Effective techniques for your SEO
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SEO can feel like a mysterious and complicated process. Spending hours trying to work out what brings in traffic, who you should be linking to, and trying to get green lights on Yoast.
There is more to SEO than what a single plugin can do for you, though.
SEO techniques feel like they change very quickly. So you might be wondering if they change so often, how can they then be effective?
Over the years, search engines, specifically Google, in this case, get smarter and more powerful. They understand what you have written, and they know the context presented and how effective it is at informing people.
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It does not only take into consideration your content, but it also takes into consideration the user experience. And how successful your content is at keeping people on the page.
If you think about it logically, we all want Google to be able to present us with better responses to our queries. So it makes sense that when we then create the content, we put everything we would want to find into it.
Here are some effective techniques for improving your SEO. It should be noted however that usually the best SEO comes from working with an SEO agency, and here is an example of SEO agency landing page.
Website performance
Before you know how You can improve, you need to know where you are rank. Find a keyword or rank checker, and determine your page ranking based on a keyword. Ideally, you want to get to your website to the top of any of these keyword lists.
These higher rankings will bring more organic traffic.
User experience
A search engine’s main objective is to find the best possible content of results for each user’s queries. If they aren’t to present the best results, then they don’t work.
Not only do you need to think about what is in the content, but you also need to think about how it is presented. Low-quality websites are less likely to rank highly on Google. And each year, Google gets smarter a determining the site’s quality.
Outdated or untrustworthy looking sites, all sites that load slowly aren’t going to rank as highly on Google as they might have otherwise.
Simplicity
The easier your post is to read the more people are going to read it. Your content should be optimise for readability. Now what does this mean?
- Have short paragraphs of no more than three or four sentences. You can have shorter ones, but it’s easier not to.
- Long sentences are hard to follow for many readers and some mobile devices. So mix it up and use a variation of long and short sentences.
- Headers are essential; they help the person break up what they’re reading and get where they’re going faster.
- Always use bullet points for facts, ideas, examples, and statistics.
- A general rule is if there are three or more items, try to use bullet points.
Leave some white space around your content, this will give the reader a break, and we will not feel overwhelmed by ‘stuff’.
Wake your reader up
Sometimes there can be a lot of information on a page, and it can be tempting for users to leave. There is something called a bucket brigade that can help keep the flow and the interest for the reader.
You are most likely to read one of the following bucket brigades.
- Do you want to learn how to do XYZ?
- Imagine what it would be like if
- Do I have your attention?
- Okay, I know what you’re thinking, but hear me out.
These can bring the readout back around to it, getting into the content. There are a few more.
- Let’s look a little deeper,
- let’s get started,
- let me show you are prevalent ones.
And if you’re struggling with how to start your conclusion, try something like in a nutshell, or let’s recap.
Call to action
Why are your readers on your website? Perhaps you write fantastic recipes. But what happens after? What do you give to the reader after? Why should they come back? Or perhaps you are a coach, and you’d like to sell some of your online sessions.
You need to have a call to action. A call to action is a large button that asks people to do something. Sometimes it ‘clicks here’ for more information; other times, it’s here is a ‘free download,’ the exchange starts here, and you get that email address.
Watch it comes down to your wording. Instead of download now, try something like getting your free e-book today! Instead of saying click to learn more, change it to make money now. Drill down to white people on your website in the first place and give them what they want.
Website speed
It is not a new thing is that the performance of a website, especially the speed, can put people off. So Google added this to their ranking factors, and now aside speed can make or break your science performance in the eyes of Google. Thankfully they didn’t just make these announcements; they created several SEO tools that can help you improve your site at speed.
These include Test My Site, Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, and of course, Page Speed Insights. Ideally, you want your website to load faster than three seconds. It might sound like a minimal amount of time, but studies show that the bounce rate will increase as the page time load goes from one 2nd to 3 seconds.
Put simply, and people do not have the patience to wait for your website to load. So make it as fast as possible.
Think mobile
You must have your website set up to make sure that it is fast for mobile users—more than half of all purchases made on the Internet made by mobile phone. Statistically, 77% of Americans only smartphone, and 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile device. This means that your content should be optimized for mobile usage.
WordPress and jet pack both have easy to click options that Strip backpack your website and present a mobile version for users; however, if you would prefer to show your entire website if you’re going to need to make some tweaks.
If you work with a web designer, they will be able to make sure that you have a tablet and mobile version that is responsive and quick. If you are doing this by yourself, you will need to look into how to optimize your website for mobile phone usage.
Keyword research
Your content should be written so that people can read it, but it also needs to serve a purpose, which is where your keyword research will play a massive part in getting your website ranking and pulling in that organic traffic.
There are several tools that you can use to make sure that you have the best keywords for your content.
Keywords are active signposts for Google spiders. This signals the topics and provides hints as to what is in the content.
When you have done your keyword research, you will discover who is searching for what topics, and it will give you a strong direction in which you can write not only that but once you understand what people are looking for, you can create more than just a single blog post you can create a whole content structure.
And these content structures are called topic clusters.
This is a model that was created by Hubspot and has proven to be very good. There is a single pillar page, which is your site’s most important pages, then they are linked to a range of other pages, which are known as close the pages.
These all link back to the relevant killer page. This is useful for users as it can mean they get from one piece of content a lot of value. And it turns your website into a much more resource place.
Make it long
Almost all the time, longer content ranks better. It has more details in it; it has more use for the reader; other websites will find it useful and link back to it; they are typically easier to read because they have more images and other things to break up the text.
The more content a page has, the more likely it is that you have covered the topic thoroughly and completely, therefore giving the use of the best possible experience. Content that is between 1000 and 2000 words is ideal.
And finally, you probably have plenty of all the content on your website; instead of leaving it to languish, go back through it, update links, add new images, and link it to other pages within your website. This is particularly true of blogs.
SEO is a long-term golden ticket to having continual organic traffic to your website. What it takes his time and knowledge. Knowledge.
