Optimizing your website for search engines is an ever-changing game. It’s a complex puzzle, full of moving pieces; even the table you’re laying the pieces on is in constant change. The goal is to keep up and add your own unique piece to the game. If you’re working to make your mark on the Internet you probably want everyone to see and read your content. Of course, if it was easy to do then everyone would do it and it would be a pointless game. There are more and more players entering the field and today only the most intelligent search engine optimizers and the best content writers manage to stay on top of the game and earn high rankings on SERPs. Most need to make use of the most recent technical SEO expert tactics.
Technical SEO is getting more important along with content quality. Some naughty tricks and expert tactics that worked yesterday and got your webpage to the top will end up with a serious penalty today. You’ll have to be smart about your approach; very smart. Google doesn’t only take on-page SEO into account when it ranks an article; it also considers backlinks, your domain’s authority, and social media signals as well, to name a few factors.
There are some good SEO strategies and techniques out there that have been tested and hardened by battle. Some cover simple technical aspects that you might not know about, others have been worked out by individuals who have already succeeded in ranking their website.
Today, we’re going to share some of the tactics that have been proven to work well and that will get your website to a much better place on SERPs. There are some basic ones that you probably already know about and there are some more advanced ones as well. Let’s see what we have!
Keyword Research is Key
It might seem obvious to any technical SEO expert but keyword research is one of the most important tactics, at least that much hasn’t changed. But the way we conduct keyword research and the way we use the results are very different, thanks to RankBrain’s game-changing performance.
RankBrain is a learning machine that Google uses to help put things in context and understand things in language like synonyms, answers, stemming, and whatnot. But new keyword tools are able to keep paste with Google’s developments and provide results such as keyword groups and Parent topics. With their help, users are able to create relevant content.
From now on, you’re best off placing all of your targeted keywords into the title of an article or post, but don’t use keyword stuffing! Instead, analyze a particular piece of content with a keyword density checker or other online tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner and see which keywords best define it. Once you have found them, do a bit of keyword research and choose the ones that have less competition.
Also, be sure to maintain good keyword density for your content. You should use your main keyword in every 100 words or work to have a 1% keyword density. So if you have a 500-word long post, you should use it 5 times. Use secondary keywords as well. The more keywords you use, the more search engines will like your content.
Insert keywords in a way that naturally blends with the rest of the text and you’re all set.
Improving User Engagement and User Experience
One of Google’s main focuses is to encourage webmasters to provide a good experience for their users. User experience is one of the most important aspects of a website and it will only get more important because it fuels the user’s satisfaction and the trust he/she invests in your business. They have a lot of metrics to keep track of how well your users interact with your website. But one of the biggest deciding factors of course is how much time they spend on your page.
So, identifying the user’s intent and optimizing your website to help him carry out that intention is one of the main things your website should be built upon. Your goal is to spark a positive emotion, help a user get what he wants as quickly as possible, and hold his attention.
We’ll show you a few ways to do so and you can also find many well-established copywriting methods and UX practices too. There are plenty of templates and more good advice than you could even memorize. Here are a few.
Optimize for User Intent Instead of Keywords
Sure, keywords are still very important, but the goal of every website is to help users in fulfilling their intention. Your goal is to answer search queries, which means you have to provide content that provides what you have promised in your headline and meta description.
Use The Inverted Pyramid Structure With Your Content
The inverted pyramid style is simply based on placing the most important information on the top of a page.
In pyramid-style writing, the most important and newsworthy information goes to the top of the page and is summarized in a short, rich paragraph. Then the most important details follow it and any other general information or background information goes to the bottom. This way, the user will get the most valuable information right away and have a satisfactory experience in seconds.
Make Your Posts Easier To Read
Note that people don’t read entire posts from start to finish; they scan pages for information by following an F pattern. Use better formatting that makes your documents more scannable, to make it easier for them to get what they’re there for and improve your engagement rate.
- Use Bullet points – When you have a lot of points and data to cover, spread them into bullet points instead of packing them into a paragraph.
- Shorter Paragraphs and Sentences – The longer a sentence or a paragraph is, the harder it is to follow it on screen, so break up long sentences and paragraphs into much shorter ones. Make a Paragraph 2-4 sentences max.
- Sub Headers (H2) – One of the most efficient ways to make a document more scannable is to divide it into as many sub headers as possible. This will make information much easier to look through. Also be mindful of how you structure a particular article or post, to make it more comprehensive.
- Bucket Bridges – They help keep the user’s interest and make them stay on your page for longer. It is basically breaking a single idea into multiple sentences that have trigger words or phrases and have colons at the end.
Use Images and Good Visuals
Having high-quality images such as graphics, infographics, graphs, and photos in posts is a great way to make them more engaging. Remember, a picture can say a thousand words. They also help visualize more complex ideas and information and make it easier for the user to consume.
Page Speed
The loading speed of pages is a key component of a good user experience. Faster page speeds always provide better results in both ranks and conversion rates.
Google has already hinted that page speed is among the factors their algorithm uses to rank web pages.
Link Building
Having quality backlinks is still one of the top-ranking factors and consider one of the fixed technical SEO expert tactics. If you don’t know much about link building, the key is to get the right kind of links for your website to increase its exposure. Links don’t have the same value. They have to be relevant to your niche and they have to be links that require an actual human’s editorial review.
There are a lot of ways to grasp quality links and you should use as many as you can. We’ll talk about a few of them here, but you’ll find that there are an insane amount of strategies if you do some research.
Creating a Blog
You shouldn’t create a separate website or blog just to provide yourself with a backlink then move on. That would be a waste of time. Publish some content on that blog instead and it will eventually earn some authority. Once that happens, you can use it for its good backlinking qualities.
Testimonials
Some companies build trust with their customers by letting you say a few words about the experience you had with their product. This creates a win-win situation because the business will have a plus review and you can get a link and some additional traffic as well.
Ask For a Backlink
Asking for something you want is a straightforward way to actually get it. The same applies to backlinks. Asking for them is a good way to start. Think about anyone who you know and run a website and ask them. But make sure that it is a website that is relevant to your website’s niche.
Have them give you in-content links instead of links on their sidebar or footer because the user’s attention is concentrated on a website’s content 80% of the time.
List Your Website in Trusted Directories
Online directories are similar to phonebooks. They are websites where users can find websites related to a certain industry. There are many worthless directories that ended up being de-indexed by Google but you can find a lot of trustworthy ones as well.
Directories that provide useful information to both you and your users are a directory you should have your website listed on. You should find directories that are related to your niche or your industry. This will help you get indexed by search engines and people will also be able to find you more easily.
Make Your Website Responsive
Targeting mobile users will help you increase your search traffic by a great deal as the number of mobile users has become 5 times more over the past years. It is estimated that about 95% of online searches will be done with mobiles by 2025. That seems pretty legit if you consider that even your grandma has a smartphone. This is why most technical SEO expert tactics nowadays will involve a heavy focus on creating mobile-friendly content.
Providing the same high-quality experience for mobile users that you would for desktop is of utmost importance since Google’s mobile-first index rolled in. Aside from that, it should be obvious to everyone by now that mobile technology dominating the Internet is no longer the future, it is happening now.
Creative Babe’s website is a prime example of a well-functioning mobile responsive website. If you don’t have your website optimized for mobile yet, you should do it right away.
Having your website optimized for mobile not only benefits your place in SERPs but also heightens conversion rates as well. About 50% of mobile searches lead to purchases for some reason.
The Mobile First Index
Google simply wants their search results to benefit the majority of their users and those are mobile searchers. Up until now, Google was looking at the web and analyzing it from a desktop perspective and mobiles were secondary. That is about to change as Google is months away from releasing its new mobile-first index.
Conclusion: Technical SEO Expert Tactics
Search engine optimization is constantly changing each year and it could even change in a month. Everyone who invests in their web presence has to adapt quickly. The biggest change is SEO is the mobile-first index that urges webmasters to optimize their website for mobile devices as well.
This game isn’t an easy one to win with its constantly changing field but there are some timeless practices that are the base of a good online experience and which you can rely on. The creation of good content, copywriting fundamentals, and the ability to engage your audience will always be among the most important factors. But your site’s loading speeds and UX shouldn’t be ignored either.
Of course, backlinking won’t fall outside of top deciding factors either, so you should put some work into gathering some solid links. If you’re interested in some great link-building strategies, you can start with the “Moving Man Method”.
