Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your online visibility without paying ads.
Effective SEO help brands get recognition within the industry to turn a profit. Businesses must keep up with the latest SEO trends to stay competitive. This article will list the most useful SEO tips in detail.
SEO Performance
Search engine optimization captures the attention of both real people & search engine algorithms. Online users find products & services thanks to digital searches like Google queries.
The e-commerce penetration has been astoundingly high worldwide during the past years. The need for SEO followed this trend. Companies must differentiate from their competitors & inform customers about their offers.
Most Useful SEO Tips
Our team of SEO experts composed this list of the 16 most useful SEO tips. We will detail each of them below.
- optimize your website structure
- choose wisely your keywords
- enhance the user experience
- target a relevant audience
- install the best SEO tools
- earn valuable backlinks
- optimize your internal links
- polish your URLs and slugs
- resize your images
- implement schema markup
- improve your content
- embed videos from YouTube
- showcase trust & authority
- address your on-site metadata
- monitor your competitors
- measure your SEO performance
#1 Optimize Your Website Structure
The website structure greatly affects SEO efficiency. It takes a user less than 1 second to develop an opinion about a web page.
The homepage should be the highest level of the website structure. Under this crucial page should come the main categories. Here is a good example of website architecture:
- homepage (presenting the main sections of the website)
- about page
- products & services category
- product & service detailed page #1
- product & service detailed page #2 (etc.)
- blog category
- article #1
- article #2 (etc.)
- contact page
The website structure also depends on the industry, the business positioning, and the target audience. It must satisfy online users across multiple devices (mobile, tablet, desktop).
#2 Choose Wisely Your Keywords
Keywords and key phrases are the foundation of SEO. Businesses cannot optimize their websites without considering them.
The most effective keywords are those that online users actively search for across the internet.
To find the best keywords, benchmark the market & look for the most relevant ones, meaning the keywords that make sense for your business. If you sell women’s sports shoes, you may be willing to rank for keywords like “buy women’s sports shoes” or “athletic shoe shop near me.” If you do, you will increase your website’s chances of appearing to potential customers.
There are several criteria to pay attention to when it comes to keyword research & selection:
- relevance
- competitiveness
- search volume
- user intent
Make sure to find the right balance between all those factors before optimizing for those keywords.
#3 Enhance The User Experience
The User Experience (UX) is crucial to keep people engaged on the website. A good user experience keeps them longer on the web pages and ultimately increases the chances to convert visitors into paying customers.
Following the website architecture, brands must build an appealing and functional design. By “appealing,” we mean “attractive” so people are impressed and want to stay longer. By “functional,”, we mean that the design must allow smooth web navigation & useful features.
#4 Target A Relevant Audience
It is easy to bring visitors to a website. It is more challenging to bring qualified leads.
There is no point in attracting people not interested in the products or services showcased on the website. Brands must focus on potential customers.
To catch the ideal demographic, businesses must produce the right content. It means both unique & useful copies. Search engines like Google are more inclined to share “good answers” with people, and those “good answers” are looked up in your website content. Write for the right people and they will visit your web pages.
#5 Install The Best SEO Tools
To implement a solid SEO strategy, consider using the following tools:
The Google Workspace is a suite of useful tools previously known as G-Suite. Over 2 billion people adopted them worldwide. They include several collaborative software that monitor, track, report, and organize the SEO campaign information & company data.
The Google Search Console is another free tool from Google. It analyzes a website’s health so that business owners manage, maintain, and troubleshoot their web pages’ performance. Besides, this software monitors the website traffic & includes solutions to make adjustments, like for the site map submission.
The Google Tag Manager provides website administrators with the tools to track web pages goals, like the number of clicks on a specific button, or the user journey from the landing page until reaching a thank-you notification. It works for both organic & paid purposes.
#6 Earn Valuable Backlinks
Backlinks are hyperlinks displayed on a web page (the referral) that redirects the digital user to another website (the destination page). They are one of the most important SEO ranking factors, and a primary reason websites fail to succeed.
Those off-site links affect the web page quality, following Google’s E.A.T. framework (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). They are advocates for the credibility of a website. Therefore, there should be a sufficient amount of high-quality backlinks to rank high on SERPs.
Backlinks must be genuinely earnt rather than purchased to trick the algorithms.
#7 Optimize Your Internal Links
Like backlinks, internal links also connect web pages together, but they operate within the same domain. For example, by clicking on a product preview showcased on a category page, the digital user will be redirected to the detailed item page.
They ensure the website navigation is a positive experience for the online user. No web page should be “orphan” (not linked to any other page of the website). Internal links bring context by connecting pages with a similar interest. They help online users explore a website.
#8 Polish Your URLs & Slugs
A web page URL (Universal Resource Locator) is the web address of a domain hosted on the internet. The URL slug is specific to a single page within the website. For example, a web address may read “mypage.com/blog” with “mypage.com” as the domain/name of the website and the “blog” ending of the address as the slug.
The URL and slugs critically influence a page’s SEO ranking as they provide additional information about the content that can be easily identified by users. URLs with ambiguous slugs that don’t include keyphrases such as “mypage.com/blog/8sjl1j3” make it difficult for algorithms to capture them for indexing. Shorter URLs with effective keywords are most effective.
#9 Resize Your Images
Images are one of the most common causes of websites’ poor performance. Business owners must optimize them for faster page load times, better user experience, and more efficient SEO. Uploading images to a website is a simple process, but file sizes must be considered.
A rule of thumb is to never upload images bigger than 200Kb in size, and the lower the better. Of course, we also need to publish visually appealing pictures. Designers must find the right balance between size and quality.
#10 Implement Schema Markup
Schema markup is the digital data and vocabulary that search engines use to digest information and relate to the online audience. This specified code relays information by interpreting valuable written content and displaying it on a SERPs preview.
Depending on the online query placed by a researcher, schema identifies the question at hand and provides websites with suitable responses, also known as suitable and relevant “featured snippets” (like FAQs).
Businesses that implement schema markup usually rank higher on Google than those that don’t. Use the free Google Structured Data Markup Helper to mark up your website.
#11 Improve Your Content
Rather than creating new online copies, current web content can be improved for more cost-effective performance. Republishing old blog posts with updated images & refreshed text has a drastic effect on increasing organic traffic. Search engine crawlers prefer to access updated information that has some online history rather than provide users with unverified content.
Overall, web pages with higher seniority perform better than newer ones.
#12 Embed Videos From YouTube
Today, video content is a preferred form of information source. YouTube is the second most used search engine worldwide after Google.
Website owners can directly upload high-quality videos on their online platform. However, embedding videos already published on YouTube is a more effective option, SEO-wise. YouTube is an online channel that includes SEO tools dedicated to videos’ organic optimization.
#13 Showcase Trust & Authority
To boost Google’s E.A.T. framework, businesses should share valuable knowledge from reputable experts on the website. The purpose is to become a trustworthy source of information across the internet. It is crucial to a website’s success as search engines prefer to rank entrusted domains that satisfy a visitor’s needs. Algorithms automatically promote pages that showcase a better user experience.
When implementing E.A.T material, include as much information as possible such as pictures, links, and testimonies of reliable experts.
#14 Address Your On-Site Metadata
Once the keyword analysis is completed, make sure to optimize the:
- page titles
- meta descriptions
- page headers
Brands should insert the selected key phrases in those metadata in a logical way.
We also recommend prioritizing the most worthy pages rather than investing in the entire website. SEO is a never-ending process. There is always something to improve somewhere. Better focus on the pages that convert or bring revenue.
#15 Monitor Your Competitors
Brands should monitor their domain performance in comparison to their competitors’ websites. They must investigate the industry, market trends, and opportunities by comparing data & rankings. By auditing other websites, SEO marketers often learn valuable information.
#16 Measure Your SEO Performance
Businesses looking to improve must constantly monitor their SEO performance to properly manage the success of their website. SEO is not simply checking where a website ranks in comparison to its competitors, it also involves assessing the online performance from all standpoints.
Thankfully, today’s digital marketers are privileged with an array of tools. This done must be done consistently. Here are the most important SEO metrics to follow:
- website organic traffic
- web page impressions
- organic keywords
- keyword rankings
- traffic source
- total number of backlinks
Improve Your Organic Ranking
Search engine optimization is an overwhelming & meticulous process that is time-intensive. Auditing a website and then comparing it amongst competitors requires great digital knowledge.
To remain ahead of the SEO digital marketing game, businesses must publish relevant content, monitor the competition, and make the most of the available tools.
