The picture you can see above mentions “white-hat” SEO. You might’ve heard about this terminology being used to describe legally acceptable practices to elevate your search engine rankings.
On the other hand, we have “black-hat” SEO or guidelines (also called spamdexing) that are unethical. These tactics are manipulative; therefore, websites utilizing these practices face penalties and even banishment. That’s why successful search engine optimization involves only ethical methods to improve your online visibility and digital traffic. In this age of digital marketing, there’s no substitute for SEO tools and techniques. So, we’ll mention the seven most essential tactics brands incorporate into their marketing campaigns. According to Google’s new algorithm, speed is a major ranking factor. So always try to use a light weight and simple theme for your blog or website. No matters, your blog is on blogger or WordPress. If you are using blogger and searching for blogger templates without copyright, then there are hundreds of premium looking blogger templates you can find on the internet.
Search engines are getting smarter with the rise in automation. Some techniques marketers used to rank higher have gone extinct in this decade. For instance, the exact-match-domain (EMD) technique fell out of favor with Google in 2012. Similarly, writing for robots and producing low-quality content now also lead to your website getting demoted. If you wish to execute SEO techniques successfully, you must rely on strategies that work. So, here are some of these crucial tactics you should try:
The Basics of an Effective SEO Strategy
SEO is a practice of using many criteria and principles, technical improvements which suit the search engines to better understand your content.
The quality of your content and the links plays the most important role when it comes to SEO. Keywords also play an influential role, but it’s 2021 and Google is enough smart to understand your content and the Google bots know what your content is all about. So let’s see some factors which we have extracted and analyzed which are as follows”
1 – Produce High Quality and Unique Content
It all begins with content! Marketers must create engaging, interesting, interactive, shareable, and quality content to attract customers’ attention. This content should be valuable to the consumer by solving their problems and offering them information. And content – contrary to a misconception – doesn’t mean blogs/articles only. It also includes videos, infographics, e-books, white papers, podcasts, webinars, and many variations. You can leverage this content for email list-building or make it “gated” to enhance people’s curiosity. All other SEO tactics – keyword research, link-building, design of your website, you name it! – matter only when you’ve produced some marketable content.
2 – Internal Linking
Both external and internal backlinks are essential components of your brand’s link-building strategy. Hyperlinking to another webpage on your domain improves the site’s ranking and visibility. It facilitates the flow of authority between pages on the website and enables users to navigate between them. That’s why creating a sound internal linking SEO strategy helps elevate your brand’s status and establish trust among the niche. This technique also spreads the link juice throughout the website and strengthens its architecture. Moreover, readers linger for a while on your website when hyperlinks take them to another location with relevant content.
3 – Work on Headings(Write Eye Catchy Headings)
Always remember that boring captions poison your content marketing strategy. Some 80% of visitors just read the headline, while only 20% bother to read the actual article. If you wish to boost website traffic, these headings must be engaging and dumbfounding. But marketers shouldn’t forget the difference between clickbait and an honest header. Since the latter build long-term relationships with customers. A perfect heading should be visible and understandable in just a glance. Therefore, experts suggest that 6-7 words are sufficient for a headline. Make sure to include your crucial keywords in the caption and use strong attention-catching words. A caption is more effective if it features numbers.
4 – Target your Keywords on the basis of Search Intent
Similar to content and hyperlinks, your SEO strategy also revolves around keywords. They act as a linchpin between people’s queries and the content you’re providing them. The sort of keywords you’ve chosen and how you plan to distribute them are crucial aspects of your marketing campaign. Keyword research tools help you find the most effective words/phrases you should target to increase visitors’ number to your website. Focus on localized keywords, since customers are more prone to buy from a closely located brand. Moreover, experts prefer long-tail keywords in some cases. They do have a thin search volume, but they also offer less competition.
5 – Optimize content for Voice searches
Voice searches are gradually growing in popularity as modern devices are incorporating voice-activated technology. And search results driven by vocal questions differ drastically from traditional text-based queries. That’s why marketers are now optimizing their websites for voice searches. Vocal SEO involves more informal keywords, which an average consumer is more likely to use in a conversation. A BBC report published in 2019 suggested that 55% of households will own a smart speaker device by 2022. These devices focus more on topmost and localized search results. So, no SEO technique/strategy will be successful without integrating voice searches in this decade.
6 – Improved User Experience
Let’s reverse-engineer the process of boosting website traffic. Why do customers leave a website? What makes visitors not stay longer? Users dislike websites that are slow, not visually appealing, have a poor layout, lack CTAs, and have automatically playing videos. Experts believe that a customer takes just 50 milliseconds to form an opinion about your site. And, if they’ve developed an opposing view, 88% of them won’t return! So, improve your on-page SEO endeavors by making the website visually attractive and navigation-friendly. Declutter the homepage, so it appears soothing to the public eye. Ascertain that your visitors can easily access the information they wish to find.
7 – Mobile Optimization
In 2018, Google announced its mobile-first indexing, to which many websites had already migrated. Now, search engines will focus more on websites that possess optimization for smartphone users. Statistics estimated that around 4.66 billion humans had access to the internet. And over 90% of them were online via hand-held devices. That’s why marketers must concentrate on mobile SEO to attract more customers and retain existing ones. In other words, they should ensure that their website’s display is easy to navigate on smaller screens. This SEO costs less than making an app and increases the time visitors spend on your site while improving its loading time.
Conclusion
Every website wishes to appear on Google‘s first page, which facilitates it in this endeavor. Having a well-established SEO strategy is imperative for companies pursuing a digital marketing campaign. Over 60% of inbound marketers consider improving SEO and boosting organic traffic as their topmost priorities. Even then – as a 2020 report admits – 70% don’t even have an SEO strategy. Thus, no wonder why nine-tenth of the content available online doesn’t get any traffic through Google. Remember that optimizing your website for search engines serves as PR for your brand. It enables more people to access your content, learn about your products, and become potential customers.
