What SEO Aspects You Can Improve to Rank Higher

Last Updated on September 3, 2024

SEO makes the difference between the websites ranking on the first page of search engine results and those that disappear in the crowd. For your website to be successful, you must implement the best SEO practices. Think about it, how many times have you searched for something on Google and went out digging for the results on the second page? People hardly do that, which means to get traffic and make sales, you have to rise to the first page. That’s easier said than done, though, especially if you have no SEO knowledge at all.

This guide will give you a few SEO tips to provide you with a starting point. And remember, SEO needs are constantly changing, so you want to implement these strategies as soon as possible before the algorithms come with new demands.

1.     Publish Relevant High-Quality Content

Google is in the business of answering people’s queries. This means they want to give users the best webpages that answer their questions accurately and comprehensively. With that logic, relevant and high-quality content will always have an advantage. Moreover, what’s the point in spending so much to rank high if you serve low-quality content that doesn’t convert?

Therefore, content is crucial both in ranking and making sales. When users are getting answers on your website, search engines respond by boosting the content’s ranking.

So, how do you create relevant content? Well, this is where you need SEO tools like ahrefs. These will help you understand the needs of your audience. You will figure the keywords to target, word count, etc. Once you have that, write a masterpiece or commission the work to an impeccable writer who understands the subject as well as the needs of your audience.

2.     Optimize Your Content

This is where you look at keyword density, NLP, content length, etc. Make sure your content has the relevant keywords to rank for the specific topics you are targeting. Several onsite optimization tools can help you out with this.

Keep in mind that content over-optimization is a real thing. As you compare your article to the top-ranking ones, don’t get carried away and use a higher keyword density than them. This may seem like a logical thing to do, but it isn’t. Over-optimization is interpreted as spammy behavior, and it’s usually punished.

Natural Language Processing or NLP is also important today as the number of voice searches increases. One of the best ways of executing NLP is by formatting topics or subtopics in the form of questions.

Updating old blog posts is also important since search engines are keen on serving answers with the latest information.

3.     Implement Technical SEO

Technical SEO is all about optimizing your website. The checklist here contains several key aspects, some of which are very technical. That’s why some people source the help of SEO consultants to optimize a website on their behalf. However, you can do some of the tasks yourself. Here is what technical SEO involves:

a.     Install SSL

This is one of the few things that you can do yourself. Secure Socket Layer Certificates provide an extra layer of security that Google loves to see.

You can tell whether your site is secured with SSL by checking if the URL has HTTPS://. Websites without the certificate usually start with HTTP://.

b.     Optimize loading speeds

Fast loading speeds provide a good user experience. Search engines also love fast websites, so they’ll naturally rank them higher.

A website’s speed can be increased in different ways, e.g., using fast hosting and DNS, compressing image size and web pages, using a single CSS stylesheet, etc.

c.     Generate XML Sitemap

XML sitemaps help algorithms to crawl your website. This makes it easier for search engines to know more about your entire site as well as the specific webpages.

d.     Make your site mobile-friendly

Google is currently prioritizing mobile indexing ahead of desktop, meaning mobile-friendly websites have an advantage in indexing and ranking.  Work with developers to create a mobile-intuitive site.

The other tasks to perform here are:

• Register your website with Google Search Console
• Set up structured data mark up
• Merge or delete duplicate content
• Create meta descriptions
• Use header tags throughout your content with H1 as your title. Make sure you use H1 only once in the content.

4.     Use Links

Inbound, outbound, and internal links are all critical ranking signals. Inbound links come from other websites. They are also called backlinks. These are the most important in ranking. The best and highest-ranking websites have inbound links coming from trustworthy websites.

There are several types of backlinks that you can build for your website. The first type is from authority websites. These are links coming from sites with high DA. Good examples here are websites like New York Times, Vogue, The Washington Post, etc. When search engines see links from these sites pointing to your website, they increase your site’s domain authority which will automatically take you higher in the SERPs.

The other type of backlinks you should get are from sites within your niche. Why are they important? Well, they provide relevance signals. When a website discussing yoga gets backlinks from other top-ranking yoga sites, it means that the site qualifies to be discussing that particular topic, so its ranking will rise.

And how are outbound links useful? Outbound links show that you are providing your visitors with the best information by directing them to other authority websites. That’s why you need to build outbound links. And make sure you maintain a good balance between inbound and outbound links.

What about internal links? Linking several pages within your website helps to distribute authority as well as traffic. And no, you shouldn’t go on a rampage linking all webpages with every chance you get. Link relevant topics to give your users more value. You can also focus on linking a webpage with a high DA backlink to a low-performing webpage to improve its performance.

That pretty much covers the biggest parts of search engine optimization that can make a real difference. Depending on the current state of your website, the tips can produce results in as little as a few hours to as long as weeks. The most important thing is making sure you get started right away.