8 High-Impact Strategies To Improve Ranking
With over 200 ranking factors that affect a website’s performance in the search results, it’s important to approach building traffic systematically. Use the following high-impact strategies to improve ranking, build traffic and generate more leads from your website.
Define Your Keyword Strategy
It should be clear what your keywords are from reading the content on your homepage. Your homepage should have content on it that satisfies a specific search intent. When Google decides what websites to list at the top of their results they are reading the content of your website and weighing the importance of what you have provided against what was typed in the search query.
Create Comprehensive Content
The fact that the contextual meaning of your content on your site is now accurately assessed by search engines has shifted keyword research to becoming market research. Keywords are now chosen by the topic. The keywords “hairdresser in Toronto” and “Toronto hairdresser” have the same search intent behind each query making optimization more about how your content demonstrates the most comprehensive solution. A one-page site with 100 words about a hairdresser will not be as optimized as a site that 1000 words on the hairdresser experience. To enhance optimization a hairdresser site would include blog posts on details associated with the hairdresser experience such as the benefits of shampooing hair before a haircut, the process for getting highlights, or similar services.
Optimize Your Metadata
Your websites on page optimization will impact how search engines view your pages. To optimize the metadata include keywords in your title, headlines, subtitles, description and URL. Write an enticing meta description to improve the click-through rate your page receives in the searches. Make use of your images alt tags by adding a description of the image using your keywords. Google will count all these efforts in your overall optimization score.
Get Your Business on the Map
Whether the website represents a physical location or a service area in which your business operates the location details should be very clear for search engines. Your NAP details (name, address, phone number) are a way for search engines to confirm your location when local searches are made so your website qualifies for local searches.
Enhance your presence for local-based searches through citations and high-quality directories. Make sure your NAP details are identical in every citation and on every website that lists your location. Your local presence in strengthened by accurate NAP details consistently reported on quality sites.
Improve Engagement From Visitors Landing on Your Site
The bounce rate is a measure of how many people land on your site and then leave with no interaction. A high bounce rate indicates that visitors are not liking something about your site. This could mean you are optimized for the wrong keywords or you’re content is not satisfying search intent. Lower your bounce rate by split testing changes to your content in order to improve the engagement of visitors who land on your site. You can monitor your bounce rate through Google Analytics.
Outrank Your Competition
In order to get traffic to your site, you need a decent ranking on or near the first page to even get your page noticed. Even if your content is the most comprehensive and perfectly optimized it may not appear on the first page if the competing site has more authority. Search engines will take into account the on page and off page optimization of a website when determining the ranking. Backlinks are the largest ranking signal that establishes your credibility, authority and optimization for any specific search query.
Write Viral Content
Getting backlinks on shareable content is much easier than if your content is mediocre so be write articles with the intention of creating value for your readers. Post your content on the most applicable social media network to your industry to get an initial response to jumpstart traffic. Articles that improve the quality of any aspect of someone’s life will have the chance of being shared. Being shared will mean apart from getting your pages in front of your own network, you will get additional eyes viewing your creation creating more traffic to your site.
The act of sharing an article on social media doesn’t directly improve the ranking of your website, it creates more traffic. If someone links your site from theirs-that will count as a vote of credibility and a positive ranking signal that helps your website move up in the rankings. This is one of three reasons guest posting is a viable method for improving your ranking.
Publish Articles in Your Field
As a guest author, you not only receive a backlink to your site but you improve your branding and provide an additional stream of traffic that can be referred from the site on which you’re published. It is highly recommended to develop a writing routine where you regularly submit an article to websites that accept blog posts in your industry-especially if your industry is highly competitive. The accumulation of backlinks from high authority blog sites that are related to your niche will increase your authority and perceived expertise in your field. This results in your ability to outrank your competition to secure a competitive position in the search engine results pages.
