A Must-Read Guide on SEO

Today, businesses are racing towards building a website that best showcases what they do and attracts leads which can eventually turn into customers. This reason has led to an exponential rise in the number of live websites. And with the tremendous rise in websites, the need for solid SEO strategy and hiring the best SEO companies is becoming more crucial.

Based on research, the number of websites running across the world is around 1.996 billion, which is higher than the population of some of the most populated countries in the world. With this ever-increasing number, the competition is becoming more challenging, and so is the work on the shoulders of businesses to create a unique and robust website that stands apart from all. 

A number of factors are responsible for a website's success, and one of them, the most important one which we will discuss in this post, is SEO.

SEO, aka search engine optimization, is a process or, in that matter, a task that focuses on improving the ranking of a website in SERP results. An SEO-optimized site has a better chance of becoming successful and appearing in better positions on search results. In this post, we'll talk about SEO, why it is crucial, and the top techniques that can help you improve it. 

Search Engine Optimization

Over the years, SEO has become one of the most critical aspects as businesses continue to invest heavily in developing a website that attracts quality traffic and potential customers. The search engine optimization process aims at optimizing or crafting the website so that it always appears in a better position on search engine results pages.

SEO is a vast field, a long-term strategy that is being adopted by businesses worldwide that aim to maximize their profits through their websites. It is anticipated that the worldwide SEO market will reach USD 122.11 billion by 2028, marking the solid growth of this vital industry. 

Businesses can hire an SEO company or build a team of SEO experts to optimize their sites. For small businesses, outsourcing this task to an SEO company is considered an effective and budget-friendly alternative over building an entire team. On the other hand, building an SEO team can be feasible for larger companies. 

How Important Is SEO?

SEO is as crucial and efficient as any other task when discussing ways to make a website successful. With a proper SEO strategy in place, businesses can meet the aim for which they might have built the website that is bringing in organic traffic or potential customers. 

A website with great SEO acts as a signal of quality assurance for various search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, etc. And these search engines today value quality significantly while ranking websites. Similarly, better SEO also ensures credibility not only of the website but also of the company, thus attracting higher traffic and potential customers. 

Sites with strong and efficient SEO strategies eventually have higher domain authority and lower spam scores, another factor that search engines consider. Not only search engines, but most people, especially professionals these days, also check domain authority and spam score before opening the website/page or linking it to their content. 

Listing simple points is not enough when discussing the importance of SEO, as it's a broad field with an exponentially growing market size owing to its proven benefits. Before moving further, let's look at some harmful practices that can destroy your SEO campaign. 

Top Techniques to Improve SEO 

There are certain aspects or parameters that highly influence the website's SEO, and maintaining the right balance of these parameters can help improve the site's SEO to a large extent. Let's discuss some of the best and most effective techniques to strengthen your website's SEO.

#1 Conduct In-Depth Keyword Research

Keywords may seem like just a single word on which the entire content of any page of your website revolves. But keywords are way more than just words, and they hold the power to improve your rankings on SERP results significantly. According to Hubspot, in a study, it was found using strategic keywords was the number one strategy of approximately 71% of marketers. 

In-depth research can help content creators come up with proper keywords that correctly define their content. More importantly, the keywords should be such that they match the real-time trending words that people are searching for. If your keyword research is strong and rightly placed with other factors proper, your chances of appearing at a better position improve significantly when that specific keyword is searched. 

Therefore, it's advisable not to treat keywords merely as random words and put considerable effort into keyword research and current trends. This will help you find the keywords your content should focus on in order to boost your website's SEO. Ahrefs keywords explorer, Moz keyword explorer, Google Trends, and Semrush keyword tools are some of the best keyword research tools businesses can use. 

Suggested Reading: Digital Marketing Tips for Successful Business Website

#2 Strong Backlinks 

Backlinks have become one of the most effective ways of proving the credibility of your content, statements, and website to search engines and the audience. You earn a backlink when one of your pages from your website is linked to any anchor text of a well-known website page. 

Backlinking has been a prominent practice used by content curators for a long time to earn a kind of referral from high DA, quality websites. People usually tend to click and derive the information they need from the pages at the top of SERP results. If you can earn a backlink from one of such pages, it'll increase your chances of attracting referral traffic once a visitor clicks on the link linking to your website. 

Search engines usually treat backlinks as one of the trustworthy factors for ranking a website page on SERP results. Search engines also look for relevance, meaning the website from where you earn backlinks should have the same genre as yours. If you are running a technical website, you should also be linking to a technical site. 

Following the ideal principles of backlinking can help your website attract genuine traffic, earn credibility and build quality that will help you get better ranked by search engines. 

#3 Keyword-Rich Content Title 

A strong title is a must for every page of your business website to improve your SEO and chance of appearing in a better position in the SERP results. A strong title is the one that best describes the content of your web page and, most importantly, houses your primary keyword. 

Putting keywords in the title is highly advisable from the SEO perspective as it can help the page get better results in keyword ranking. 

For beginners, keyword ranking is a metric that refers to the website's position or, say, rank when a specific keyword has been searched. And if your title includes the keyword, it'll have a better chance of appearing in a better spot in search queries no matter how many times it has been placed in the content. 

Hence it's recommendable to use a strong title with proper keyword placement to ensure your website's better ranking.  

#4 Invest in Responsive Web Design 

Another parameter that highly contributes to the quality of your website is its type of web design. There are two types of web designs: responsive and non-responsive. Usually, responsive web design is considered a symbol of quality by many search engines, such as Google, which follow a mobile-first policy. 

Responsive websites seem and feel similar visually, and by performance, regardless of device or screen size, they are being browsed in. In contrast, non-responsive websites look different on different devices, and sometimes a significant part of them seems to be cut off, especially on smaller screen sizes. These types of designs affect visitor experience, making it harder for the visitor to navigate the website, thus severely affecting the quality. 

Therefore it's advisable, both from the user experience perspective and considering SEO requirements, for businesses to invest in responsive web designs for building a successful website. 

Suggested Reading: Key Reasons Your Website Must Have Responsive Web Design

#5 Right Use of Visual Elements 

Visual elements are one of the most critical ingredients of a website that make it better both visually as well as from the SEO perspective. Proper use of these visual elements and their appropriate placement can help make websites interactive and appear better in quality. 

A content creator should know that adding too many images, infographics, and videos in a blog might lead to a slower loading page, degrading the overall quality and feel of the website. But at the same time lack of visual elements can make the website look too dull, thus making it unattractive for the visitors and leading to higher bounce rates indicating low-quality behavior to search engines.

Hence the content curators must place the relevant visual elements in adequate numbers so that the website looks and feels visually appealing. This way, those elements can contribute towards improving the SEO of your website.

#6 Focus More on Quality and Less on Quantity

Many amateur content curators often put unnecessary images, too many colors, keywords, and visual elements on their web pages in order to make them look more interactive and informative. In this process, they fail to realize that what they are doing is stuffing elements without realizing that they are only focusing on quantity rather than quality. 

It's very important to note that keyword stuffing and over-adding various elements, be it content or visuals such as animation, images, videos, etc., end up overcrowding the page. Overcrowding the website will not contribute to the quality and SEO; instead will make the website harder to read and navigate. Research shows that around 84.6% of web designers consider a crowded web a very common mistake by small businesses. 

Hence businesses need to remember that overcrowded design does not speak quality when devising their SEO strategies. Hence, it's crucial to maintain a good balance among every ingredient of the website to enhance its quality, thus strengthening the SEO.

Consequences of Poor SEO

To Conclude

Search engine optimization is one of the most robust and guaranteed ways of improving a website's quality and performance. SEO is a vital factor prioritized by search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and many more while ranking a website and deciding its position in SERP results.

A website with excellent SEO, no matter new or old, is bound to be successful by occupying the front page of search engines, thus attracting higher traffic. In this post, we tried to make it clearer to our readers what SEO is, its power, and some techniques businesses can use to improve it. 

It’s very important for businesses not to underestimate the importance of SEO and hence invest in a proper SEO strategy to maximize profits and provide a better visitor experience.