All businesses can go online in minutes. It is more challenging to make your products visible online.
Despite their efforts, most websites struggle to receive a handful of visitors.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has two main purposes:
- Make the online platform discoverable
- Earn good organic rankings
Google, Bing, Yahoo! Search, Yandex, Cốc Cốc, and other search engines must understand what all web pages are about. To achieve this, they constantly crawl the internet to decipher the content. Brands need to send the right signals, so search engines can notice them.
Once found, web pages must convince search engines that they share relevant content with online users. The problem is that SEO is constantly evolving.
The Google algorithm updates once or twice every single day. Marketers must continuously monitor the 200+ SEO factors that affect website rankings.
This article will list the top #6 SEO techniques that help websites rank higher. We will focus on white hat practices. Follow them to boost your website’s organic rankings sustainably.
#1 Audit your Website
Any SEO plan should start with a website audit.
We need to identify what works well, what needs improvement, and where there are growth opportunities. Based on this SEO audit, we can implement the right tactics to boost profits.
There are 3 main areas to review: website performance, onsite technical, and outreach. We will detail each of them below.
Website Performance
Website performance and loading speed are crucial factors that influence organic rankings. They ensure a good user experience for online visitors. No one wants to stay on a page that takes 6 seconds to load or refresh.
To optimize your website performance, you need to have a developer with expertise in your Content Management System (CMS). Here is a list of the most important web vitals to monitor:
- HTTPS
- Server response time
- Network payloads
- JavaScript
- CSS
- Web fonts
- Caching
- Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Render-blocking resources
- Image sizes
- Video sizes
- URL redirections
- Mobile-friendliness
Besides the web speed, pay attention to the mobile browser version.
Google officially announced that websites should be designed for “mobile-only.” Content that is not mobile-friendly may be missed by web crawlers.
On-Site Technical
The on-site technical part of the audit is the on-page SEO. It focuses on the website’s crawlability and indexing. In other words, it concerns the first purpose of SEO: “make the online platform discoverable.”
Check the following onsite technical elements to optimize in priority:
- Robots.txt
- Sitemap.xml
- Non-indexable pages
- URL structure and hierarchy
- Canonicals
- Schema markup
- Duplicate content
- Thin content
- Content expertise and relevancy
- Keyword stuffing
- Page titles
- Meta descriptions
- Hx headers
- Image ALT text
Unlike website performance, you don’t need a developer to improve the on-page SEO. With a crawler tool like Screaming Frog and some solid analysis skills, you can cover the whole on-site technical work.
Outreach
Outreach, or off-page SEO, is a technique that enhances your website’s organic visibility and authority.
There are many ways to improve this area. We recommend businesses prioritize the following outreach items:
- Referral domains
- Backlink quantity
- Backlink quality
- Spamming and harmful backlinks
- Broken links
- Anchor text
- Earned and lost backlinks history
- Link juice
This area of the SEO audit is the most time-consuming. However, it remains one of the most beneficial. Digital marketers should take it seriously if they want to be competitive.
#2 Discover Valuable Keywords
Online users find brands, products, and services thanks to their queries. They type keywords or keyphrases into a search engine to return the most relevant results.
Consequently, businesses must optimize their web pages for keywords to be found by potential visitors. Because not all keywords are the same, let’s differentiate the short-tail from the long-tail ones.
Short & Long-Tail Keywords
The short-tail keywords’ characteristics are:
- Broad and general
- High volume
- High competition
- Low intent
- Low conversion
On the contrary, long-tail keywords are:
- Descriptive and specific
- Low volume
- Low competition
- High intent
- High conversion
As we can see, long-tail keywords are better for conversions because they imply higher intent. Unfortunately, their search volume is also lower than “broad keywords.”
It is okay to optimize for a low-volume key phrase if it is at the bottom of the sales funnel. In parallel, we should not overdo the optimizations on long-tail keywords, because websites also need some traffic. Marketers must find the right balance.
Keyword Research Factors
To select the most valuable keyphrases for their businesses, companies must conduct research. Here are the top criteria to choose the right keywords:
- Relevance
- Search volume
- Intent
- Competitiveness
Keyphrase relevance is key in SEO. We cannot optimize for keywords that are “good for the business” but not related to the company’s activities.
Search volumes help digital marketers understand where to focus their efforts. As we saw above, we need a combination of short-tail and long-tail keywords to conduct an efficient organic campaign.
There is a correlation between search volume and user intent, but they remain separate. Businesses should not only optimize for “branded” keywords that drive awareness, but also for those that convert.
Competitors also optimize their websites and rank for keywords. We must benchmark them to identify the feasibility and potential effectiveness of our optimizations.
Keyword Research Process
Businesses conduct keyword research to anticipate what people want and are looking for. They must identify the keyphrases that match online users’ queries.
Here are the most efficient ways to investigate and choose the best keywords:
- Online social news aggregators (Quora, Reddit)
- Google Search and Auto-suggest
- Google Analytics
- Competitor keywords benchmark (with Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Google Keyword Planner)
People look for answers on the internet. Doing keyword research helps brands know which topics their potential clients are interested.
We can check trending topics on social networks or in Google Search, which provide “neutral data.” In Google Analytics, businesses can see which pages are their best performers, which is more “specific data.”
Thanks to competitor analysis, companies identify their most promising pages. They can do some reverse engineering by creating better content.
Once we finalize the keyword list, the best way to evaluate if they will drive conversions is to use them. Real data helps, but nothing beats actual implementation.
Having the keywords does not end the process. We must decide which target pages to optimize, as not all web pages are relevant.
Then, it is time to develop the content around the keywords. The next section will teach you how to write content that is valuable to search engines and real people.
#3 Write Killer Blog Content
A blog is one of the most powerful branding tools available in the digital market. Publishing useful content about various topics boosts online discoverability. All brands willing to showcase their expertise should have a blog section on their website.
Copywriters start producing content after the keyword research is done. When writing blog articles, the most important rules to follow are:
- Be straightforward
- Cover the topic completely
- Use a natural tone
- Keep sentences short (20 words)
- Write easy-to-understand copies
- Avoid the passive voice
- Insert appealing and unique images
- Proofread the article before publishing
Let’s complete this general copywriting guideline with specific advice on structure. Blog articles should always include the following:
- Long content (never shorter than 1,000 words)
- Engaging headline (60 characters)
- Descriptive meta description (155 characters)
- Subheads (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
- Short paragraphs
- Bullet points (1 line each)
- White space
Experienced copywriters know that the title tag and the meta description are critical to improving the Click-Through Rate (CTR). Their job is to get enough clicks so people will read the piece of content. More traffic results in more sales.
Writers must take time to polish the headline, which accounts for 80% of the copy’s appeal. They should also pay attention to the meta description, as it directly affects CTR, another ranking factor.
Since quality is more important than quantity in blogging, we recommend that brands update their older content. Copywriters should review their articles at least once every year.
It is a good strategy to consider “evergreen” content. Those copies are timeless because they address topics people continually search for.
#4 Build Meaningful Links
Link building is a major SEO technique to boost organic performance. As there is some confusion about them, let’s differentiate the 3 main kinds of links:
- Backlinks
- Internal links
- External links
We explain them in detail below.
Backlinks
A backlink is a link from another website pointing to yours. It connects both domains, starting with the anchor text on the external website and ending at the destination page on your website.
Backlinks are like online votes: the more backlinks, the more other websites quote yours as a good source of information. They pass “link juice” and authority, so it is important to get backlinks from related, trusted websites.
As for keywords, marketers can perform a competitor analysis for backlinks. Ahrefs and SEMrush help report the backlink gap, which is a good starting point in identifying new outreach opportunities.
Given the power of backlinks, it is tempting to “purchase” them in bulk. This black-hat practice worked in the early 2000s, but today search engine algorithms are smarter. Unnatural backlinking, or “rush link increase,” is penalized. Websites can lose their rankings because of that.
Internal Links
An internal link connects 2 separate pages hosted under the same domain. For example, it can be a product page with a hyperlink that redirects the user to a blog section that fully introduces the product.
Web crawlers like Google bots need links to navigate the internet. Links provide context between the billions of websites available. Internal links tell search engines that the 2 pages are related. It allows crawlers to better understand the content.
Use internal links to give a quick overview of your website architecture and page hierarchy.
External Links
External links are pretty much the opposite of backlinks. This time, your website is the one pointing at another domain. It means you are the one passing some “juice” to the other website.
Make sure you link out to reliable sources of content. External links are a SEO factor because they make your web pages more useful to online users.
In a blog, a good practice is to insert links in the first and last paragraphs of the copy. This is where they are the most effective.
Not all external links are equal. If a link has the rel=nofollow HTML attribute, search engines will ignore it. Such a link does not pass any juice to the destination page. Dofollow links, on the other hand, send some authority to the pointed domain.
#5 Boost your Potential Web Pages
SEO is a long-term digital strategy. It usually takes months and some budget to see significant organic results.
There is an SEO technique designed for quick and easy wins. It requires boosting the web pages that are currently ranking after the 10th position on the Google Search Engine Result Page (SERP).
On the first page of Google SERP, online users can see 10 organic results. The second page returns the 11th result, and so on.
Everyone knows that 95% of people only scan the first page. The top 3 positions alone account for 70% of all clicks. Brands want to appear there.
This SEO technique allows marketers to rank highly with minimal effort. Check for which keywords your website currently ranks on the second page of Google SERP. If they are meant for your business, you should focus on them because they are likely to reach the first page soon.
To identify your web pages satisfying those conditions, go to your Google Search Console. In the performance tab, check which pages and keywords rank at the average position of 5-15.
If those candidates are good for your business (i.e., they can increase your sales), you should optimize them to capitalize on this “quick win.”
Here are the 2 easiest techniques to optimize the pages sitting on the second page of Google:
- Optimize the page meta
- Add internal links
Review the page title, meta description, and H1, H2, and H3 headers to ensure they align with the keyword you are optimizing for.
Add internal links from your most authoritative pages (e.g., the website homepage). It will help the low-hanging-fruit page rank higher.
#6 Optimize your Local SEO
Many people search for local businesses, especially brands selling physical products. This typically includes search engine queries, such as “near me.”
Local SEO is a top technique for companies. Optimizing local search traffic guarantees great footfall results.
To optimize for local SEO, consider the following top-ranking factors:
- Physical location
- Online reviews
- Web content
- Backlinks
- Mobile-friendliness
- Online directories
- Citations
To get started, you must have a Google Business Profile (GBP) account (formerly Google My Business). This service is free and extremely powerful. It offers organic visibility on the GBP knowledge panel, the local finder, and the Google Local pack (3-pack) as well.
Pay extra attention to the NAPW, which is an acronym for:
- Name
- Address
- Phone
- Website
The NAPW information must be the same everywhere. Your GBP NAPW information must match the name, address, phone number, and website you entered on social media networks, guest posts, and all other online locations that mention your brand.
Final Tips on Best SEO Techniques
The internet is full of poor and/or duplicate content. While producing valuable information takes time, some publishers do not hesitate to plagiarize it for their own benefit.
SEO techniques make the difference to stand out from the crowd. They optimize web pages for both search engines and people.
Marketers should follow those professional tips for their blog content and for their product and category pages.
There is no need to optimize the whole website. Search engines like Google rank web pages, not entire domains. Under time and budget constraints, businesses are better off focusing on the pages that convert.
When applying those SEO techniques, make sure to measure your web performance with the tools mentioned in this article. Focus on the metrics that matter, not on “vanity” metrics like “number of likes.” The point is to generate revenues after all.
To go further on this topic, read our complete SEO guide. You will learn everything you need to optimize your website and rank high for your desired keywords.
