6 Most Important SEO Tips To Rank Higher On Google
Get to #1 on the search engine results page.
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Higher search engine rankings mean more website traffic. Yes, one of the keys to getting more website traffic is SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
In this article, I have outlined and explained the different best SEO practices that will boost your website’s search ranking. But before I go into that, some of you (especially beginners) may be wondering what SEO means and that brings us to the question…
What is SEO?
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is the process of making a website rank higher on search engines to boost its visibility and website traffic.
When you optimize your website for SEO, you are making it easier for search engine users to discover your website, content, products, or services.
0.63% of Google searchers click on the results from the second search engine results page.
With that said, I’m pretty sure you don’t want your website to end up on the second search results page.
Here are 6 SEO tips to win even the first position on the first search engine results page.
1. Conduct Keyword Research
Keyword research is a crucial aspect of SEO.
If no one is searching for what you write about, no one is ever going to discover your website — that’s what makes keyword research important for SEO.
You need to search for words or phrases that have a high search volume on search engines. Keyword research will help you discover search engine queries and search terms to target.
Semrush, Ahrefs, AnswerThePublic, Ubersuggest, and Google Keyword Planner are the best keyword research tools you can use.
2. Use SEO - Friendly Title Tags and Meta Description
This is where you tell the search engines and their users what your website or webpage is all about. Let’s dive deeper, shall we?
Title Tags
Title tags are clickable titles that show up on a search engine results page and browsers tab. It tells google and your website users what your page is about.
Here are tips to make the title tag SEO-friendly:
- Make sure to include your keywords in the title tag. Place them mostly at the beginning of the title tag. Search engines check for keywords mainly at the beginning of the title tag.
- Google advises that you keep the title tags below 60 characters to avoid the words getting cut off on the search engine results page on both mobile and desktop devices.
- Also, try to keep the title catchy so that it can capture the search engine users’ interest.
You can use Coscheduler’s Headline Analyzer to analyze your title or headline. It also checks the title’s SEO score.
The title of this post got a headline score of 88 and an SEO score of 90."
Meta Description
A meta-description is used to describe the content of a webpage. It is located under the title and URL of a webpage in the search engine.
The meta description should summarize what the webpage or website is all about and make sure each webpage has its own unique description.
Keeping the description below 155 characters will help to prevent Google from truncating it on the search engine results page.
3. Get More Backlinks and Build Internal Links
Backlinks and internal links are important in their special way.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links that point to another website.
Backlinks from other websites to yours tell Google that other websites trust your content. This reassures Google that your website contains quality content.
If your web pages have enough authoritative backlinks, then they are most likely to rank well.
Here are some tips for building backlinks.
- Write guest posts and blog articles for other websites. You can include links to related posts that you have on your website.
- Create interesting visual content. Visual content is easily understood and shareable. People tend to share them a lot and you’ll get backlinks to your site.
- Create a free tool. Useful free tools have a high potential of being referred to. Everyone loves free things, right? (Even I am not excluded)
- Search for broken links on other websites. It’s not easy to check for broken links on websites, but it’s worth trying. Broken links or invalid links affect the user’s experience of a site. No website owner wants that. That’s how you have the advantage here. When you find a link that points to a page that no longer exists or is outdated, reach out to the website that linked to the page and let them know that you have a page with similar and updated content to swap.
Internal Links
Internal links are hyperlinks that point to web pages on the same website. They help Google to understand the structure of your website and understand the content of a webpage.
The best practice is to add internal links from web pages that are performing well to low-ranking web pages.
Here are some tips for building internal links.
- Link to low-ranking pages from old pages. It’s best to link from old pages to new ones because old pages tend to have more authority.
- Include keywords in the anchor text of the links. The anchor text helps Google to understand what the page which is being linked to is about.
- Always monitor and repair broken links on your websites.
4. Optimize Images For SEO
Yeah, images are also important for SEO. They contribute to the SEO of your website and improve your users’ experience.
Here are some ways to optimize your images for SEO.
Use Alt Text
Alt text means alternative text. It is used to describe an image on a webpage.
Alt text helps Google to know what an image is about. It is also displayed when a browser is not able to display the image, that way, readers can still know what an image is I’m about without seeing it. It is also used by screen readers. If you also want your images to rank on Google, use alt text. Make sure you don’t use ‘image of’ or ‘photo of’ in the alt text.
There’s a difference between alt text and image captions. Image captions are displayed below an image. Alt text is included in an HTML code. Like this:
<img src="media/images/book.png" alt="A book">
Lazy Load the Images
Lazy loading means the images are loaded as the website user gets to them while scrolling. This increases your site’s loading speed.
Compress the Images
Compressing an image will reduce its file size without reducing its quality. The reason I recommend this is that the larger your image file size, the longer it takes your website to load.
TinyPNG, ImageOptim, Optimole, and JPEG Optimizer are tools you can use to compress images.
Edit the File Name
Give your images a meaningful filename and separate the words in the file name with hyphens. For example:
❌ image-1.jpg
❌ beautiful-big-house-129854.jpg
✅ beautiful-big-house.jpg
5. Create Useful Content
Create helpful content that will serve your website users well. Try to help them find what they are looking for.
If your website users discover that your content is not helping them, they exit shortly after coming in. This will make Google detect that your website users are departing shortly after visiting, then it assumes that you don’t provide useful content and it reduces your site rankings to allow other websites with high-value content rank higher. Who wants that? No one.
A good strategy is to create content about topics you know very well and are familiar with. Check for trending topics in your niche or industry and then create useful content about them.
6. Include your Target Keywords In These Places
Here, I’ll list 4 parts of your webpage to include your target keywords.
H1 Tag
Make sure your H1 tag has your keywords in it. One or two keywords are okay 👌.
Content
This I another place to include your keywords. Just make sure you don’t put too much.
I advise that you include your main keywords in the first and last paragraphs. Then you can include your other keywords in random parts of your content. You don’t have to use the exact keywords all the time.
URLs
You can also include your keyword in the URLs, but don’t include more than two or three keywords.
Subheadings
Subheadings help to organize your content. You can include your keywords in some of your subheadings, not all, to avoid keyword stuffing.
Alright, those are the 6 very important SEO practices you can make use of. They are your best bets at making your website get to the #1 position on the search engine results page.
I Would Like To Hear From You
- Do you have any more SEO practices that work for you?
- Which of these SEO practices have you not been able to easily implement? If you have a reason, why?
Let me know in the comments.
