One way to improve your website ranking is to pay attention to increasing the SEO performance, as one component of digital marketing services.
Over the years, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has developed various forms, and how websites rank on Google has evolved considerably. Hence, it is essential to consider that SEO requires ongoing effort and maintenance to optimize the best practices as a long-term strategy.
The following lists are essential SEO tips to help you improve the performance of your website in the search engines.
Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
To understand what your pages are related to, Google’s search results rely on the HTML title tag and meta descriptions, which, in the end, affect ranking in the search results. Descriptive, accurate, brief, and unique are the ideology of what title tags should be.
In some situations, if title tags are unprepossessing, users will be less likely to click on them, leading to a low click-through rate (CTR). To optimize this, not only insert target keywords into title tags and meta descriptions, but you can also limit your title tag from going over 60 characters and the meta descriptions to no further than 150 characters.
Furthermore, adjust your title and description with search intent (or user intent), a user’s primary goal when typing a query into a search engine. Four common search intents are informational, commercial, navigational, and transactional.
Internal Links
The principle of Google’s ranking algorithm has remained consistent: the more links a page has from internal and external sources, the higher the page is ranked on Google search.
Generally, Internal links are used for internal navigation, linking from one page to another within your website, allowing visitors to move from 1 to 2. These simply hypertext links connecting two pages on the same domain.
For instance, a link from one Cogent blog to another within the https://cogentibs.com/ domain would be an internal link. On the other hand, a link from a Cogent blog to an external website would be an external link.
Search crawlers through Internal links help Google to understand better what a page is about,
optimizing each page’s value when tying pages together, guiding Google and visitors to the pages you think are essential, and improving user experience.
Having an authoritative page with a link to another page on your site helps your visitors find the other page, enhance authority, and boost both pages’ search engine ranking.
Backlinks
Backlinks have been the principle of the algorithm in Google. Even though backlinking is just one tool in SEO, it is still one of the most important Google ranking factors. Backlinks are one of three SEO components: off-page SEO, sharing Google that your website and pages are authoritative and trustworthy.
In general, backlinking increases your website traffic and, as a result, ranks higher in SERPs. Relevant and authoritative pages are the key to building backlinks, primarily if you can fulfill users’ search queries. More importantly, quality over quantity. Whenever you get a backlink to your site from a reliable website, your site has a piece of high-quality information.
To get recommendations from another website, you should be aware of content quality as your primary focus, as it attracts other links organically, generating efficient endorsements for your site.
More interestingly, there are two types of backlinks: follow links and nofollow links, which also affect your website beneficially. Despite not influencing rankings as much as follow links, nofollow backlinks can still optimize some authority. Hence, to improve your backlinking strategy to ensure your rankings will be developed, initiating with follow links is the best option to prioritize.
Search intent
Search intent, or user intent, is the user’s primary goal of what they are looking for when typing a query into a search engine. Their intent behind the words they put in the search bar might be purchasing a product, looking for answers, and finding a particular website.
There are four types of search intent:
- Navigational intent – Searchers want to find a specific page
(e.g., “Cogent IBS”)
- Informational intent – Searchers want to learn about something
(e.g., “What are IT services?”)
- Commercial intent – Searchers want to do research before making a buying decision
(e.g., “best IT services”)
- Transactional intent – Searchers want to purchase to complete a specific action (e.g., “buy Cogent online course”)
User Experience (UX)
A critical component of SEO is User experience (UX), as it focuses on the best possible interaction and experience from users who visit your site. However, if your website is not convenient, visitors will leave it consistently, damaging it with a high bounce rate.
To avoid these issues and improve your site’s user experience, focus on optimizing the following:
- Mobile friendly – your website should be user-friendly on a mobile device, as it can optimize for better performance.
- Website speed – by minimizing the website pages’ loading time.
- Visual appeal (images and fonts) – enhancing your website’s images and fonts by decreasing their size without reducing their quality and making sure faster load times.
- Easy navigation – your website’s structure should be easy to navigate and well-designed.
- Limited ads and pop-ups – avoiding these two to undistracting and unharmed users’ experience from the primary content.
- Content Delivery Network (CDN) – to reduce latency and improve page speed by using a CDN, at the end of the day, can help you by caching content.
- Compression techniques – reducing the amount of data transmitted over the network by compressing your data.
- Caching – minimizing the server’s time to retrieve data and improving performance using caching.
- Decreasing CSS and JavaScript files – enhancing your website’s loading time and performance by reducing the number of JavaScript and CSS files.
Therefore, consider what users expect from your website and focus on it so that you can develop your UX appropriately.
Alt text
Alt text is an alternative text that describes the attribute or appearance of any image on your website’s pages. Not only is it built for the visually impaired who understand screen readers’ read-aloud, but it also has an accessibility feature indexed by search engine bots to give you a better understanding of your page’s content.
Although something else stands out to alt text in a regular Google Search, the alt text should clearly explain exactly what the image displays for the best result. What about image search?
Image search SEO is the answer! It enhances the image rank in image search and image packs to rank better for user searching. The key to optimizing your alt text’s image search is to be specific, describing what, who, when, and where is doing an action specifically.
Alt attributes, alt descriptions, and alt tags are the other names of alt text used within the appropriate field in the Content Management System (CMS) and within an HTML code.
Conclusion
Applying these factors to improve your SEO is a decent starting point to rank higher on Google with the trends in 2023 and beyond.
Keep an eye on your progress by monitoring the latest SEO news and trends and staying updated with reputable blogs, e-newsletters, and thought professionals.
Apply and experiment with the latest technologies in digital marketing services in Michigan to optimize your tactics, as these can serve a better user experience, search intent, and consistency to deliver your valuable content.
Most importantly, be patient as SEO constantly changes due to trends and search engine algorithms. Therefore, be aware and ready for the rapid change, even though you have a solid online presence.
Optimizing SEO ranking and bringing more traffic to your website, at the end of the day, leads to expanded conversions and more revenue. Cogent Integrated Business Solutions is a global technology company offering services in tech, niche SAP projects, enterprise mobility, and consulting. Stay updated on the latest technology trends and news with us.
By Natthapoom Saenghan