Introduction
The significance of SEO is seen in the fact that 67.6% of clicks happen on the top five search results on Google, research by Zero Limit Web suggests.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, helps you organize and create your website in a way that it can compete for the first page with other webpages in the same niche. The higher traffic you get, the more likely it is to get your traffic to convert.
By researching for keywords and semantics, utilizing relevant links, adding media and other simple practices, you can get your webpage to rank higher. Consistently updating content helps your webpage stay relevant in searches. There are certain other hacks that you can employ to help drive more traffic to your website. Let’s see what they are.
Hacks to Boost Traffic Using SEO
Employ the following hacks to get the most out of your SEO strategy.
Create Content Around Important Keywords
Creating quality content around primary and secondary keywords ensures that the information you are delivering is relevant and meaningful. That alone gets search engines to boost your rank. Strategically place primary keywords into informative, descriptive titles and subheadings that clearly communicate the purpose of the blog. Pick secondary keywords that complement your primary keyword and help you deliver more detailed information on the subject. For example, if “SEO for blogs” is your primary keyword, the secondary keyword you pick can potentially be, “Best SEO practices”, which can help you communicate more on the subject.
Use Good URLs
Believe it or not, URLs can also be SEO-optimized. Use of keywords in URLs also helps boost search engine rankings. Try to keep your URLs short and use primary keywords in them if possible. Additionally, they should be easy to understand for your audience.
One trick is to keep them just under 60 characters, as it is known that search engines encounter a hassle trying to process longer URLs and push such webpages down in search result rankings.
Get Good Quality Backlinks
Getting backlinks is a great SEO strategy that gets you ranking higher in search results, and helps you stay there. However, it isn’t an immediate occurrence, and may take time to really build up and start yielding results. However, you can do some things at the beginning to speed things up a bit:
- Seek out the reputed publishers and media figures in your niche, and reach out to them for writing guest posts on their websites
- Offer your research or authentic data to such outfits to publish on their website, which will get you a backlink
- Try to get your brand name added to online listings of industry forums or networks
Attempt to Rank for Featured Snippets
Featured snippets appear at the very top of Google search results, and is a highly coveted spot for which all digital marketers strategize intensively. Usually, content that directly and relevantly addresses a specific user query gets selected as featured snippet. Ensure that your blog posts are optimized according to the semantics in use. That, and the use of primary keywords intelligently (no stuffing) can help you compete organically for the spot.
Use SE-Friendly Templates and Formats
Search engines understand structured content better than paragraphed text. It is important to use a text format that a search engine can easily crawl and comprehend so that the ranking of your page gets a boost. Use of headings, subheadings, bullets and tables helps keep content easy to understand – both for the reader and the search engine – and helps your webpage rank higher in the search results.
Also, consider the maximum and minimum lengths of sentences and paragraphs.
Include a Page Title and Meta Description
It is easy to overlook these two components of a webpage. When a webpage doesn’t have a meta description, search engines automatically pick up a random paragraph from the page and feature that as the meta text. However, it may not always communicate what your page is about, costing you traffic. Include a clear page title and a meta description that summarizes the blog in under 30 words. Use primary keywords in both.
Only Use Quick-loading Elements
Let’s face it – users don’t have the time to wait for the heavy content on your website to load. If it takes longer than 3 seconds to load, that traffic is likely going elsewhere. Use Google’s free tool to analyze the loading speed of your website, and try to get the highest score possible by removing any website elements that are taking longer to load or are jamming up the bandwidth.
Publish High-Quality, Original Content
Google is a very smart search engine, and it can differentiate well between content that is original from the one that has been spun using software (or duplicated). Duplicate content will not only get your website to rank lower, but also get it blacklisted if this practice doesn’t stop.
High-quality, original content with the right keywords and media always gets recognized by Google’s algorithms and gets higher ranking.
Study Your Competitor’s Website
Which of your competitors are ranking higher than you? Check out their website. Create a log of what they are doing differently that you can adopt for your own website and have a chance at competing for their spot. Chances are that their content is higher in quality, or the use of the right keywords follows better strategy. Maybe they are using good media and have a solid backlinking network as well. Whatever the case is, try to inculcate the same things in your website.
Write Longer Content
Longer content doesn’t only give you the opportunity to communicate more with your audience, but also the chance to:
- Get more backlinks
- Include more internal links
- Include more keywords
- Add more media to posts
It all adds to creating a post that checks all the boxes for a good SEO strategy. Try to aim for content that has higher than 1000 words, and the information included therein exhaustively covers the subject being talked about.
Conclusion
While it is easy to implement SEO strategies on your website, these nifty tips and tricks, these nuances are known better by professional SEO services companies. Hiring one can help you rank better on search engines.
