.
Adding sufficient and relevant information about your social media presence on your website allows search engines to rank your social media pages on the result pages. Moreover, once you lead the visitors from your website to your social media profiles, you can get more traction and engagement out of the same.
Major Don’ts For SEOs
Here are some of the most important activities you should refrain from performing to get your website ranked high on the SERPs:
Copy Content From Other Websites
Avoid copying content from other websites and pasting it on yours to get a better rank on the SERPs. According to the Google Webmaster Guidelines, the search engine would never acknowledge a website with plagiarized content and may end up penalizing the concerned organization for the same. The importance of using engaging and original content is very high when it comes to getting the desired SERP rankings.
Put All Your Keywords on a Single Page
Never stuff a single web page with all the keywords you are targeting. A page stuffed with keywords nullifies the reason why they are used in the first place! Always make sure that you space out all your keywords across the content posted throughout your website. Search engines are capable of assessing the smart use of keywords while indexing websites.
Look Past the Search Intent
The primary goal of a search engine is to provide content to users based on their specific intent. If your website is not in sync with the search intent of the users, search engines will not rank the site high up on the SERPs.
Largely, there are three major intents of users browsing the internet – informational, commercial and navigational. If you are targeting users with an informational intent, make sure your website provides them with correct and relevant information. If you are catering to the commercial intent of users, make sure your website makes the visitors understand your products or services. If you are willing to attract users with navigational intent, make sure you own the navigational query of your brand.
Allow Slow Loading of Your Website
As mentioned earlier, the attention span of internet users has significantly reduced over time. With high-speed internet at their disposal, no one is willing to wait for longer than a couple of seconds for a website to load completely. When your webpage takes time to load, the visitors are likely to close the tab, making search engines feel that the content on your website is not relevant.
To ensure that your website loads faster, make sure that you cache your webpages well, compress the images used, simplify the code and limit redirects from your website.
Use Too Many External Links
While using the right amount of relevant external links is healthy for your website, using way too many links is never advisable. Google considers a site with excessive external links to be spammy and does not rank it high on the SERPs. Also, if your website has a lot of external links, you are driving traffic away from your website.
The Final Word
I hope this information helped you reinforce your theories about SEO and taught you a thing or two about the art and science of digital marketing. Irrespective of the scale at which you operate and the industry you belong to, always remember that practices like SEO help you carve your niche in the market and stand out from the clutter.
