Even if you have a beautifully rendered website, it is hard for you to rank well in search engines without good SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is the process in which the traffic to your website is improved from search engine algorithms. The higher a website appears in search results, the higher the possibility of receiving visitors from the search engine.
While there are hundreds of factors that make up Google’s entire ranking algorithm, the thing that matters the most is content. All the factors influencing Google ranking directly or indirectly depends on the quality of content you present on your website.
Here are 10 tips and tools that are sure to help you rank higher in Google:
1.Page Titles
The page titles or title tag is used by search engines to display a page in search results. These tags tell search engines and users what your page is about. Google only displays between 50 to 60 characters in their title tags; therefore it’s important to keep descriptions short, compelling, and relevant. Keywords should also be featured in these page titles to help Google understand the page.
2. Keywords
The usage of the right keywords is perhaps one of the most important tactics of SEO. If you use the effective keywords which a user might use to search for information, product, or service, you are most likely to get higher ranking in search engines. Just make sure you don’t overuse keywords, especially if they are unrelated as this can lead to your site being flagged as spam. Keywords should make up less than 2% of your text.
3. ALT Tags
Each image and video that you put on your site can be described with the help of alt tags, also known as alternative text descriptions. These descriptions allow search engines to locate your page using the keywords found in your image and video alt text descriptions. This increases the opportunities of your site being found by search engines, which therefore raises page ranking.
4. Sitemaps
A sitemap is a list of all the pages of your website which is only visible to Google. This allows crawlers to locate pages quickly, and with more relevance to the keyword entered. Using sitemaps, every page is easier to find for search engines such as Google.
5. Mobile Site
With nearly 40% of organic traffic coming from mobile devices, websites with a mobile-friendly interface will certainly rank higher in Google searches. Google is trying to provide the best user experience so better the user experience of your site, the better you will rank with Google.
6. Don’t Use Flash
Many small businesses use Flash Player to run their website as it is cheap and easy to launch. However, Google always ranks Flash sites lower then sites running on alternative platforms as crawlers cannot because link to an individual page. Changing a Flash-based site to WordPress can largely increase search engine rankings.
7. Update Content Regularly
It is absolutely necessary to regularly update your website content. Regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best indicators of a site’s relevancy and reputation.
8. URL Structure
A URL is the first thing that a search engine uses to determine what a page is about, hence ranks the page according to it. To improve Google rankings try to keep the URLs short and relevant to the page’s topic and keywords. The URLs also enhances the user experience and categorize the site pages.
9. Organic Links
The number of organic and inbound links to your site also determines Google’s ranking. This works because Google ranks the reliability and relevance of your site analyzing the results of how many times it has been recommended by third parties.
10. Audit
You won’t know if all your hard SEO work is paying off unless you conduct an audit and see where you are landing. Along with this, it is also important to check your referrer log so that you can see how your visitors arrive at your site, and the search terms they are using to get there.
These ranking factors may fluctuate as Google’s algorithm changes so pay attention to your industry and your competitors so that you can update your content according to the new algorithm. Visit www.digitalpresence.today for more information on SEO and Google ranking.
