Google is constantly updating its algorithms to optimize its search engine results. Find out what will generate the most organic traffic in 2019.
As we come through the month of March, we can see that Google isn't going to make SEO easy for anyone. Google keeps introducing more and more SERP features that are getting rid of the need to click on a link. This makes it harder and harder to drive organic traffic to your website. Thankfully, there are five things you can do to make sure that your website is optimized and ready to rank at the top of the search results.
1. Don't Target Easy Key Words
Easy key words are search terms and phrases that are easily answered. An easily answered search term will usually appear in a snippet, which is a little box that appears at the top of your search result page and will contain an answer to your question clearly laid out.
If you were to look up which time zone Alaska is in, you would get an easy answer which would be displayed by Google before any websites. The snippet box would say," Alaska Standard Time". The user would most likely stop searching for their answer there and would never see your website. That makes it somewhat pointless to try and target these easy key words.
Instead, try using slightly, and I mean slightly, "harder" key words. A Google search of," Why Alaska has its own time zone" would yield much better results in targeting.
2. Optimize For Mobile Devices
Number two on this list is probably the most important; and that has to do with mobile phones. Right now, it's estimated that 62% of web browsing is done on a mobile device. That makes it crucial for websites to be optimized for mobile devices.
The best way to test for this is to get on a mobile device and look up your website. Go through and click on every single page and interact with everything on the website. If something looks odd or just isn't right, that would mean that your website is not optimized for mobile usage.
Google does keep track of how optimized your website is for its search engine rankings, so improving mobile optimization will also bring more organic traffic to your website!
3. User Experience
User experience is very important for a website. It's the building block that allows you to market your product or services to the customer. Adobe says," 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content and layout is unattractive." That means that your website needs to be aesthetically pleasing and neatly organized.
When looking at your website, figure out what information on it is very important and what information on it is not as important. Highlight the important information and try to make it easier to see or notice.
One other thing to keep an eye on is the loading speed of your website. If the user sees images still struggling to load long after the website has finished loading, it will heavily detract from the user experience.
4. Promote Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness
Google has been gearing its algorithms to put an emphasis on what it likes to call EAT. This means that Google is trying to only give search results to its users that are from very reputable or established websites that would be much more likely to give truthful or correct answers to the search term.
If you were searching for information about long division, you wouldn't want to see articles from a food critic's blog. You would want to see something from a mathematical website. This is because that website would have a lot more expertise, authority, and trustworthiness on the subject.
The easiest way to promote expertise is to narrow down the keywords you are trying to rank for and to focus on your more important or relevant keywords. You can't hope to be an expert on everything, and most websites are considered an expert on only a single topic. Try focusing your keywords on the main purpose of your business so that over time, after continually ranking highly for your carefully selected keywords, and obtaining enough reputable backlinks, your website will be considered by Google to be an expert opinion on your desired topic.
5. Backlinks
Backlinks are the backbone to any SEO campaign. They are one of the few things that Google has always and will always look for to determine website ranking.
The idea behind it is pretty simple: the more websites that have posted links to your website would indicate that your website is an authority on that particular subject. The more backlinks one can encourage, the more organic traffic will come to your website.
The best way to obtain links to your website is to regularly create and post content on your website. This could be in the form of blog posts, videos, or reviews. Once you are creating good content, you can reach out to other websites, blogs, news sources, and authorities in your field of work and try to convince them to feature your work or to post one of your articles. Eventually the links add up and your website will be soaring through its rankings!
The year has still barely begun and there will doubtlessly be more "curveballs" thrown to us by Google; but by sticking to these five key ideas, you can be sure that your website will rank as well as the amount and quality of work put into the website. Google can tell if you just "threw" your website together, verses if you spent a lot of time and put a lot of effort into it. And you can be sure that Google will reward that hard work.
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