Having a solid SEO strategy in place is a necessity for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Whether you’re managing a large corporation or a small, local company, SEO is critical for success.
Even businesses which operate in a remote area with no online services need good SEO to help make sure their customers can find them. Google’s ‘near me’ function and other local search features have seen considerable increases in use in recent years. These kinds of changes to the way consumers search, coupled with Google’s ever-changing algorithms makes keeping up with SEO a challenging task.
Below are 6 killer SEO tactics that will help boost your traffic and ensure your website can reach and maintain a strong ranking on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
1. Enhance With Reviews
Showcasing your company or product reviews directly on the results page is an effective and easy way to boost your organic traffic. Rich Snippets (using Schema mark-ups) can be used to display your reviews and a five-star rating on your organic listing. These help to make your web page listing stand out among the competition, and provides consumers with vital information before they even reach your website. Learning how to implement Google Rich Snippets is a simple way to improve CTR and drive more traffic to your website.
2. Optimise For RankBrain
Google are regularly rolling out new updates and changes to their algorithms, but their recent announcement of the RankBrain algorithm has been a game-changer. Google RankBrain is the search engine’s first artificially intelligent algorithm. In simple terms, it analyses how a user interacts with the results shown on the first page. If a web page seems to satisfy the user, then it will be ranked up. If it doesn’t, another page will be tried next time.
In order to optimise your website for Google RankBrain, you need to improve your organic CTR (click-through rate), your bounce rate and your dwell time. These indicators all show Google that your web page is satisfying users and that your content is valuable.
3. Use Google Ads For Inspiration
Compelling Meta descriptions and titles are critical for improving organic traffic, but knowing the content that consumers want to click on isn’t always easy. One of the most effective and easy ways to determine titles and descriptions that will generate interest is to look at Google Ads for your keywords. These ads have undergone hundreds of split tests that are designed to maximise the number of clicks to that page. When you want your page to rank highly for a specific keyword, take inspiration from the ads that appear when you search your keywords. The terms used in these ads are proven to generate clicks from consumers looking for your product or service.
4. Link To Authority Websites
Search engines look out for websites which are considered to be hubs of useful, relevant information. Google’s Hilltop algorithm does this by determining the relevancy and quality of a web page’s outbound links. A page that provides links to authority websites and helpful resources will rank higher than those that only offer internal links. A recent study revealed that there is a real correlation between Google rankings and outbound links, making this an SEO tactic that cannot be ignored.
5. Optimise For Mobile First
Mobile search has been growing for years, and it has now far overtaken that of desktop searches. Mobile development has gone from dedicated mobile websites through to responsive designs that work for all devices, but when it comes to SEO, your website needs to do more than just look good on a small screen. Google looks at load times and usability on a mobile when it determines a website’s position on SERPs. Make sure your website is appropriately optimised for use on mobile devices if you genuinely want to boost your organic traffic.
6. Refresh Old Content
Once content has been on your website for some time, it can quickly become redundant. Even web pages that used to perform well in SERPs will drop over time. By taking time in your SEO strategy to refresh old content, you can breathe new life into your existing pages and posts. A common mistake when it comes to SEO is to focus all your time on energy on brand new content, but by also updating old content, you can gain more traffic than ever.
When it comes to SEO, there are an endless number of strategies out there, so it’s vital that you find the SEO tactics that work for your website and increase your organic traffic. From displaying reviews with Rich Snippets to optimising for mobile first, these tried and tested tactics are sure to help your website perform better on SERPs. Keep in mind that SEO techniques are never a quick fix, and the results of your hard work will take time to show.