It’s safe to say that Google is still the most dominant search engine with over 70% of the search market share. However its popularity has evidently meant that it has become more difficult to rank highly.
Not sure if your website is ticking all the boxes, then read on to get an understanding and some useful tips in understanding SEO and what you can do now to rank better on Google.
Step 1. Improve your On-Site SEO
What is On-Site SEO?
On-site SEO refers to the practice of optimising elements on your website in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic from your search. Proper on-site SEO helps search engines understand what the page is about and ensure that the information is relevant to the user’s search.
On-site SEO is more than just about Keywords.
As search engines become more sophisticated, it’s becoming much more difficult to rank higher on Google just based on keyword repetition or keyword placement. Here are some tips on how to optimise your on-site SEO for 2020. On Page SEO changes often, so It’s important to keep up with the latest practices.
- Make sure your content in In-depth. This is where long-form articles can help and explain and provide more information to your audience and also improve your ranking.
- Do not duplicate content. Try to make sure that your content is unique and avoid copying text in your website as it may impact your site’s Google ranking.
- Optimise the site for mobile. Google recognises that users are spending more time on their mobiles to search for information. Always check on your mobile that information is easy to read and the website navigable.
- Update your Title Tags. Meta title tags are a factor in helping search engines understand what your page is about, they appear at the top of your web browser and also as the display title in the Google Search Engine Pages.
- Include the keyword in the image alt tag. Including the subject in image alt text is simply SEO best practice, however a closer look and you’ll find images without their alt text. There are handy SEO plugins that will automatically include the image alt text, however this does mean that the file name needs to be correct.
- Internal Links. Another SEO best practice is including internal links on each landing page. They’re useful as they help users navigate your website and also improves website usability which is an important element to improving your Google ranking.
- Include the subject in the URL. Reflect the category of what your page is about in your URLs.
The following is a good URL example: https://www.desketing.com.au/masign-marketing-packages/
The following is a bad URL example: http://www.example.com/title/tt4531321
Step 2. Add quality LSI related keyword terms
LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) is just a technical term but it basically means that terms or keywords that are related to your keyword.
Put simply, Google will index a page and look and pick up keywords and terms that often are associated with those keywords. For example, say you’re running a Brisbane hotel business, Google will also identify other keywords they found on the page such as hotel reception, guest rooms and or hotel in Brisbane City.
Google is so much smarter than it was before, as it learns what the page’s overall topic is about and relies on LSI related keyword terms to understand the content deeper.
Step 3. Optimise Your Technical SEO
Technical SEO relates to the setup of your website and is about making your website more secure, faster, mobile friendly and easy to read for search engines. When building a website, it’s important that you have a web developer or team that understands the technical SEO aspects of building a website. Otherwise you could find yourself with a pretty website, generating very little leads for your business. Let’s make sure your next website’s Technical follows the Best SEO practises by following this checklist.
- Ensure you have a Good URL structure includes simple short URL descriptions – this helps Google crawl and understand information easy.
- Add Breadcrumb Menus. A breadcrumb menu is a set of link at the top or bottom of the page and helps users navigate to the previous page and hints to Google and other search engines about your website structure.
- Add SSL. In the past SSL was only important for ecommerce website, however changes with Google, has meant that every website on the Internet should have SSL installed.
- Optimise your website speed. Check your website speed by visiting PageSpeed Insights. This is a great tool to analyse and also let you know how you could improve your website speed. A faster website will reduce your bounce rate and also improves the usability of your website.
- Does it make sense on mobile. We’ve said it before, but it’s so important which is why we’ve mentioned it twice. Make sure that it reads well on mobile, and the Google Ranking Gods will thank you.
Step 4. Pillar Pages & Consistently Publishing High-Quality Content
In 2020, content will still be king. Publishing content regularly on your website, regularly tells Google and other Search Engines that they need to crawl your website. That being said, Google is certainly getting smarter and is much more demanding when it comes to the quality of content. If you haven’t heard of Pillar Pages, then today is a brand new day for you. Pillar Pages are topic pages that cover all aspects of the topic on a single page with links to other content on your website. The Pillar Page will broadly cover a topic and the articles linked to the page will address certain keywords or terms.
So why is it important?
The content benefits your Google Ranking by making it feel that the page is an authority on the topic. Pillar pages are longer than a blog and offer hyperlinked chapters to other areas of your website. As we already know, making your website easier to navigate, providing useful links and reducing your bounce rate are all elements to ranking higher on Google.
Continue to keep on top of trending topics and find the time to write quality content on the subject and then share your published content with others to boost your organic search ranking.
