Get a top spot in search results with these simple tips
Organic search engine optimization, or SEO, allows you to obtain a top spot in search results through unpaid, algorithm-driven methods that translate to increased page traffic and conversions.
By optimizing your website’s content, on-site elements and authority, you can tap into the 90% of Google searches that land on Page 1 results.
Read on to see what that means for you.
1. Optimize your content. By making sure there are relevant keywords throughout each visible part on your website — each new page, each new blog post — you can increase your visibility to searchers in your market.
A simple way to get your site above others is to ensure the freshness of its content by adding the current year, and in some cases even the month, into the body and even title of your pages. Adding the current year helps users identify your content as fresh and relevant, thus increasing their likelihood of clicking through.
2. It’s not always what’s visible on-site. If the experience of accessing a website is friction-filled, visitors may not stick around long enough to explore the content. To check how fast your
website speed is — under three seconds is an ideal response time — enter its URL into Google PageSpeed Insights, a free tool that reports the user experience of a page on both mobile and desktop devices and gives suggestions on potential improvements.
Other
on-site elements that impact SEO might include schema markup, which is code that enables search engines to understand your content and signify it in the search results; and honing a meta description, which is the text users see
beneath your site title in a search engine that answers users’ questions and includes a call-to-action. While search engines no longer use them as a ranking signal — Google stopped sometime between 1999 and 2003, according to the website Search Engine Journal — meta descriptions do improve click-through rates from search results.
3. Authority is key. Authority relates to the quality and size of your backlink profile or the list of sites that link back to your website. Major search engines see backlinks as “votes” in favor of a specific URL, meaning pages with more backlinks tend to have a higher organic ranking in search engines. And because 40% of revenue on average is captured by organic search results, this can affect your bottom line.
The quality of your backlinks matter. Backlinks from respected, high-ranking, authoritative websites will boost your organic SEO higher than backlinks from lesser-known websites. To attract more backlinks, focus on creating linkable assets, such as a blog post, a survey, or a video.
To find out more about what organic SEO can do for you, email info@communityjournals.com.
