Improve SEO – 45 ways to climb up in rankings
There is no doubt that SEO is one of the most complex segments of the B2B cycle and something everyone pays a lot of attention to.
Did you know that 93% of all the experiences on the Internet start with a search engine?
But let’s start from the beginning.
If you want to find yourself on the first page of the search results on Google, the ways to find out how to improve SEO should be on your priority list.
Having a high position will ensure better visibility, a bigger number of visits, and, thus, more users.
You should bear in mind that there are around 200 different Google ranking factors. That is a lot of work.
Fortunately, it’s not too late to start applying different methods to reach a higher rank position.
In this ultimate guide, “Improve SEO in 2019”, we have chosen 45 most efficient ways of reaching bigger traffic on your website.
So, let’s start right now!
1) Quality content
It’s easy to post whatever pops into your mind to keep the regularity of posting, but it’s much more important what is it that you post.
The content you upload to your website, blog, or social media must be of good quality; it must be relevant to your target audience and in accordance with your business.
The audience needs to see the content’s real value.
That value is reflected in whether the content is heterogeneous, informative, creative, or how they feel about it.
When creating an avatar, that is, the ideal buyer persona, you have to keep in mind what would be of interest to that ideal buyer and to provide him with just that through your content, which will lead to the improvement of SEO.
2) Multiple types of content
Different types of content will keep visitors on the website much easier.
Try to use text content, images, video clips, infographics, tables.
Of course, everything should have its purpose; do not insert some foolish things just to achieve diversity.
Try to show the USP of your business (eng. unique selling proposition) through textual content.
The rule that a picture is worth more than a thousand words is valid even when it comes to business.
Video content provides tremendous opportunities to improve SEO. Today, everything is happening fast, and many more people would rather spend a few minutes to watch the video clip than to read some text. That’s why they are a great option to represent certain textual things through video material.
The following statistics speak precisely in favor of this:
Though making a video takes more time than writing textual content, it’s worth the effort, because the results are fantastic and they will affect SEO positively.
Infographics and tables are a great way to display different results and represent data, not just through text, but also visually.
People will be able to imagine and remember what you want to convey easier.
3) Storytelling
Every business needs its own story to distinguish itself from the competition.
Storytelling is what converts people into real buyers.
If you want to connect with your potential customers, keep them interested, and to make them understand your mission and vision, the storytelling is irreplaceable.
If you do not think that you have a story, ask yourself again. Use the USP as the basis of your brand’s story that you’ll share with the audience.
People like a good story, do not deny it to them.
4) Testimonials
Satisfied users will be happy to share their opinions about your product or service.
It’s up to you how are you going to include their experiences into a part of your content that will be delivered to your target audience.
Why are testimonials so relevant?
You want to convince people that your product or service is something that they need, something that might mean to them even later on. The easiest way to earn their trust is to show them the experiences of real people who are not directly related to your business.
Objective opinions will be of paramount importance to new potential customers when they choose to make a purchase decision.
In this way, you will quickly establish trust and gain credibility.
And that is not all.
If you want to draw the maximum potential of testimonials, combine them with the video content.
Remember the statistics that we mentioned a bit earlier?
Ask faithful customers to record a video in which they would express how they feel about their user experience and, after that, reward their efforts with discounts or something similar.
If you can not obtain this kind of video content, find a designer who will fit different texts written by your previous users together and place them on your website and any other channels that you use for promotion.
5) Social media
Social networks have been viral for a long time, and new ones appear now and then.
Nonetheless, some remain incredibly successful in maintaining their popularity.
Those are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Note: Do not try to impose your business on every social network that exists. Explore where your competitors make their accounts most often. Not every job is suitable for every channel. In order not to waste your time and budget on advertising vainly, find out where your target audience is and be sure to be active on those channels.
Place social media buttons in the form of a widget on your website. In this way, visitors will be able to find your social media accounts much easier.
Source: AccuWebHosting
Share your content on social networks and encourage your followers to do the same.
Make your content interesting enough that they would want to share it with their friends. This will lead to more visits, which will contribute to improving SEO.
For example, if Instagram is one of the channels you use, create an exciting prize game and a hashtag that your followers will have to use to participate in your game. The more people take part, the more hashtag will become popular, and it will intrigue others to check what it is about. And voila, reach on your Instagram is growing rapidly!
6) Influencers marketing
Influencers are people who, as the word itself says, have a positive impact.
Explore which influencers would be suitable for the niche you are dealing with.
After you create a list, make sure that their content is of high quality, how their audience reacts, whether their followers are real or not, and so on. Analyze each of them.
When you finish selecting the ones fit to be ambassadors for your brand, write an email to each one (people like to see that you have made an effort) and explain what is your business about, why you chose he/she over someone else, and make your offer.
The audience that follows them does that because they trust them, and they value their opinion.
Influencers marketing can have a huge positive impact on your business.
The influencers have one goal – to make their audience interested in what you’re offering. People who become interested will visit your website, and you will quickly turn them into your customers.
Also, the number of visits will increase, and Google will recognize your website as relevant.
Therefore, it is essential that you carefully select both niche and people from that niche that are adequate to promote your brand.
Look at the results of a survey on how much of the budget marketers separate for influencers marketing:
Source: BigCommerce
7) Blogging
Blogging is a great thing when it comes to business.
You can post texts on your blog that is not just about what you offer, but also about some innovations from a particular niche, actualities, longer user experiences, etc.
Blog posts improve SEO rankings.
And how does this happen?
Creating new content or rewriting the old one will bring people to your site, and if you succeed in making them interested, they will stay.
Customer retention time is another factor that can help improve SEO.
Also, this is an excellent opportunity to use backlinks.
8) Outbound links
Using outbound links is one of the methods to improve SEO rankings.
Mentioning specific sites in your text can get you a better position in Google search.
It is important that these links come from the relevant sites from your niche and that they already have a certain authority. The more popular your websites are, the more likely will they affect your position in the results.
Source: Bloggersidekick
9) Backlink building
Backlink building works similarly to the principle of inserting outbound links.
The difference is that the goal here is to “earn” the possibility of the sites mentioning you in return. To accomplish this, the content you create must have something to do with what their business is about.
In the following way, you can go one step further:
- Explore the content of a site whose backlink might be vital to you.
- Write something on one of the topics that this site has been dealing with and try to elaborate on a segment to which they did not pay too much attention previously.
- Contact them by email and write to them that you think it would be of great importance to them if they read what you wrote on your site.
If the link you on their website, you will get more visits, and Google will, therefore, recognize your content as reliable and important.
10) Internal links
These are, in fact, links within the same website.
This is a great way to keep people on your website and to make navigation easier for them, as you’re at the same time offering more of the content that might appeal to them.
11) Check all links
It is very important that all the links that you mention on your website are correct.
You surely do not want your visitors to be misdirected to the “error” page.
Broken links can affect your SEO ranking very badly.
Check all links regularly, although there are small chances that the authority websites have “broken links.”
Dead Link Checker can help you automate this process and save time.
You can use Multi checker to check links at multiple websites simultaneously. In that way, you will quickly find out if the sites you wanted to link have broken links.
The Auto checker option runs a checker through your website regularly and informs you of irregularities automatically.
12) Readable website
Pay attention to the words you’re using when you talk to your users.
Do not use complicated terms just because they sound “smart.” The text should be at the level where most people could understand it in the best way possible.
But if you are working within a niche whose target audience is very narrow and professional terms are inevitable, then it is perfectly fine and advisable to use them.
If you are not sure whether a word is too long or complicated, Readable.com will help you.
13) Keywords
You’ve probably heard many times what the importance of keywords is when it comes to the ways to improve SEO rankings.
That’s definitely for a reason.
Keywords are the words through which people most often find out about your website.
They must be related to what your business is about; they must be relevant.
First, do keyword research. Tools such as Ahrefs, Keyword Planner, or Competitors.app can help you with that.
Find out which words from your niche are most popular. Also, do not forget to explore which keywords are used by your competitors.
Use the analysis to find out which are the low competition keywords that your competition does not use and include it on your list.
14) Implement keywords
After the analysis has been completed, it’s time to pay attention to where you can insert the keywords.
There isn’t an exact number of times one keyword should be mentioned in a text, but it is recommended to be 0.5% of the total number of words in an article or post.
Of course, be careful that your page does not look cramped and confusing, because reading can quickly become not such a user-friendly experience.
If you are making an ad and a landing page, you should try your best to use keywords in both of them.
Include your keywords in URLs, images description, headers.
Long-tail keywords are essential too.
But remember, do not overdo it by repeating them because it can affect your SEO rankings negatively, so use them naturally.
15) ALT tags
ALT tags, also known as „alt attribute“ or „alt description, “ are, directly speaking, the descriptions of the images.
Every picture that you upload on your website should have these descriptions.
For example, if the keywords you use for your article are „Improve SEO,“ you should place them in every image description in your article. After you have entered those, you should describe briefly what that picture represents.
You should keep your image text less than 125 characters long.
This will help Google to recognize your website much easier when someone enters „Improve SEO“ in Google search, and it will improve SEO rankings.
16) Compress the images
Images on your website should be compressed so that they have the smallest file size possible.
Smaller images will improve SEO because they can be downloaded much faster. They won’t interrupt the page load speed.
Don’t experiment with the images; always use 100% quality images.
Tools like ImageOptim, Kraken.io, and JPEGmini will help you reduce the size of your images.
17) Improve page load speed
If page load speed is to slow, it will have a negative effect on your Google ranking, for sure.
Because your aim is improving and not worsening your SEO rankings, you have to pay attention to this advice.
Not only will Google be unable to recognize this, but your visitors would also have an unpleasant user experience.
Pages that need more than 3 seconds to load have a huge percentage of abandonment.
Now you understand how important the page load speed is.
But fortunately, you can use some programmers’ hacks to improve it.
Here are eight steps that will reduce your page load speed:
- Optimize caches
- Trim down JavaScript parsing
- Do away with redirects
- Minify JavaScript & style sheets
- Apply CSS3 and HTML5
- Minimize image size
- Apply AJAX
- Use a content delivery network
When your website loads in 3 seconds or less, the Google algorithm will recognize this, and people will keep coming back, too.
This is another effective way to improve SEO ranking.
Tools like Pingdom will help you test your page load speed.
18) Optimize your website for mobile devices
The use of mobile devices has grown significantly and continues to grow still.
If you want to improve SEO, this is something you should not ignore.
Google can recognize which devices people use when searching for something, and it ranks the websites accordingly. If someone uses a mobile phone when searching, websites that are optimized for mobile devices would be first in the results.
So, don’t forget to optimize your website for mobile devices.
19) Create a mobile app
Creating a mobile app can be an expensive investment, but it will help improve SEO rankings for your business.
If someone types in a keyword from your field in the Google search bar, your app can be shown in the search results.
Google now indicates mobile apps in Google search, and therefore, this opportunity should be used.
20) Use headings and bullet points
As mentioned previously, texts must be readable.
Break a text with headings and bullet points so that they can be more understandable and easier to remember.
A large pile of words will not appeal to people.
If you know how to „break“ the article where it should be „broken,“ you will encourage your visitors to continue reading.
See an example from the article you are currently reading:
21) Website widgets
Website widgets are small apps that can help you organize and make your website pages more organized.
People love good functionality and organization. They would be pleased to return to your pages, and their visits will improve the SEO of your website.
There are many types of website widgets: a search bar, calendar form, social media buttons, clocks, translators, video players, and more.
The implementation of website widgets is quick and simple. You need to find a certain widget on the widget-market that you want to put on your page and copy-paste the code.
They are very easy to use and do not take up much space.
There are many website widgets’ tools: use AddThis for social media buttons, Google Calendar for calendar form, MailChimp for contact forms, SwiftType for the search box, and so on.
The two main reasons to install these applications on your website are:
- You will get a functional website that will provide a user-friendly experience.
- You can collect the data from website widgets.
22) Collect the data from website widgets
Many website widget tools collect the data for you.
They gather information about your visitors’ actions and make an analysis that will help you understand their behavior and improve your business.
For example, you can follow the things your visitors type in a search bar, so you will know precisely what they are interested in.
One small app, such as a search box, can do wonders for your business.
When search results match the users’ expectations, the exit rate will surely decrease.
If you only follow the data, you will be able to provide your readers with what they want to see and find out.
Live chat widgets will enable you to connect with your customers and also, to collect the data.
Widgets for customer reviews and ratings have a high potential in discovering what people think about your brand and what you are doing right and where you should make some changes as soon as possible.
23) Organize your website
When it comes to your business, you need to keep in mind your target audience for everything you do.
If you want to improve SEO, people need to comprehend what your website represents.
The structure of a website should be clean and neat; the text must be readable; image quality has to be on a high level.
Dysfunctionality will not create a user-friendly experience.
Use colors, fonts, headers, bullet points to make readable textual content.
But don’t overdo it with different fonts and colors, make it simple and interesting for reading.
Every page of your website should be understandable and should contain proper information if you want your visitors to come back and become your users.
24) Make clean URLs
Clear and simple URLs are far more optimized for Google search and easier to remember.
Messy URL would look like this:
http://www.competitors.app/index.php?page=blog
And the clean one looks like this:
Can you see the difference?
By using focused URLs, you’ll make search engines much easier to find your site and improve SEO rankings.
25) Add HTTPS to your website
HTTPS is an abbreviation for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure.
A couple of years before, Google published that they are starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal.
Pages that have HTTPS are better ranked than other pages.
Adding this secured protocol implies that you will have a better insight into where your visitors come from.
If your users see that you are offering them a secure connection, it will encourage them to give you their private information and payment details without fear.
26) Write a meta description
With meta description, you provide a clear summary of your website page.
You can present what your website is about and what your users should expect when they click on the link in 160 characters.
The tag looks like this:
<META NAME=“Description” CONTENT=“informative description here”>
It’s an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your business.
Use meta description to interest people in your brand and increase click-through rates.
That will surely improve SEO rank position.
27) Use LSI
Latent semantic indexing or LSI can provide your website with a significant SEO boost.
How LSI works?
For example, your article is about SEO.
There is quite a lot of information you can include SEO:
- What is SEO
- How you can improve SEO
- SEO ranking factors
- Stats about SEO
- How to find out your competitors’ SEO strategy
Google finds the most relevant pages for the searched segment from the SEO field, thanks to LSI keywords that are already included in certain pages or blog posts.
LSIs present a kind of next level of searching by keywords that helps Google deliver adequate results.
Now you can understand how crucial they are for improving SEO.
28) Competitors strategies
Everyone who doesn’t investigate what their competition is doing can seriously harm the progress of their business.
First, you have to make a list of the competitors in your field.
Then research them and see what their methods are when it comes to running a business.
Only after you find out what the competition is doing, you will know what your position in a particular field is.
Look at how they present products, services and features, what their tone of communication with visitors is, what the consumers said about them in comments and reviews section, what and how often they reply, which website widgets they use, how much they charge, what their SEO methods are, etc.
Find out which mistakes your competitors make and use them to your advantage so that you improve your SEO.
Use the conclusion from your analysis to make a better experience for users.
29) Monitor competitors changes
Only one analysis is not enough to win the competition.
You need to monitor your competitors regularly to keep up with the innovations and changes in the market.
If you don’t do it, be prepared to be monitored and beaten by your competitors.
But the more diligent you are, the more likely you will beat them.
Use tools such as Ahrefs, Competitors.app, or SEMRush to „spy“ on competitors and save your time for other essential tasks.
Use those results to get bigger chances to improve SEO.
30) Competitive analysis
How will this help you improve SEO?
Besides all the benefits that monitoring competitors can bring, a competitive analysis can help you in one other way:
If your business can be an alternative to some other, already well-known business, use that comparison in the competitive analysis.
Be objective and include all the pros and cons.
You should mention why your brand is the best alternative that users can find on the market.
For example, let’s say that your tool is an adequate alternative for Adobe Illustrator.
Write a competitive analysis where you will compare your tool with that program.
When someone searches for „Illustrator alternatives, “ it’s more likely that your text about this comparison will show up in search results.
Now, do you see where it goes?
31) Forum websites
Websites such as Quora are a great option to give some answers in your field.
When you find the questions for which you can leave well-written answers, include relevant links to your website.
Do not exaggerate with promotion, be smooth and informative.
If your answers are trustworthy, it will bring more visits to your website.
32) Google Business
Google Business is an Internet service for business owners.
You need just a couple of minutes to make an account, and benefits can be huge.
You can add info about your business, add pictures and social profile buttons, follow reviews, and more.
33) More words
Articles and blog posts with more words get better rankings than standard 500-word posts.
As you can see, the more you say – the better.
Of course, this does not mean that the amount of words is allowed to affect the quality of the article.
Count both in to get more visits.
34) Find old, short posts and rewrite them
Look through your website.
Find short articles that didn’t get much attention and turn them into long-form posts for better performing.
35) Make old content fresh
You don’t have to post completely new content regularly.
Of course, posting new things is vital, but you can also take the old posts and update them with some brand new information and fresh content.
Upload more pictures and videos, make a slideshow, rewrite old texts – the possibilities are numerous.
People will start returning to your website, which will improve SEO and provide you with a higher ranking in search results.
36) Architecture and navigation
If the visitors don’t find what they need on your website immediately, you can be sure that they will leave it soon enough.
This will affect the bounce rate and is not an excellent way to improve SEO.
Let’s see an example of clear navigation:
When you provide your visitors with the experience, they expect, or even more, the probability that they will return to your website and become users is significantly larger.
37) „Contact us“ page
„Contact us“ page is a significant part of your website.
You should use it as a means of informing about your business so that it would be easier for people to make contact with you.
It will be easier for you to build connections with your users this way, and the more information you give to them, the more confidence they will have in you, and you will improve your credibility.
You will improve SEO and rank higher by Google search engines.
Using an organized Contact us page will enable you to improve your customer service, too.
Well-organized Contact us page will make it possible for you to collect important data about your users.
38) Make an email list
As you can see in the picture above, one of the fields is reserved for the email address used.
There are some other ways to find your users’ contact information. Promoting a live webinar, free e-book or guide, online courses, or simply adding the subscription option for in your newsletter.
The bigger your mailing list is, the easier it is for you to reach more potential buyers.
You should try not to overwhelm your readers with too much information. Choose a specific period for sending emails so that your users would expect to get your email on an exact day.
Send exciting and informative content. Notify them on innovations, promotions, exciting things, and ask for their opinions. Feedbacks will help you improve different aspects of your business.
Include relevant links that lead to your website in the body of your email.
You will encourage them to visit your website, and the number of visits will increase.
39) Google News
The number of options you can use to improve SEO is so big that you might not be aware of the existence and potential they have.
One of those options is Google News.
Quicksprout mentioned that news articles get pulled by Google on two SERPs—the traditional SERP you’re used to and the News section.
To appear in Google News section, you should follow these nine steps stated by Quicksprout:
- Start a “News” section on your blog/site.
Update it regularly (1-2 newsy posts a day is a good practice). - Publish authoritative, unique, original, and newsworthy content. For research, set up a Google Alert for keywords in your field.
- Informational articles such as how-tos and guides do not qualify. Every post must be newsy.
- Do not publish aggregated content.
- Each news article you write must be authoritative.
- The byline of each post must be linked to the author’s profile, which should contain their contact information and links to their social media profiles.
- Follow the Google quality guidelines before starting your news section.
- You need to subscribe to a paid Google account to become a Google News Partner because you can’t get in with a free account. The best thing to do is sign up for a Google Apps email account, available for a low price of only $5 per month (https://apps.google.com/pricing.html).
- Finally, start publishing, and enroll as a Google News Partner after building up sizeable content (at least 50 pages).
Even though it seems demanding, this can result in increasing your visits. The majority of your competitors won’t feel the need to engage in this, and that is yet another reason why you should make use of this opportunity and create an advantage over your competition.
40) Use URL plugins
When your website appears as one of the results of Google search, you have a chance to show as much relevant information as possible.
Each option that enables you to interest people further is of the utmost importance.
We have already mentioned the meta description.
Besides that, you can also add an address plugin, map location, phone number, etc.
The more useful information you give, the more will you be able to convince your users that you are worthy of their attention and their time.
41) Voice search
Optimize your website for voice search.
Statistics show the following:
If you are aware of the power of voice search, it is a pity not to use it to improve SEO rankings.
Voice searches are mostly in the form of questions, so the best thing you can do is include both the question and the answer in your written content. This way, your website will be shown in Google search results.
Backlinko reminds you that this will also enable your content to show in Featured Snippet:
42) Provide direct answers
It will be easier for Google to recognize your website as an adequate result for the search for some specific keywords if you provide direct answers.
If your content is written enough, Google search engines can see that it is you who answers a particular question.
This will give you better chances to improve SEO rank position.
Try to write clearly, so that your text would be readable, without any complicated words or phrases.
43) Spread your content even more
If you wish to expand your content more (and you certainly do), you can try some or even all of the following ideas.
- Organize a live webinar
- Run an online course
- Write a guide or e-book
- Make live Q&A videos
These are just some of the ideas which can help you interest people in what you do.
You should choose the ones that fit your business purpose.
For example, if you are in the field of digital marketing, you can make a free e-book or organize a free webinar that can familiarize people with your work and point out to the clients why they should choose you.
A live webinar or free e-book can also be a great promotion if you are preparing a course for digital marketers or something similar.
While people are applying for your webinar, they will leave some contact information, such as an email address.
Thanks to this, you will have loads of email addresses that you can include in your mailing list. Use this to share relevant information and news over the newsletter.
You will keep them interested, built a connection with them, and they will return to your website.
44) The power of the press
Finding more and more ways to increase brand awareness can only result in your having, even more, visits to your website and help your strategies to improve SEO.
The press has significant potential when it comes to spreading the news.
Make a research of the relevant press in your field and contact them.
You can write the texts on your own or hire a PR agency, such as PR Serve, which will help you publish texts connected with your brand. They will find adequate media for you and spread the word about you to your target audience.
45) Test everything
Last but not the least important way to improve SEO rankings is to test and analyze everything you do.
Check the page load speed and whether all the website widgets and links work.
Check to see if everything is in its place if the images and videos are in high quality if the fonts and texts are readable enough.
Test all the codes and information written.
If you have made a mistake, it is better that you find it out before your visitors do.
The bottom line
After going through these 45 best practices to improve SEO rankings, it is high time you started putting them in use.
Don’t forget to monitor your results.
SEO is an essential part if you want to run your business effectively and progressively, so take it seriously, and you will benefit from it greatly, for sure.
Although it might seem to you that some items are less important than others, be sure that everything we’ve written in this Guide has the same purpose – to ensure a better experience for your users and to improve the SEO position of your website.
When you start applying these methods, you will see how everything fits, and it will all go more smoothly.
Start right now and skyrocket your SEO!
