23 Ways To Improve Your SEO Efforts!?

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – SEO ranking is a lot more than just a number on a page. For your business and more importantly your brand, it’s everything. It represents visibility – how likely people are to discover you when they’re searching for related products, services or topics. It represents the start of your sales funnel and the always-essential first impression that you’re about to make with a new customer. It means getting a tactical advantage over your competitors that you can use to gain better, higher quality leads and the increased sales that follow.


Improving your SEO ranking is always important – but one thing it certainly doesn’t have to be is difficult. At least not if you approach it from the right angle. If you really want to improve, strengthen and support your SEO rankings and related efforts, there are a few simple-yet-effective tips you’ll want to keep in mind.

GENERAL SEO RANKING TIPS

The following tips are not designed to be “one-time use.” They’re not a magic bullet that will allow you to achieve the top rank on Google and keep it forever. These are things you need to focus on in the long-term, making an effort to accomplish at least a few of these as often as possible.

1. Always work on creating useful, quality content that is relevant to your target audience. This helps to keep people interested in your site, which keeps them there longer, which positively affects your SEO ranking.
2. Update that content on a regular basis. The more often you update your site, the more authority Google and other engines naturally give to your entire domain.
3. Integrate social media. Make it easy to share the content you’re creating on sites like Twitter and Facebook, which will help not just spread content but also build authority and strengthen your SEO at the same time.
4. Visual content is king. Speaking of enticing people to share your content, always visualize information whenever possible. Show, never tell. Visual content like Infographics are more likely to be shared on sites like Facebook, which will always help your SEO efforts.
5. Optimize those images. Every time you post a new image on your site, make sure that you’re using keywords for your image file name, your title, your description, your caption, etc. This signals to search engines that the image is relevant, which boosts the SEO of your entire domain.
6. Header tags. Break up long chunks of content into smaller, more manageable pieces. Use header tags – kind of like the way the article you’re currently reading does – to make content easier read and, therefore, more likely to be read in its entirety.
7. Try to create a true multi-media experience. Don’t just post Infographics OR blog posts – do both. Images, slideshows, presentations, videos and even audio clips are all valuable tools for enriching the user experience.
8. Include video wherever you can. Landing pages with even a single video have significantly higher conversion rates than those that don’t, so always try to include short and relevant videos to boost those SEO ranks.
9. Don’t forget about readability. Nobody should need a PhD to understand the content on your site – if they do, everyone without a PhD is going to leave immediately and hurt your SEO. Use tools like Grammarly to make sure your content isn’t too difficult to digest.
10. Local, local, local. Play to the strengths of your local market by making sure that all of your contact information isn’t just included, but that it’s all accurate. This includes your address, your hours of operation and more. Google actually looks for this information when determining page rank for local searches.

LINKBUILDING TIPS

Linkbuilding is a tried-but-true technique where you entice other people to link back to your website, thus increasing your credibility in the eyes of Google and improving your SEO as a result. In an effort to optimize your linkbuilding efforts, keep the following tips in mind.

1. Don’t buy links. Link quality is very important in terms of SEO and too many low quality links will cancel out the genuine ones you get naturally. Plus, this is something that could easily get you penalized by Google.
2. Build relationships with other sites who serve similar audiences. Once you do, create an agreement – you’ll link back to them if they link back to you.
3. Guest posters are also a great way to generate backlinks, as the site they usually post for will naturally want to link to the content they’ve published for your site.
4. Guest post for someone else’s blog yourself. The same logic applies: when your piece goes live on their site, you can link back to yours – generating a quality backlink in the process.
5. Start another site. Make a separate domain for your company blog, then link back to your brand’s main website.
6. List your site in as many trustworthy directories as you can. There are many trustworthy link directories that you can use to not only find out more information about your audience, but to instantly generate quality backlinks within your particular niche.
7. Eliminate dead backlinks from your site. If a quality backlink that you were able to obtain now gives a 404 error because you changed the URL at some point, this is actually harming your ranking, not helping it. Use a tool like the Link Juice Recovery Tool to find a list of your dead backlinks and correct the problem however possible.
8. Keep an eye on your competitors. Use a tool like Link Alerts to see what your competition is up to. Whenever they get a new quality backlink, figure out where, why and how – and then use that information to create a new opportunity for yourself.

WEBSITE USABILITY TIPS

You could do absolutely everything else perfectly and still not see the ranking that you want if your website is difficult to use or is broken in some way. Always be sure to check these usability factors to increase your ranking.

1. Check your website’s effectiveness. Users are going to land on your page with certain objectives already in mind – be it finding out about more products or services or placing an order. How easy are those objectives to complete? What can you do to make them easier? How can you improve the user experience and user interface of your site?
2. Emphasize efficiency. How long does it take your page to load? If it’s more than three seconds, people are likely to leave – harming your SEO ranking in the process. Don’t just make sure people can complete their objectives, make sure they can complete them quickly.
3. Work on memorability. When users visit your website a second time through a search engine, it always helps your ranking – particularly on Google. Make sure that the keywords and phrases you’re targeting are memorable enough to generate repeat traffic.
4. Eliminate errors. Even something as small as a 404 error page or a broken link can harm your SEO, so go through your site with a fine-toothed comb and make sure that absolutely everything is functioning properly at all times.
5. Mobility matters. If your site looks great on a desktop but is a chore to use on a smartphone or tablet, it WILL harm your SEO ranking on all of the major engines. Make sure that your desktop site isn’t just good, but that your mobile site is even better.