If your website appears on the first page for specific keywords, it’s a sign that you’ll start getting more traffic from the search engines. The primary reason why some websites are better ranked than others is the algorithm used by the search engines. They scroll through billions of pages and use hundreds of factors to determine which content is most likely to answer a visitor’s query.
Following are five suggestions that you can implement to improve your website’s ranking:
#1 Target long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are a great option to boost website traffic. Long-tail keywords are keywords or keyphrases that are specific to whatever you are selling. This strategy really works when there is a lot of competition for the main keywords you want to rank for. For example, if your company sells mounting equipment in Maine and finds it very difficult to rank the website on generic keywords like travel, you can use long-tail keywords to generate traffic. These long-tail keywords could include:
- Maine mountain climbing tours
- Beginner mountain climbing in Maine
- Rock Climbing in Acadia
#2 Publish and update high-quality content
Publishing high-quality content is the top requirement if you want to rank higher in search engine ranking. Your content also needs to be recent and relevant. If you regularly update your website with articles, you will have visitors spending more time on your pages. Every time you update your website, the search engine takes notice and re-arranges your site’s ranking. The easiest and most effective way to stay fresh is to add a blog regularly on your site. Write something that will get the attention of the users. Remember that search engines may view a static website without updates as a “dead” entity.
#3 Increase page load speed
Page speed is a critical element in higher ranking. If Google finds out that your page takes too much time to load, it may harm your ranking. In this digital era, users have very little attention span, so if the page load time goes up, the chance of someone bouncing from your site increases dramatically. If your website isn’t on par with the top 10 organic pages, you won’t rank on the first page. Research shows 40 percent of visitors will abandon websites if the page takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Bulky images and poorly designed coding are the most common causes of slow pages.
#4 Write click-worthy titles and descriptions
The title of a new blog post should be written in such a way that it informs the readers about the post, hints at how it could help them, and immediately grabs their attention. Regarding the SEO title tag length, it should not be over 65 characters. Here are some tips for writing click-worthy titles:
Load your title with keywords – Use the most important keywords at the beginning of the title so that the critical information is visible if it is cut short. People will typically only scan the first two words of a title.
It should be predictable – Your SEO title should take the user to a page that meets the user’s expectations.
It should give clarity – In just 65 characters or fewer, the reader should know what your webpage is about.
#5 Your website should be mobile-friendly
Your website needs to be mobile-friendly if you want strong search engine rankings. Given that most searches now come from mobile devices, Google now highly values websites optimized for mobile devices. In May 2019, the search engine announced that mobile-first indexing would be enabled by default for all new websites previously unknown to it. The readiness and responsiveness of existing websites are determined by:
- Parity of content (including text, images, videos, links)
- Structured data
- All other meta-data
Improving mobile SEO means that users can easily find your content and your index pages will index better.
About Smarter Web
We are a leading design & digital marketing agency that delivers impactful web experiences for our clients. Located in Pensacola, Florida, we build websites that are designed to captivate your audience and convert leads. We offer services like online advertising, SEM, web design, development & optimization, SEO, and content marketing.
To learn more about the services that we offer, call us at (844) 762-7890. You can also drop us an email at sales@smarterweb.net for any queries.
