When it comes to SEO strategy, it’s critical to consider your website as a whole. You must have high-quality content and high-quality domains connecting to your web pages.
But first, make sure that your structural and technical foundations are rock strong. Here’s how you do it:
Organize the Structure of Your Website
Is it simple to navigate your website? Is the hierarchical organization logical? URL structure is important. Each folder and subfolder in your URL adds extra context to search engines about what’s on the page and how the URL links to the more prominent website.
Pay attention to information architecture while organizing your site so visitors can locate what they are looking for. If consumers can find pages in three clicks or less, Google will have better crawl efficiency when it examines your website. Learn more about developing the ideal website architecture.
Reduce Page Load Time
Google representatives openly discuss the importance of fast-loading web pages. This focus can be observed in various Google efforts, including Google DNS, Google Hosted Libraries, Google Fiber, PageSpeed Tools, the AMP Project, Core Web Vitals, and Google’s contributions to the most current web performance standards and protocols.
When evaluating your site’s speed, keep mobile in mind. Even though mobile users frequently have poorer internet connections, they want pages to load at least as quickly as desktop users.
Reducing page load time benefits more than a simple user experience. It also implies improved business outcomes. According to Google and Deloitte, reducing your mobile load time by 0.1s can increase conversion rates by 8.4% in retail and 10.1% in travel and minimize bounce rates.
Ensure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly
Because of the recent proliferation of mobile devices, more searches are now conducted on smartphones than desktop computers. Many businesses, such as stores aimed at a younger demographic, obtain most of their traffic from mobile devices.
Because of the high volume of mobile traffic, Google has shifted its focus to mobile as the future. Google, for example, announced a change to mobile-first indexing, which it claims would be finished for all websites worldwide by early 2021.
This means that your website must be mobile-friendly and speedy on mobile devices. If you are primarily concerned with the desktop version of your website, it is time to shift your attention and make mobile the focal point of your SEO efforts.
Settle All Indexing Issues
Google must index your pages for them to appear in organic search rankings. Your search engine visibility may drop to zero if you encounter technical difficulties.
Check your robots.txt file to check that there are no directives instructing the Google crawler not to crawl critical areas of your website. Make sure to simplify your codes so search engine crawlers can know what your page is about and why it’s an authority in its niche in only a fraction of a second.
Resolve 404 Errors & Broken Links
If a user hits a page, you have removed it from your website. They will receive a 404 error (page not found). The visitor is on a valid domain, but the precise URL path needs to be created. If you have 404 pages, redirect them to the correct target page via a 301 redirect.
Google dislikes 404 sites because they degrade the user experience. Furthermore, if customers land on a 404 error page directly from the Google search engine results page, that’s much worse because it will raise your bounce rate. Finally, removed pages with many backlinks cannot pass on the authority they have gained.
Many retailers and others with a significant inventory of products have the issue of keeping up with an ever-changing stream of products. Unfortunately, once products are withdrawn from the website, they may cause several 404 pages.
Maintaining up-to-date with any inactivated pages is crucial so that Google knows your site is working and trustworthy.
Standardize the URLs
Each of your web pages should have its URL. Companies have SEO issues when each web page potentially has many URLs. Assume that your home page is www.domain.com.
Although the content is similar, search engine crawlers treat each URL as individual pages. Not only would this confuse Google, but it will also lower the quality of your backlink profile if different URL variations are linked.
Canonicalize All Duplicate URLs
A rel canonical is a technological solution for telling Google about your principal URL.
When there is duplicate material on a website, a rel canonical is often included in the HTML, and canonicals are handy for dealing with product variants in the instance of a retailer. For example, www.domain.com/bags/that-bag/ may be the primary page for a bag. However, each texture variation could be separated by faceted search (e.g., www.domain.com/bags/that-bag/?texture=velvet, www.domain.com/bags/that-bag?texture=denim, www.domain.com/bags/that-bag?texture=leather).
In this scenario, you want Google to index only the main shirt page (www.domain.com/bags/that-bag/), so add the following rel canonical to the color variations:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.domain.com/bags/that-bag/”>
Using a canonical URL for every collection of similar URLs increases the SEO for your website since Google understands which URL to count for organic search purposes. Any links connecting to the URL variants will be calculated and consolidated for the original URL.
You can even utilize canonical URLs that point to the current page. Ensure that the development team has no rogue canonical URLs leading to the development or staging site.
Have Clean, Optimized URLs
We can only answer how to increase SEO results by discussing URLs. Make it simple for Google to understand your URLs, whether for a category page, a product page, a blog post, or any other form of page.
Google cannot deduce what the page is about from the URL alone, whether from a category or a product standpoint. A better, more optimized method would be something like this:
https://www.domain.com/pets/cats/dry-food/carnilove
Apply SEO Fundamentals
Start with on-page SEO basics like page titles, subheadings, alt tags, and anchor text if you want to learn how to boost SEO. Sometimes, the most straightforward solutions bring out long-lasting and effective results.
Create an SEO-Centered Blog Strategy
Aside from technical adjustments, writing is one of the most effective strategies to enhance SEO and raise your exposure in Google.
Blogging is beneficial because you may create material on a wide array of topics and rank on thousands of high–volume and long–tail keywords. What is the significance of this? Because the vast majority of searches are for long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are phrases with a low search volume but a high variation.
In other words, because they are either very narrow search phrases or users phrase their queries in various ways, each inquiry is only searched a few times every month. Many long-tail keywords contain many words.
Put it all together, and blogging gives you a platform to rank for a wide range of keywords, well beyond what your home page, category, or product pages would allow.
Optimize Content for Search Intent
Aligning your content with user intent is a surefire strategy to optimize SEO for increased digital marketing ROI. When someone looks for the “best [product],” they typically seek a third-party evaluation of the most significant possibilities. If they search for [product] reviews, they want a list of people’s thoughts on a specific product. If people search for “[product] near me,” they are most likely looking for a place to buy or pick up the item. Finally, when people search for “what is [product],” they are looking for a definition or more information about the category.
These searches could be for the same goods but for entirely different reasons. They may have the finest experience if the search results match what they were looking for.
Remove or Update Old Content
You’re looking at a site’s session count after an eight-month spring cleaning. Organic searches climbed by 360% from 8,598 in June 2018 to 30,927 in February 2019. Not bad, but what’s truly remarkable is that only five new entries were added to the site during this period.
Remember to expand your search for ways to increase SEO to content development. Consider content trimming and prioritizing as well. Removing, combining, or updating obsolete, out-of-date content is quite acceptable. Always strive to produce the most relevant content possible.
Your entire portfolio of content should be working hard for you. Keep it up to date, and cut dead leaves from the tree as needed.
Obtain High-Quality Backlinks
When considering increasing SEO for your website, you should consider factors other than a solid technical basis and quality content. Aim to obtain high-quality backlinks as the third pillar of your SEO operations.
Backlinks are one of the essential criteria in organic search rankings. Many businesses need to pay more attention to it because it is one of the most challenging parts of SEO. A remarkable 66.31% of web pages do not have any backlinks.
This is an excellent opportunity to gain high-quality backlinks while staying ahead of competitors.
Increase Backlinks
If you’re in a highly competitive market, you will need more than simply a few backlinks. You may require something much more scalable.
Monitor Your SEO Rankings & Other Relate Metrics
You will know how to boost SEO once you track crucial SEO indicators. Google Analytics may be used to track organic traffic increases and conversions. To find new keywords, use Google Search Console or SEMrush. Use tools like Stat, or use a SERP API to monitor rankings.
When you know what is and isn’t working, you can optimize more to boost SEO results.
Superior SEO results require a lot of effort. It necessitates a solid technological base. High-quality material is another essential. You can’t, however, stop there. You must also devote time and effort to generating high-quality backlinks.
SEO gives you an unprecedented opportunity to achieve significant outcomes for your brand. Use these SEO tips to your advantage, and you’ll notice considerable gains shortly.
