The best SEO tricks to rank higher!
Digital Marketing has been gaining relevance and importance rapidly since the onset of Digitization in India and abroad. It has become the number 1 way for brand awareness, advertisements, selling and buying and even interacting and keeping in touch with consumers! It has become an ever-growing practice which is now essential to make a mark in the market! Also, it is next to impossible to imagine Digital Marketing without SEO.
The science of enhancing a website to make it more visible when people search for goods or services is known as search engine optimization. The likelihood that a brand will attract business increases with a website’s search engine presence.
Since it is still a domain of untapped potential, there are multiple strategies around, that may or may not work out for everyone. Hence, we are here to guide you through the process and list some clear-cut SEO tricks and tips that will help you rank higher on every search engine!
Let’s just get right into it!
1. KEYWORD PLACEMENT
If you’re here, you might already know the importance of Keyword Research and usage, for the pages that you want to rank. But have you ever thought about the significance of their placement?
Relevant keyword(s) should definitely be present in your Title Tag, Website or Webpage URL and in the first 100-150 words of your content. These should be used at least once and in the right context. Just throwing words here and there to make it appear on the SERPs, will never do the trick. Remember, you are in the game for a long run and there’s no point in jeopardizing your reliability. So, context is key.
2. MAKE SURE USERS STAY ON THE PAGE LONG ENOUGH
This one might hurt a little bit but,
Pogo-sticking or increased bounce-rate can make or break your ranking.
So, let’s first check out what pogo-sticking exactly is –
Pogo-sticking is when a Google user clicks on your site but then click on the back option in the top left corner to reach the search results to find something that actually helps them.
And when someone “pogo-sticks”, it sends a strong message to Google: “I didn’t like that result.”
It goes without saying that Google will lower your site’s ranking if your users aren’t satisfied.
So, What can you do to encourage users to stay on your site longer?
The answer is – FORMATTING.
Use bullet points and subheadings to make your text easy to read or just run through. If people find it easier to grasp, they will stay longer and invest in it accordingly.
3. GET RID OFF THOSE ZOMBIE PAGES
As the name suggests, zombie pages are the ones on your website that are basically.. dead and don’t do anything for you. They don’t bring in any traffic or provide information or fruit to you or your users.
When you delete these pages, its like unloading the trash and results in higher rankings and more traffic!
Thus, when one e-commerce site “pruned” 11k product pages, search engine traffic increased by 31%, and income increased by 28%!
They are not alone either.
After removing 40,000 zombie pages from their website, Proven.com reported a boost in organic search traffic of 88.3%.
Why does this tactic succeed?
Websites that are overloaded with shallow, inferior material are not ones Google wants to rank.
In fact, Google stated that they prefer “one stronger page versus many smaller pages”.
4. SPEED IT UP!
Having slow loading pages on your website can 100% hurt Google rankings. Google’s “Speed Update” specifically downranks pages that load slowly on mobile devices. This is why it would be best to discard and eliminate anything that would slow down your page or increase load time.
5. USE GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
This is one of the most underrated SEO tricks ever!
Go to the Google Search Console and login. Head over to the performance report and click on “Pages”.
This will show the pages that bring your the most traffic. But that’s not all! You may view all of the keywords the page already ranks for by clicking on one of the pages. Digging deep will help you find LOTS of keywords that you didn’t even know you were ranking for!
Why is this important?
Well, if I’m ranking for say, 3 keywords by accident, imagine if I actually tried! So to get more traffic from those search queries, I would therefore only need to sprinkle those terms across my post in order to increase traffic from those search queries. Furthermore, Google will probably raise my results for those search queries now that it has noticed those keywords in my material.
6. COUNT IN THE SHOULDER NICHES!
Creating high quality content is one of the most crucial SEO tricks.
But what if you’re in a so-called “boring” niche? Isn’t it impossible to create content that people will link to or share on social media? Fortunately not.
All you need to do is create content around “Shoulder Niches”.
Shoulder Niches are closely-related topics that you can easily create awesome content around.
For example – If your topic is baking, then cooking could be your shoulder niche.
Mike Bonadio used Shoulder Niches to boost his client’s organic traffic by 15%!
How did he do it?
Well, Mike was in a niche that couldn’t be more boring: pest control.
But, you might be wondering: “How do you create an interesting piece of content about pest control?”
You don’t.
Instead, go after closely-related niches that are actually interesting. (In other words: “Shoulder Niches”.)
In fact, that’s what Mike did:
And this ultimately led him to create an excellent infographic on the related topic of: “pest control for gardeners”.
ALL IN ALL
These are a few tips and tricks that have fared well for me and I’m sure there are more such amazing tips out in the world that will contribute to your Digital Marketing success. So, if you were me, what would you add to the list?