Embarking on your journey to improve your website’s rankings on search engines can be an exciting, but daunting process. If you’ve just begun learning Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it’s hard to know where to begin with the large range of books, articles and videos dedicated to the topic.
As such, we’ve assembled 6 tips to explain how you can improve your rankings in search engines like Google.
1. Publish Relevant, Quality Content
Creating relevant quality content is crucial if you want to improve your rankings on search engines. Quality content that matches the search intent of your audience helps to improve your site’s relevance and authority, which in turn may lead to better rankings. Stay updated on the latest industry news, take note of topics your clients are bringing up, and weave these conversations into your content.
2. Create Metadata
As you work on your website, it’s important to create metadata for each of your pages. Search engines like Google use metadata from meta tags to understand information about your webpage. They then use this information for ranking purposes and display snippets in search results. The metadata you’ll need to create include:
Title Tag – Your title tag will be responsible for the page title that pops up at the top of your browser window and as the headline in your search engine results. It is the most important metadata to include on your page. You should ensure your title tag is unique and relevant, includes your target key phrase, and is no more than 70 characters in length including spaces when possible.
Description Tag – This is the textual description you’ll find underneath the page titles you see on the search engine results page. You will want to make sure your tag is a concise and appealing description of the information your page contains, is unique to your page, and is between 110 and 155 characters in length – including spaces.
3. Optimize Page Speed
After Google’s previous Core Web Vitals update, page speed is a key benchmark. It’s important to ensure your site is as fast as possible to help improve your user experience and in turn, increase your chances of ranking better.
4. Optimize Your Website for Local Search
Whenever people search for businesses “near me”, your website’s local search capabilities will be put to the test. To help improve the likelihood your business will show up in relevant local searches, be sure to claim your Google My Business listing, improve and monitor your online reputation, and ensure your business is listed in local directories.
5. Update Your Links
It is helpful to have quality inbound and outbound links on your website if you want to improve your search ranking. To ensure the quality of your links, you should regularly audit your site to check for issues like broken links and duplicate content. Check for 404 errors, pages from your site that are competing for the same keyword and take steps to fix these issues.
6. Use Alt Tags for Your Media
If you use images or videos within your content (and you should!), be sure to always describe your assets with alternative text descriptions (alt tags). Why? Your alt tags will help search engines to find your page. Alt tags are also vital for people with disabilities who need to use assistive technology to describe your media content. We hope these tips help. For more information on how you can improve your Search Engine Optimization efforts, be sure to reach out to the experts at MoreVisibility.
