In a world where over 95 percent of all websites are getting zero traffic from Google according to Ahref, everyone is concerned about SEO best practices that can improve organic search ranking, drive visibility and increase traffic from the search engines.
With the recent Google updates, the situation gets more grim as even more websites struggle to make a last push for search engine visibility, using every tricks they can come by.
In the midst of all of this, there are a number of SEO strategies that have been useful in times past. Some of these SEO practices and a few new ones have redefined the SEO landscape in recent times, leading to a dramatic turnaround for most websites.
Whether you’re long established or you’re just starting out today, you need these SEO strategies to revamp your website traffic. And in this guide, I’ll share some of the strategies with you while showing you the steps you can use to get started…
Keyword Research & Optimization
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One of the most important SEO best practices for improved organic traffic whether for new or old website is keyword research and optimization.
A number of SEOs have downplayed the effect of keywords in search engine optimization post 2020s but, based on case studies and personal observations, keywords research are still very powerful factors when it comes to improving search engine visibility.
For a new website, you want to identify the relevant keywords in your industry, niche or target audience, using tools like Google Keywords Planner, Wordstream, Ubersuggest etc.
If you’re offering a product or services for example, be on the lookout for keywords relevant to that product or services in particular. This will come in handy when you’re building your services or product pages.
Outside particular pages or products, you need to also carry out keywords research for your entire website itself. This will get you with a more general set of keywords to use on the main website itself.
Longtail Vs Shorttail Keywords: For new websites, it’s always best to avoid short tail or other keywords with one or two words. At best, go for something between longtail and mid tail keywords. That should be around 4-6 words. Doing this will be far more helpful in getting you to achieve your goal much faster, compared to the former.
PS: Do not over-optimize your content with keywords. Create a decent length of content and then use your keywords generously throughout the content.
On Page Search Optimization
On Page SEO is one of the most critical aspects of search engine optimization that cannot be ignored. It is one of the key SEO practices to improve organic traffic for all kinds of website but unfortunately, I’ve seen a number of websites without any sort of on page optimization. And this is beyond wrong.
Whether you’re a new or old website, you need a solid on page search engine optimization implemented on your website, if you plan to see consistent rankings. And here are the areas to look out for during your on page SEO.
Title Tags: Getting a title for your post should not always be about your favorite title or the first thing that comes to mind. For all posts and pages on your website, you need a compelling, descriptive and search engine optimized title tag that will appeal both to your user and the search engine bots. No one has to be left behind.
Meta Description: As part of the key SEO best practices, create a captivating description that summarizes your post for meta description, including your SEO keywords.
Header Tags: To get the best display for your post on search engine (rich snippets) and other SEO benefits, use the header tags accordingly, H1 for main title, H2 for second sub title, H3 for third sub titles etc.
URL Structure: Go for a URL structure that is shorter, search optimized and more useful for your audience, over one with too many special characters.
Content Optimization: Post high quality, valuable, relevant and well optimized content on your website only.
If you’re using WordPress for your website, plugins like Yoast SEO etc will be very helpful in getting you to make some of these optimizations and many others, right out of the box.
Technical SEO
Another important part of the key SEO best practices to improve organic traffic is to implement a technical search engine optimization that ensures your website is crawlable by search engine bot, loading properly for visitors and well secured to deliver a seamless experience for users.
You can do this by taking care of the following:
Connect with Search Console & Bing: Create an account, submit and connect your website with Google’s search console and Bing Web Master tool, to get timely reports on your website performance.
XML Sitemap: An XML sitemap is a file that list all your website’s pages, making sure that Google can find and crawl them. Often times, with a Plugin like Yoast SEO, your sitemap will be submitted to the search engine automatically but where it is not, you have to submit it directly via your search console or Bing Web Master tool.
Mobile Responsiveness: Majority of your website users will be doing that via their mobile devices. For this reason, you want to ensure your website is mobile friendly, delivering a great experience for mobile users across different devices.
Page Speed: Your website speed is a key ranking factor that can make or break the success of your SEO optimization efforts. Pay attention to ensure your website is loading properly by setting up caching and compressing large images and other files.
Install SSL: Yes, HTTPS is a ranking signal for Google, in recent times. So, outside boosting a user’s confidence on the security of your website, installing an SSL certificate can improve your SEO standing.
Creating & Sharing Content
Content creation is one of the must have SEO best practices to improve organic traffic. It is no brainer. To get more people coming over to your website, you must create and share content that matters to them.
So, in order to improve your search engine optimization outcomes, you want to start with understanding your audience, identifying your needs, and finding ways to provide solutions to these needs, using content marketing.
So, go ahead make some research about your target users. Find out who they are, what matters to them and how you can provide the solutions that will get them coming to your website.
As soon as you’re able to find out about these things, it’s now time to go ahead and start creating content, based on your findings.
Ensure that your content is valuable, relevant, solution driven and aimed at creating the needed outcomes that will get your users coming back to your website.
After creating your content, it’s now time to optimize and share it with your audience. Using the keywords you identified in step one above, optimize your content properly and get ready to share it with your audience.
PS: If you’re creating text content, pay attention to create a piece of content that’s up to 1000 words and above, so you can use your keywords evenly. Also, get a content calendar. It’ll help you in creating a level of consistency.
Link Building
Link building is an important SEO strategy that can revamp your website traffic very easily. Done correctly, it can improve the ranking of your website, in a matter of days.
Internal Link: There are two levels of link building that can be done to improve your website visibility. The first one is internal link building where you link from one relevant page to another relevant page or pages on your website.
This kind of link building is helpful in getting the relevant page crawled and indexed easily by the search engine. It helps in your website navigation and also passes link authority from one page to another, which is quite helpful for site wide SEO.
External Link: The second part of link building is the external link. It is one of the top SEO best practices to improve traffic.
With external links, you get links from other websites to point to your own website. The more external links you have, the more your website authority gets improved. And with a better website authority, you’ll eventually gain improved visibility on the search engine.
Outside attracting backlinks to your website organically, there are a number of steps you can take to get other website linking to your website like guest posting, broken link building, publishing Infographics etc. Pay attention to use these steps so you can improve your ranking.
PS: Focus on using the proper anchor text for internal links. Also, for all incoming link, prioritize targeting links from high quality and relevant websites over irrelevant and spammy sites.
Social Media Integration
Outside improving your trustworthiness, your social media platforms can attract a new set of users over to your website.
This is why a number of SEOs have made social media integration one of the top SEO best practices to improve organic traffic for websites.
Creating and building social media handles for your website on social media platforms is very important. Personally, I have seen a number of websites that had 60 percent of their traffic coming from different social media platforms.
Of course you don’t have to be on all social media platforms. You want to identify the top platforms with the largest number of your target audience demographics, create and build an audience on those platforms.
Alongside this, you need a social media strategy that will get you to create and share content on that platform, consistently.
Implement Local SEO
Local SEO is not applicable to all websites. But generally, optimizing your website for local search engines can get you to rank faster than you’d expect.
The reason for this is that in most cases, the competition for certain keywords for local SEO is far lower compared to competition for the same keyword at international level. So, you can use this as your low hanging fruits and get started, while waiting for the main deal.
That said, local search engine optimization is one of the SEO best practices for improved organic traffic that might not need to be implemented indiscriminately.
Pay attention to understand the priorities of the website, its target audience and users before implementing a website focused local SEO strategy.
If you’re taking off site measures for this strategy, you can still go ahead, regardless of your goals and target audience.
Final Words
Using these SEO best practices can drive your website outcomes in multiple folds. But alongside these strategies, you have to pay attention to analytics reports from the search engines, watch out for your website performance and make updates where necessary.
Also, while implementing a search engine optimization on your website, be sure you’re working with an SEO expert that can deliver great outcomes for your business.
Now it’s over to you. What are your challenges when it comes to creating an improved search visibility outcome for your website? Drop your comments below.
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