There are no second thoughts to the fact that, in recent times the SEO techniques and its effectiveness are undergoing massive changes at an alarming rate. This makes it furthermore difficult to be tracked along with Google’s constantly updated algorithms. One needs to understand that what begins as just a search query plays the major role in fetching the greatest share of traffic to one’s website and establishing the much-needed brand awareness, which makes SEO inevitable.
Staying on top of SEO appears tough due to the backend research and missed trials however, there are certain basics that one just needs to get right. Prior stepping ahead to implement the incoming new and advanced practices, one needs to lay a strong foundation which includes – picking the right organic keywords, determining their position on the webpage, focusing on long-tail keywords, rightful integration of the keywords across numerous places, and last but most important the need to ensure that you don’t overdo any of it. Most times, the attempt to achieve more traffic ends up with keyword stuffing that has an overall negative impression. So instead of forcing yourself to use the keyword on the page, use it where it fits seamlessly in the write-up.
To thrive in today’s competitive world, you need to go beyond the basics to achieve successful SEO results. In this post, we’ve broken down the best SEO techniques for 2021 to help you retain and increase your organic search presence while taking your site one level higher with advanced techniques in demand.
1) Conduct A Complete Content Audit Periodically
A content audit closely examines the all-round performance of your website by analyzing all the subsidiary pages on your website and creates objectives based on the findings- whether they should be kept as it is or replaced to achieve those objectives. This process helps increase profits by making minor alterations to the already available content.
It is an extremely underrated SEO strategy. It is surprising to notice that several websites have pages with little or no SEO value due to unnoticed faults.These easily overlooked factors can be readily fixed, improving website traffic.
Factors That You Should Be Looking For During An Audit Are:
- Check if your pages have SEO meta headings & subheadings
- Each page on your website is optimized for SEO keywords without keyword stuffing.
- Ensure that the URL structure should be appropriately optimized – should be short, simple, and understandable for search engines.
- Each page and blog post should be formatted in an orderly and consistent structure.
- Each page should clearly indicate the call-to-action information.
- Use internal and external links wisely to add value to your content.
2)Publish Long-Form Content
Recent studies indicate that longer-form content has a competitive advantage and ranks better in Google. It can be mapped that the average word count of most first-page Google results is nearly 1500 words, which might raise several questions in our mind. The most common one being, Are long pieces of content feasible to read for mobile viewers? Research and statistics say yes.
A strong association is noticed between the length of content and visibility performance. Long posts are interpreted to be people-oriented as they provide in-depth information for readers. Along with that, In-depth content strikes the important emotional quotient and gains more reliability pushing people to share it online among their social circle. This emphasizes the need to produce well-researched, long-form articles that include helpful information for users.
3) Produce Content As Per The User Needs
It’s time to shift focus from search engines and prioritize the readers first. It’s furthermore important to write content with the primary intent to help someone, therefore making the content engaging and valuable. This measure fetches the desired results. By putting users first you additionally receive search engine rewards for enhanced user involvement and at the same time gain loyalty and trust of the incoming audience.
There Are Several Ways To Find Out What The Users Are Looking For:
- Use social media platforms where most people hang out and discuss widespread topics
- Resort to Quora – Note down questions that people ask related to your domain and gain ideas from the experts
- Refer to the most popular pages in Google Analytics and understand bounce rates to improvise your content and selected topics.
- Understand what posts gare widely shared and how could you channelize the same for your website.
- Pay attention to visitor comments on your blog posts and try to answer real questions through your content.
4)Improve The User Experience For The Website
Google closely tracks how users behave with your content. Thus constant efforts to improve your user experience (UX) can directly or indirectly play a key role in improving your search rankings. Page speed is the vital factor influencing the user experience of visitors to your site. A higher percentage of bounce rate from your site to the search engine results is interpreted by Google that your page doesn’t offer what the searcher was looking for and results in a dip in search engine rankings.
Mentioned Below Are A Few Tips To Create A User- Friendly Site Preferred By People:
- Proper use of subheadings: Google as well as the audience understand your content better when subheadings are used. This shoots up the readability factor.
- Using Aesthetically pleasing content: Studies indicate that visuals draw the attention of people and improve understanding. Using relevant images, videos, infographics go a long way in conveying the ideas better.
- Pay attention to the use of intrusive popups and Ads: Popups not only hamper SEO performance but also end up annoying the visitors. Added to that, Google has been penalizing sites that use intrusive pop ups. So it’s advisable to avoid pop ups as much as possible. Similarly, a bunch of broken links makes your site hard to use, resulting in people’s unwillingness to link to it even if you have great content to offer.
- Use white space mindfully: White space is a fundamental aspect of good design and makes any website look organized to the eyes. White space used effectively – between paragraphs and in the left and right margins increases perception by 20%. So consider using white space to make your content more distinct and grab user attention.
So every site owner must pay special attention to UX, as it is enormously capable of giving your SEO a boost too.
5) Eliminate The Factors Reduces Your Website Speed
The sad truth is that for every additional 0.5 secs your website takes to load, there is a higher rate of fall in the number of visitors retained at your website. Yes, we all hate waiting for slow-loading pages especially in such a fast-paced era. This gives an advantageous edge to your competitor’s site which is more likely to be chosen.
A slow page frustrates the buyers resulting in an increased bounce rate, discouragement to buy your services, and creates a negative impression. Most buyers deem the website to be untrustworthy which drastically affects your SEO ranking. Speed being one of the all-important ranking factors, needs to be worked upon, so you can keep leads from bouncing back to the search results.
There are two available methods to check a website’s functionality:
- The owners can avail the google based PageSpeed Insights which gives an overview about website performance and its capability to retain incoming traffic. Referring to the results drawn. the suggestions can be into consideration and necessary changes can be implemented.
- The second option is to use page speed services from a digital marketing company that addresses the shortcomings.
- A simple approach is to use Ubersuggest that shows how quickly your site loads and how quickly key elements become available to users.
6) Achieve Full Scale Internal Linking
Linking is the most underrated part of SEO. Instead of only focusing on backlinks, one also needs to link internally to your own pages. When you link to pages on your own site, you keep leads on your page longer and ensure that the available content is effectively utilized.
You can link to different pages to the most linked-to pages of your site. These being the most powerful pages from a link perspective can be used to link to service pages & pricing pages to help bring audience conversions. They play a key role in redistributing and passing some of the link authority to other (relevant) pages that need a push in organic visibility on your site. Hence, one should look for opportunities to link the newly launched content internally.
Internal linking gives you a competitive edge as Google discovers new, relevant pages on your site, and at the same time, your audience stays engaged in your website for a longer duration without putting any additional effort from the back-end.
7) Create An Authoritative Backlink Portfolio
Even in 2021, backlinks obtained from other credible sites contribute largely to search engine optimization.
Spam-worthy links can do more bad than good for your website, despite a high level of quality. Statistics indicate that links from older domains hold more value than those from newer sites.Trust and authority of a website is a result of the backlinks which give it a major boost. A site’s credibility is mapped by Google through the earned values such as – outreach, and influencer marketing, as a virtue of this viewers trust that your site is valuable and credible. With a greater amount of content creation, you can build a healthy relationship with an authorized company that is safe and extremely effective. You can continually share your content with them and they can choose to link to it on their site, generating more valuable traffic to your site.
While working on backlinks keep the following in mind to gain desired results:
- When promoting content, one should target both the big and small sites alike. The smaller sites are often more responsive and niche-specific hence bring more value.
8) Fix The Pages With Broken Backlinks
Backlinks to dead pages (404 pages on site) are effectively wasted as they don’t contribute to ranking. Since they no longer exist, hence they are ignored.
It is common to find sites with high numbers of authoritative links which help them to rank but currently being dead never redirected or hold any current authority.
There are three ways to fix broken links:
- Reinstate: If the dead page was deleted by mistake, relaunch it.
- Redirect: If the dead page exists at a new URL, redirect the old URL using 301 redirects.
- Request a link change: If someone made a physical mistake while linking to your page, approach them and rectify the error as soon as possible.
Note that it’s only worth fixing these issues if the dead pages have high-quality backlinks and serve any purpose for your website growth If not, you can leave them as 404’s instead of spending your precious time.
To stay ahead in the competition you need to go beyond the basics and keep up with the latest additions in the dynamic world of SEO. By understanding the advanced tactics, you can adapt faster and rapidly begin to implement stronger strategies to give your website a necessary edge to stand apart from others in the market.
So make sure you spend time considering the fundamentals as well as continue hunting the top technical trends which can enhance your organic visibility.
Jignesh Vaghasiya is the CEO at Universal Stream Solution. Universal Stream Solution is a mobile app development company in Atlanta. That helps startups to enterprise companies in mobile & web technology.