Although there isn’t an exact recipe that ensures being prioritised by Google, a lot can be done to improve your ranking.

As the SEO game is always changing, it is important to keep-up with the SEO experts on new ways to optimise your search engine results. If you are looking to increase your website’s ranking, this list is a good beginner’s guide.

Following these points will help you avoid being penalised and ensure that your content is ranking well for the correct keywords: 

1. Keyword Research

SEO is all about keywords really. It is important to do thorough keyword research. You can use some of these keyword research tools to help you do that.

Be aware that your SEO strategy and your content strategy need to work hand-in-hand. Actually, let your SEO strategy guide your content strategy. Use the keywords you’ve decided to focus on to come up with niche content pieces that cater to your target market.

2. Content Pillars

Speaking of niche content, it’s actually great for SEO to have content pillars that align with the keywords you’ve chosen to prioritise. Then create bedrock content pieces covering the various pillar topics.

Content pillars will help focus your keyword topics and the bedrock pieces will give you an opportunity to take a deep dive into these topics. You can also create spin-off bedrock content for your social media channels that will drive traffic and also help your SEO.

3. Meta title, Meta Descriptions and Alt Tags 

Now that you have your content, you need to add a precise title tag that describes the subject you are writing about. A meta title is important as Google bots use it to identify what the content is about. It will also be displayed on the search results that users see when they have typed a query into Google. Moz has a great Title Tag Preview Tool and recommends that the title is 50–60 characters.

The other thing you should have is a meta description. This description should be between 50–160 characters and needs to be well written as it will help drive user-clicks to your content.

Finally, don’t forget to include alt-tags on any images featured. The purpose of an alt tag is to describe the appearance of the image on the page. This is very important for web accessibility as well as search engine crawlers – just make sure to include your keywords in this alt tag!

Read more: How To Write Product Descriptions That Sell

4. User experience

Ultimately, the purpose of SEO is to make the internet a better place for users. Therefore, the user experience on your site is very important for your SEO. Obviously creating interesting, valuable and shareable content that coverts  is what it’s all about. But if the functionalities of your website aren’t working people will just bounce despite the good content.

Think about your reader and gather information about what they are looking for. Then use that to perfect their journey online. Investing in good UX design and UX copywriting will help enhance the overall experience and increase the likelihood for conversion.

Other things to keep in mind when creating a seamless experience is to remove duplicate content, redirect broken links and increase the page speed.

If you need help with your SEO, we can provide you with a full site audit and strategy for improvements. We can also help you implement the best SEO practices to ensure you rank higher on search engines. Get in touch with our team here.