How can my website be higher in SERPs?
Do you want your website to be higher in Google search engine results? Do you need handy solutions to boost the efforts done by your SEO agency or media house? Or maybe you want to lead the SEO process of your website yourself? We warn you that it will not be an easy, simple and pleasant thing to do. This will require a lot of patience and experience on your part, but we can reveal a little bit of the secret and show you what elements we as a SEO agency pay attention to. This is not a ready-made recipe for success, but rather a collection of good tips. We implemented most of them ourselves on our website and we know how much commitment they require, so we’ll say it just at the beginning – don’t be discouraged, just go with it. The effects will come with time.
Write valuable articles
This would seem to be trivial advice, but extremely important one. There isn’t always time to create new content. However, it’s the systematic publications that make the website interest not only the search engine algorithms, but most of all the readers or users of your site. Therefore, make yourself a publication schedule and stick to it. And additionally, just in case, prepare neutral articles that you can publish even when you don’t have time to write them.
Good content is not just blog posts, but also product or service descriptions. The more details that tackle a particular service or product, the more professional and specialized your website is. Everyone likes to interact with people who know what they are talking about, what they do and what they offer.
Respond to questions and needs
This solution is partly related to the first point. A user who comes to your website is looking for specific information and answers to his needs or problems. The text on your page should give the user what they need. Remember that he will immediately sense whether the content is unique and valuable in terms of content, or maybe it was created for a search engine and uses stacks of keywords (which ultimately never affects the position of the optimized page).
In addition to working on the text itself, you should also experiment with different forms of communication. Perhaps the issue can be presented in a more interesting form than text – for example with infographics or a short video?
By serving good, informative and juicy descriptions, your website will be boosted by Google robots, but also by customers. This can translate into an increase in organic traffic and therefore sales.
Match the page to the search engine criteria
With the optimization of each element on your webpage, search engine robots will know exactly what the page is about, what the essence of the page is and what elements it contains. Everything should be accurately described in the form of:
This information is displayed in search engines when you type in a particular phrase. Remember to use it in meta descriptions in a natural way, using the right form of a word. We wrote about meta titles and meta descriptions in the article on how to improve your website in Google.
Descriptions of alternative graphics
If your site has a lot of text, you should make it more varied. Use elements such as images, photos, infographics or even video. At the moment, no visual forms of communication will be read by a search engine if they are not described. Additionally, you can include keywords in the description. If you use WordPress, then keeping track of the so-called “alts” will be easier with the Yoast SEO plugin.
URL configuration
See the point above – and this is where the Yoast plugin comes in handy. It will automatically generate the URL for a new page or article based on the H1 header. However, if you have to configure the URL manually, do not use specific language related characters or special characters in it. It should be edited so that it could be easily dictated to someone else.
Internal linking
When writing blog articles or product descriptions, if the context allows it – include internal links to your other pages. This will make it easier for Google’s robots to navigate your site, thus speeding up its indexing and gaining positions. We wrote more tips for internal linking in our previous article.
Be present on the Internet
Sounds too vague? That’s what it’s supposed to sound like. You should be present wherever you can find a potential customer. Try to get external links on similar sites with similar topics to yours and operate on social media.
What does that mean? If you’ve blogged a tutorial about what to look for when choosing a particular product, then immediately share it on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. You can never be 100% sure on which of the media your audience is most active and where they will come across your article.
It is known that if the text is good, you can expect someone to share it on topic forums or other blogs. Remember, when publishing externally, you should always ask for a link back to your website, the same for quoting your writings.
Take care of the page loading speed
You may have a little more work to do here, but we guarantee it’s worth it, especially keeping in mind the user experience of your website. You can use the Page Speed Insight tool to check the current health of your site. It is trivial to use and your task is only to enter the address of the website you are interested in.
You will receive a score for the page on a scale from 0 to 100, as well as information on what should be improved to get a better score. The attention of the tool is focused on the overall loading speed of the page, and also indicates what elements need technical optimization and gives tips on how to carry it out. If you can’t manage it yourself, you can always ask for help from the person who created our site or a web developer.
There’s a reason this point comes last. Unless you are a programmer you will have the most trouble. It will be hard for you to specify your expectations and formulate a specific order. Additionally, the effect of page load speed on page rank is uncertain. It is important from the User Experience point of view, so you should pay attention to this aspect while taking care of your website users’ comfort.
By following the above advice you will sooner or later reach higher positions. However, you should remember the completely different 3 golden rules of SEO activities: do it patiently, systematically and consistently. The first changes should be visible quite quickly (the appearance of optimized meta descriptions in Google search is a matter of a few days at most), but you will have to wait a bit longer for the effects in the form of a website in the top positions.