Despite SEO’s short stint of existence, it can seem as if the debate around SEO is as old as the term itself.
While there is a school of thought that thinks social media is a better tool to reach new audiences, the following facts prove SEO is still king and a potent tool for achieving your online strategy goals.
- Online experiences are 68% influenced by search engines
- There is a 27% market share for Google among search engines
- Users click on 61% of organic links while searching
- Most users–75% don’t scroll past the first page of results when searching
- The search engine is the primary driver of traffic (61%) to content websites, surpassing other marketing initiatives
- Before contacting a sales representative, 47% of consumers view 3-5 pieces of content produced by a company
Google uses many SEO ranking factors, but focusing on these six rankings in 2021 and beyond will increase your traffic and ranking in the search engine results.
Content
When ranking a website, content is an essential SEO factor to consider. Google no longer analyzes your page in line with how many times you use keywords. Today, it focuses primarily on-page content, EAT, YMYL, and beneficial purposes.
Solid Keyword Strategy
The key to ensuring Google knows what your content is about is performing thorough keyword research and integrating keywords throughout your content. Ensure that keywords are present in crucial places like URLs, Title tags, Image Alt Texts, H1 tags, Description tags, etc.
To do so, follow these steps:
- Incorporate a keyword into the title tag
- Meta descriptions should contain the target keyword
- Place keywords on H1 tags
- In your first 100 words, include your keyword
- Make sure the keyword density is correct
Structure of the website
Having a professionally designed and well-structured website plays a vital role in SEO. A website should have a page that explains why it exists and defines the purpose for which it exists.
You should organize the products, services, and offerings into different sections, with sub‑sections beneath them. Google can easily crawl and index the pages because the website is neat and organized.
High-Quality backlinks
An effective way to improve your content’s appeal to Google is to get high-quality backlinks from authoritative domains.
It’s sort of like earning a vote of confidence from another website—the more backlinks your site gets, and the more Google regards your content to be an authority on that keyword.
Mobile Friendliness
Smartphones are now the primary means of finding relevant information and account for nearly half of all searches. Optimize your website for mobile. Use responsive designs.
Optimized Images
Using optimized images on your website is essential for telling search engines that your pages are relevant to the content on those pages.
You should name your images accurately when you upload them to your site – do not just write ‘image 1’, ‘image 2’, etc. Include captions and descriptions for images when inserting them into your site.
Final thoughts
SEO is not a one-time thing. Continually review your content strategy as SEO ranking factors are constantly evolving. However, these key factors will help your site rank higher in search results.
