Top 10 Surprising Ways To Improve SEO In 2021

Top 10 Surprising Ways To Improve SEO In 2021

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is responsible for improving and increasing the traffic to your website on search results. The higher you rank, the higher your chances of gaining visibility… and ranking on SEO is an absolute must if you want to gain visibility! But how?

Here are the top 10 surprising ways you can improve your SEO this year.

1. Increase Page Speed

Remove anything that is slowing your site down. Google ranks pages based on speed, so the last thing you want is a website that fails the test. Not only is it important for your page rankings, it’s also important for user experience. According to Moz, pages with a longer load time tend to experience higher bounce rates and lower average time spent on each page.

Common Things That Can Slow Down Your Website:

• Large page sizes
• Issues with your visuals
• Assets and scripts
• Browser caching
• DNS settings

2. Utilize Internal and External Links in Blog Posts

Using both internal and external links in your blogs posts are essential for your SEO growth. Let’s first start by going over the importance of internal links.

• Internal Links

Not only do internal links assist your page visitors with site navigation, but they also give search engines a better chance of finding you and ranking you higher in search results. Using relevant internal links from other parts of your website will help you gain even more traffic to your site and allow you the opportunity to track where people are coming from. When using internal links, you want to make sure you’re being strategic about it. You don’t want to post too few, otherwise you may not get acknowledged by search engines. On the contrary, posting too many can feel spammy to your readers.

• External Links

A lot of people fear that linking out to sites other than their own will have a negative impact on their viewership and overall reputation. Not only that, but many people fear that it’ll damage their SEO rankings and give people an easy exit away from your page. These are justifiable fears. However, external links do just the opposite for your SEO – as long as they’re relevant to the content you’re producing and coming from highly-ranked pages. In fact, external links are an essential component of Google’s search engine algorithm.

A few major benefits of external links include:

• Improve your visibility
• Increase traffic
• Improve your search engine rankings

3. Write For Humans, Not Search Engines

   

A common misconception is that in order to rank on search engines, we must write for search engines. However, this isn’t the case. While you want to be mindful of your keywords and length of your content, this isn’t all you should focus on. Google would rather see quality pages than pages that were clearly written for search engines. Finding a good balance between optimizing for SEO and writing for humans is the best way to get the best of both worlds with this one. Some of the best practices for writing good content for people include:

• Create Unique Content
• Use Strong and Captivating Headlines
• Ask Your Audience What They Want to See
• Write Content That’s Easy To Understand and Follow

4. Have Web Analytics

Web analytics are absolutely crucial in improving your SEO. Web analytics allow you the opportunity to learn about your visitors so you can create content that specifically targets and tailors to those people. This not only will increase the number of viewers to your site, but this will also get you better visibility on search engines. Web analytics tell you the demographics of your visitors and their interests to allow for you to target a certain set of people.

5. Write Meta Descriptions For Each Page Of Your Site

Meta descriptions provide a brief summary of a web page or blog and this description is what get displayed on search results. It’s not enough to just write meta descriptions, though. You want to write good ones. But how?

• Be mindful of the length: You don’t want your description to be too short, but you also don’t want it to be too long. Aim for 155-160 characters.
• Choose the right focus keyphrase: The focus keyphrase in your meta description is the search term you want the page to rank with. For example, if your page is about AC repair services you offer, then your focus keyphrase might be “ac repair.” You will want that focus keyphrase to be present somewhere in your meta description.
• Include a call-to-action: Giving a clear call-to-action gives people a reason to click on your page. Your call-to-action can be something as simple as “contact us today” or “get it now.” Or, you can include call-to-actions such as “free training” or “20% off today only.”
• Be specific and make sure it’s on topic: You want to be specific about your page as much as you can in 160 words or less. Not only that, but you want to make sure it matches the content that’s on your page. The last thing you want to do is to trick visitors into clicking on your site.

6. Use The Right Keywords

Keyword research when it comes to SEO is so important. When you use the right keywords, you’re helping drive traffic to your website. Despite the name, keywords aren’t always just single words – they can even be phrases. Using the write keywords can be a difference between receiving a couple clicks a day or hundreds of clicks a day. Finding the right keywords can be tricky – especially if you don’t have the experience or knowledge to do so. There are some great websites out there that can assist you with the process of choosing the right keywords. Or, you can hire a marketing agency like VitalStorm to handle your SEO for you.

7. Produce Unique Content Frequently

Like we touched on earlier, unique content is a great way to not only increase your SEO rankings, but also increase traffic to your site. Unique content means exactly what you think – it’s unique, one-of-a-kind, nothing out there like it. If your content is duplicated from somewhere else on the internet, you run the risk of negatively impacting your SEO rankings.

8. Focus On User and Search Intent

When choosing your keywords, meta descriptions, content, and anything else that has to do with how you rank on search engines, focus on your user and search intent. In other words, how are your users searching and what are they searching for? There are three types of search queries:

• Navigational search queries: If the user wants to be lead to a certain website using your specific keyword.
• Informational search queries: If the user wants to find out more information about a specific topic using your specific keyword.
• Transactional search queries: If the user wants to buy something using your specific keyword.

9. Content Refresh

If you’re noticing certain pages of your website aren’t performing as well as the others, not getting a good number of viewers and not ranking on search engines – consider a content refresh! Sometimes, a content refresh is just what the soul of your website needs. Using different wording, different keywords, a different meta description, and a different length could contribute to the success of that page when you’re all done!

10. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly

In today’s digital world, having a site that appears well on cell phones is absolutely vital. By optimizing your wesite to be mobile-friendly, your SEO content will be much more effective, and you’ll rank higher in search engine results. Why is this?  Well, according to Search Engine Land, 57% of all web traffic is done on mobile devices. If your site is difficult to access from a mobile phone, viewers are less likely to open your page. Not only can this hurt your SEO rankings, but this can also decrease people’s trust in you. Studies have shown that 57% of online users won’t recommend a business that has a poorly designed website.

 

Have questions about how to improve your SEO in 2021? Get in touch with our team at VitalStorm. Call us today at 877-311-5695 or visit more of our marketing tips here.