Much as the internet is the hub for all information, there is limited precious information about how search engines rank websites, and this makes it a concern for website owners, regardless of their expertise, to master the perfect art of SEO fully.
That said, you cannot waste one more minute wondering why your competitors are doing better than you, because you will just be letting them keep at it. Here are six things you need to start doing immediately to improve your SEO.
Edit your URLs
URLs are often an undermined SEO practice that could mean the difference between the first page and the second of Google’s rankings. Use an SEO checker and verify the URLs. Correct URLs need to be short and straightforward, with emphasis on the primary keywords of that particular web page.
As Googlebots crawl your website, they need to crawl the URLs to get a glimpse of what the pages are about, and if your URLs are not optimized and well-written, your site will be wrongly ranked. Short URLs are good for SEO, but also for social media when you share posts with links.
While at it, ensure that your site has HTTPS protocol following your short URLs, which is also a ranking factor to Google.
Add content to your short copies
More than you would know, long-form content is essential in the practice of SEO, and today, it outranks short-form content. Not only does it allow you more room to use up your keywords, but also, gives both your target audience and search engines more information to feed on.
Ideally, a short copy is one of less than 1000 words. If you want to jump to page one of Google’s ranking, you need to beef up your short material to 1000 words or more, the most being around 2000 words. This way, you get to keep your visitors on your website a lot longer than with short material.
Create more engaging material
You mustn’t assume that you are the only platform with content to consume. In your industry, there are already thousands of website owners competing for the same market share as you. If the content you produce is boring, regardless of how relevant and current it is, people will still prefer entertaining material.
The idea is not to completely lose professionalism for entertainment, but rather to make your articles engaging. Embrace a conversational tone that will get your visitors engulfed in your posts and yearning for more. You can also implement tactics like humor, suspense, questions and vivid descriptions. Remember, Google’s concern is the happiness of its users, and if your material makes people happy, then Google is happy, and that will reflect on your rankings.
Get started with video
Video content has gained a lot of attention among content creators because of the high demand of the internet population. Studies show that people are more inclined to watch a video than reading through the same content.
Video content doesn’t mean you entirely do away with text-based content, but rather you strike a balance. You can choose to make content solely on video and text-based content, or integrate them in such a way that the video complements the text. Also consider joining a social media platform with a preference for video content, for example, YouTube, or Instagram. Keep your videos long enough to pass across your message and keep your audience on your site a little longer, but not too much so that it becomes boring.
Add images
If you are going to improve your material to make it long-form, you realize soon enough that it could quickly become boring. Pictures are the in-thing in the 21st century, with a high shareability that text-based content.
Adding images provides a visual perspective to your work, and breaks the monotony of one form of content. This, however, is not to imply that you overcrowd your articles with images, but rather, that you use them enough to complement the information.
Be careful that the media is of high-quality and appropriate sizes, lest it works against your user experience. Consider the diversity of images, that is, pictures, photographs, memes, infographics, GIFs, among others.
Beef up your competitor research
If your competitor is a big brand, then they are operating with a massive traffic flow that you can ‘steal’. The idea is to get more in-depth with competitor research, not only to borrow techniques but take advantage of by making their customers yours.
When doing keyword research, for instance, you can search for alternatives to your competitors, say, alternative [competitor name]. The truth is, the larger the audience is, the harder it becomes to serve them to their satisfaction, which means the customers will be looking for alternative solutions to their needs, and when they do, they had better find you ready for them.
Don’t wait to sleep on it, because these six tips are tested and proved effective in improving SEO. Visit https://serpbook.com/blog/rank-trackers/ to find out what you need to do to track your rank progress.
