Ways to Improve Organic Rankings on Google and Better Your SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the overall process of improving your website to better rank for search engines. It is optimizing the content on your site to perform better for search engine crawlers.
There are a lot of ways to improve organic SEO and your rankings on the search engine results page and many different ways that affect how you might be ranking. Below we will walk through ways that you can improve upon your SEO as well as some things that might be harming your appearance on the SERP.
What is helping:
Keyword research. Researching what terms and phrases your target audience is entering when trying to find your products or services is key. This will help you implement those keywords strategically throughout the site and improve your chances of being ranked higher on the Google Search Engine Results Page.
You can also utilize tools and search your competitors to see what keywords they might be ranking higher for. This will help you determine how you might need to sprinkle in your keywords.
Meta Title and Meta Description on every page. Meta tags are pieces of code that help search engines get a glance at what the content of the page might be able. This is what you typically see in search engine results.
Fresh and Quality content. By keeping your content up to date and refreshing content, you are reminding Google and other search engines that you are still active and knowledgeable in your field. There are a few ways to do this.
Updating older pages and articles, adding new pages with new keywords. High-quality content keeps people engaged and interested, as well as helps them to learn more about your business. A great way to accomplish this task is blog writing! Here are some additional tips and tricks to keeping your content fresh!
Blog Writing. Blog writing is a great SEO tool for all businesses. Websites that utilize blog writing have a much higher chance of being indexed by site crawlers. When you are more frequently writing new posts, search engine crawlers recognize you as being knowledgeable and will position you higher on their results pages.
Alt tags on photos. Alt tags inform Google and other search engines about what an image is and allows for the proper indexing of them.
Adding H1s to every page and utilizing headers. Utilizing heading tags allows not only Google and other crawlers to break down the content of your site but also allows users to more easily access information that they are looking for within your site.
Using outbound links. When you link sites that provide support for your content, you will increase the chances that Google and other search engines will see you as a credible and trustworthy source and thus rank you higher on the SERP.
What is hurting:
Duplicate meta titles tags and descriptions tags. Duplicate meta titles and descriptions make search engines struggle to find the differences between the two pages and may even result in neither page ranking on the SERP.
Out-of-date content. While it may seem harmless, old and outdated content has a negative impact on how your website ranks. By refreshing your content, you are reminding Google to continue to index your site and that you are experts in your field. You can read more here on why outdated content is hurting your position on the SERP.
Keeping pages that do not add value to your site. Similarly to cleaning your home, you should regularly be cleaning your website and removing content that is no longer benefiting your website. It may be a page that gets no traffic, or it may be something that is no longer relevant. Removing that content will help clean up your site and allow Google and other crawlers to index your site more.
Sites not optimized toward mobile. When your website is not optimized for mobile, certain images and content will not translate over to the smaller screens, which negatively impacts user experience. Search engines recognize this and will penalize your site, resulting in those pages not getting ranked. Read more on why mobile usability is vital with your site here.
Poor technical health. When your site is riddled with technical issues, it will have a much harder time ranking than a healthy site. Some of the ways that your technical health is impacted negatively include poor mobile experience, incorrect indexing within the sitemap, broken links, slow page load times, broken images, and more.
A site with a lot of technical issues indicates to Google and search engines that your site is neglected and not relevant to the users that are searching. At The Sampson House, we recommend quarterly audits to anyone wanting to rank higher on the Google Results page. We utilize a variety of tools that help outline where your site might be in need of some technical help.
If you are interested in learning more about how your business can improve its rankings on the SERP, we can help! We offer a variety of digital marketing services that can help improve your business’s overall SEO and site health. Let us know how we can help you! Contact us today.
AUTHOR:
Shannon Mollet — Digital Strategist
