Most people know the general principles of SEO, but with the ever-changing nature of internet content, SEO rankings, and ranking algorithm factors, those fundamental principles can change pretty quickly. Some of the principles even become obsolete. Staying updated on the latest trends and techniques is critical in order to garner more traffic for your website and improve your SEO ranking. While many different and important techniques help SEO rankings, we are going to focus on the five most important SEO tips to help you start 2021 on the right foot by driving more organic traffic to your website and boosting your search engine rankings!
1. Optimize Your Website’s Speed
Have you ever tried visiting a website only to run into loading issues? It’s a very frustrating experience and it can have some serious consequences. Page loading speed is a significant factor in SEO. If a user can’t access your website to find the information on it because it takes too long to load, then search engines will also have a more difficult time with it, resulting in a deflated SEO ranking.
Furthermore, slow pages frustrate users and can lead to them abandoning your site alotgether, which means they won’t be reading your content or buying your products. The longer it takes to load your site the more users will ultimately leave. Every second counts. This is why it is crucial to remove anything from your website that isn’t essential and could potentially be slowing down loading times. One way to optimize your website’s speed is to get rid of unneeded elements that slow down your site, such as removing non-essential plugins, decluttering your sidebar, and only using essential widgets.
2. Link to Other Websites/Encourage Trustworthy Sites to Link to You
The idea of linking to other websites may sound strange and even counter-intuitive, but it is an important part of optimizing your SEO rankings for your page. First and foremost, you are trying to help your reader by providing useful information that they are looking for. That’s why they are on your site in the first place: because they need help with something. If you provide them with other resources from reputable websites to further help with their problem, they will be grateful and remember how helpful your content was. This will help them create a connection and build loyalty to your brand or website.
You should only be linking to credible, authoritative, trustworthy websites. This is how you build relationships with other websites, brands, and businesses. Hopefully these relationships will reach a point where these other websites will start linking to your website in return, resulting in more traffic and a better SEO ranking.
3. Write for People, Not Just Search Engines
One of the biggest mistakes writers make is trying to write in a way that will benefit their page in relation to search engines. Just take a second and think about that. Their main priority is not to help other human beings, but to cater to robots. That seems a little backward. Don’t lose track of the actual human beings reading your work and making purchases on your website because you are too busy worrying about search engines. Write for your users first and search engines second.
Try to forget that Google and SEO even exist and just write with the goal of helping someone. This is known as SEO Copywriting. If you make an effort to write for your users first you’ll end up benefiting in the end because your content will be helpful to those users and, since search engines follow users, search engines will reward you. Additonionally, writing with your users in mind and not search engines will help build trust with your audience and enhance user experience.
4. Simplify Your URL Structure
As we mentioned in the last section, search engines follow users and if users are having issues, then it’s likely that search engines are as well. This is why it is a good idea to simply your URL structure and make sure it is easily readable. Compare the following two links for articles about shortening URL structure:
https://www.hostgator.com/blog/reasons-shorten-url-structure/
or
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232505
Which one is more useful, straightforward, and understandable just by reading it? The first one, of course. Both links take you to helpful articles relating to simplifying URL structure for your website, but the first link is much simpler and easier to remember. It only takes a few words for a good URL, but it can be extremely beneficial for you and your website by making this small change. Make things easier for your users and for search engines by simplifying your URL structure.
5. Consistently Publish Unique Content to Improve SEO
Publishing a large quantity of content on your website sounds like a good idea that will help attract more traffic and improve SEO rankings, but that’s not the case if you are publishing the same content over and over. As the old adage goes: quality over quantity. Your vast amount of content isn’t going to matter if it is too similar. Why would anyone visit your page over and over again just to read the same thing?
That’s why it is so important to 1. Yes, publish a lot and consistently, but also 2. Publish unique content. When you continually publish new content, your users keep coming back because you are offering more valuable resources to them. New content also attracts brand new users, thus helping your website’s traffic and SEO rankings. Additionally, Google uses a “freshness score” in their rankings with unique content being one of the main factors. If you consistently publish unique content, your website’s freshness score will be higher, which ultimately will benefit your traffic and SEO ranking.
One last tip: use social media to your advantage. It’s not an official ranking algorithm factor, but it does make an impact in spreading your content to more users across the internet. That also creates more traffic on your website, thus boosting your SEO ranking.
