It’s important to get potential customers to know about your goods or services, but marketing is more than just buying ads. You can also help people find you on their own, like through organic search results, which are where more than half of all web traffic comes from.
Getting a higher SEO ranking (improving your place in free search engine results) makes it more likely that people will find your products when they search for terms related to your business. People who are interested in buying can be found where they are, and it doesn’t cost as much as other marketing methods. Still, one of the most misunderstood types of marketing is SEO score growth, since it depends on many things that change over time.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization ranking, or SEO rating, is where a website or page shows up on search engine results pages (SERPs) after a search query. The page’s link is more likely to be seen if it shows up higher in the search results. This means more traffic and exposure.
SEO ranking is based on many things, such as search relevance, website content, and backlinks. You want to improve these factors so that your site ranks higher and gets more free traffic.
- Key phrases – These are the words you type into Google to look for something. When you run a business, you probably focus on certain buzzwords that are related to your goods or services. These can be single words or groups of words in a question.
- Positions – Your ranking is where you appear on SERPs in comparison to other search results. On SERPs, search results aren’t usually numbered, but in SEO, they’re often talked about in numerical order. Results are arranged by how relevant they are, with the least relevant results (10th) at the bottom and the most relevant results (first) at the top of the page. (Ads, which usually show up in search results, are not in these numbered results.)
What does SERP stand for?
Search engine results page, or SERP, is the page that a search engine shows you after you type in a search term. It’s what you see when you put something into Google. It usually has a list of websites, pictures, videos, and other material that are useful.
If someone says, “We’re ranking number one in the SERP,” they mean that their page is the first result (after ads) for their goal keyword on the SERP. This is the best spot for getting clicks and traffic to their page. The traffic from SERPs is not spread out evenly; on average, 55% of the clicks for a term go to the top three results.
In reality, you can’t always be at the top of search results for your goal keywords. How likely it is depends on how competitive the keywords are and how the search engine understands what your target terms are trying to say. For popular keywords, well-known websites that know how to improve their content tend to show up higher in the search results, making it harder for new websites to get to the top.
It’s also harder for a business page to get a high ranking if the search engine thinks the keyword’s intent is informational, which means it thinks the searcher wants long-form material to answer a question instead of a product or service. This is because a search engine’s main job is to give people the best results, not help businesses appear higher in the results.
Anywhere on the first page of search results in the top ten for a keyword is good for a website and shows that it is relevant to the term. People think it’s great to be in the top three findings.
SEO Raindance: Making Your Website Rank
The point of SEO marketing is to get to the top of search results for buzzwords that will help your business grow. To get better rankings, it’s important to know how search engines work and how they rank websites.
Google and other major search engines want businesses that do SEO to follow their rules. If you know their rules, you can improve your site’s SEO, which will help search results, users, and your business. By paying attention to these things, you can help your business move up in the SERPs and make the whole site experience better.
- Create an Awesome User Experience
Search engines watch how long people stay on your site after coming from the search results page and whether they use the browser’s “Back” button to see other results. Going back to the SERP means the searcher didn’t find what they were looking for on your site, which is what the search engine cares about most.
The best thing you can do is make your site as simple to use as possible. For a good user experience, you need responsive design, fast loading times, and easy scrolling. This makes it easy to read and interact with your site on both phones and computers. Websites with recipes, on the other hand, have bad user experiences because many of them hide the recipe at the end of the story, making people scroll through ads and other text that isn’t relevant to find what they need.
- Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (EEAT)
Expounding on our first point, Google has put more weight on the “trustworthiness” of content in its results because of the rise of “black hat” SEO (spammy SEO that breaks Google’s rules) and automatic content aggregation tools like ChatGPT.
Google wants people to think that the information they’re getting comes from real people who know a lot about the subject, not just people who know a lot about algorithms. Because of this, the company judges material using its EEAT framework:
- Experience. Does the person who made the page really know about the subject? Ask yourself if they tried on the shoe they were reviewing or if they were just commenting on what they read. This is what Google, and its search raters think based on information about the author and how specific their statements are.
- Expertise. Does the person who made the page show that they are an expert in their field by showing titles or specific knowledge? How does a page maker know enough to talk about, say, the finer points of a great shoe? Are they a doctor of orthopedics or a hobby blogger?
- Authoritativeness. If a site is authoritative, it means that people can trust it in that area. It’s possible that a fitness website that has been around for a while, has a lot of high-quality backlinks (links from other trustworthy websites), and has well-written and researched content will be seen as more trustworthy.
- Trustworthiness. Does the content seem fair, or does it show bias through ad partnerships? Does the online store have a safe checkout process and good customer service?
Look for ways to make your site seem more trustworthy. You could add promises for good customer service, full author bios, and a list of certifications. Going over each page of your site with these four things in mind is one of the best things you can do for on-page SEO.
- Pick the Right Keywords
The goal of a search engine is to give you the best results for your search. Using keywords helps figure out how relevant something is.
Google, for instance, uses a complicated algorithm to figure out how relevant a web page is to a certain search question. One important thing the program looks at is how the keywords are used on the page, including how often they appear, where they are used, and how relevant the text around them is. This helps the search engine figure out what the phrase means and if the page answers the user’s question.
Finding the best words or sentences to describe each of your webpages is what keyword selection is all about. Most of the time, you should pick one major keyword (your focus) and two to three secondary keywords. Advanced SEO experts do thorough keyword study by finding out how often, why, and how hard a keyword is searched for. Modern SEO tools like AHREFs and SEMRush make it easier for people who aren’t SEO experts to get to this info.
Once you’ve chosen your page’s main keyword, use it easily in the title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and alt tags. Most of the time, search engines look for the main keyword in all these places and at least once in the body text. Some tools will also give you a list of keywords that are linked that you can use in your body text. Try to use as many of these keywords naturally as you can. Don’t force them in or stuff your copy with keywords, as Google will punish you for that.
- Come Up with High Quality Material
Google makes it clear that its goal is to provide material that is trustworthy, high-quality, and “created to benefit people.” The company gives you clear instructions on how to judge the quality of your content. Your visitors should be able to say “yes” to the following questions:
Is there original study, information, or analysis in the content?
Does the material give a full, thorough, or substantial account of the subject or item?
Is there information in the content that isn’t clear or a product that is different from what’s already out there?
Would you like to remember this page or product, share it with a friend, or tell them about it?
Would you expect to read about or see this product or piece of material in a printed magazine, encyclopedia, or book?
- Get Backlinks
Google was started by academics. A study paper isn’t enough in the academic world. You also want other researchers to use your work as a source in their own papers that build on yours. People will trust your work more if other experts talk about it. It’s even better if well-known researchers, like those from Harvard or another top school, cite your study paper.
For search engines, the same rule holds. A search engine will trust your site more if other sites link to it. Backlinks, or links from other websites, have been an important part of Google’s algorithm for more than 20 years. Improving them is called “off-page SEO” in the SEO business.
There are different kinds of backlinks, and the type of link you have affects your SEO results. For instance, it doesn’t matter much if a link comes from a social media site, a sponsored post, or a comment area. But links from bloggers, well-known media outlets, and stars in your field can make a big difference. Backlinks can happen automatically to websites, but most businesses need a plan to build links to reach more people.
- Optimize the Design and Organization of the Site
Google and other search engines think that your website should have parts, like a menu at a restaurant. When you read a menu, you know how to read it because the items are organized and ranked from appetizers to desserts. Similar things happen with search engine crawlers, which are robots that read and understand websites like yours. They need to know that blog posts are not the same as product pages and that a section of a website for men’s underwear is not the same as a section for women’s clothing.
A search engine that crawls your site looks for folders and subfolders (like yoursite.com/folder/subfolder) and a way to link to other pages on your site that makes sense. Your site needs more parts the more pages it has.
Don’t think too much about how to improve your SEO score with internal links. Make sure that your URLs (web names) make it clear to both users and search engines what part of your site they are on. Make sure that interior links can take you to every part of your site. To give you an example, if your website sells clothes for both men and women, make sure it has collection pages for both groups. If needed, you can also add special subsections.
Conclusion
The tactics here will certainly help improve your search engine rankings, but don’t expect it to jump too high overnight. The results will still take patience, time, and a lot of trial and error.
Without any active effort to improve search traffic, a company wouldn’t last very long in business. Improving visibility in search engines means increasing your traffic, conversions, and sales. That’s why – while it can take quite some time – mastering SEO is time well spent.
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