Are you having a hard time ranking your site on search engines? Are you not even sure where to start? Well, do not worry, you have come to the right place. This article will guide you on guest posting and how to optimize your site properly. Your site will start ranking within no time.
1. Write long-form content
You can’t rank on Google if people don’t know what you do. Search engines are all about keeping the user on the page for a long time. So, if they’re not reading your copy, then they won’t know what you do. Write as much content as possible.
Long-form content will allow the reader to learn about you and what you do, giving them more reasons to trust you. Use a variety of words and be as concise or as detailed as you want to be. As long as you keep the story moving and tell the reader what your business does, they will keep reading your content.
2. Upload a sitemap for Google
Google offers an awesome tool to help you build a sitemap in .txt format. That’s because Google uses Google Webmaster Tools (basically Google’s answer to Ask Jeeves) to crawl your site and check that it’s a valid sitemap. They also store it for you in one of their SERPs. That way, when Google crawls your site, they can find your sitemap and determine that your site is a valid one. In turn, when you submit to Google, Google will also see your sitemap. So, you should create a sitemap and upload it to the most important page on your site (e.g., the main page). You can also create it and upload it to your staging site to be safe. You should probably submit your site to the Search Engine Journal, Yahoo!, and Bing blog directories.
3. Make sure you are using 301 redirects
Bad 301 redirects (for example, to.co.uk instead of to.com) are not good for the search engines or your users. Doing one will not make your site look better to search engines. Your site looks fine to users, but it won’t rank higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs). You need only use 301 redirects if the domain name is the same or similar to the domain you’re redirecting to.
4. Allow Google to access your site
Using an error page to redirect or “disconnect” from the search engine to prevent them from crawling or indexing your website is a common way to stop crawling your site. Ensure you understand all the different types of error pages, so you’re not accidentally using one that will harm your site.
5. Optimized for mobile
One of the biggest mistakes many businesses make is optimizing for desktop computer users, but not on mobile devices. When mobile users search your site, they expect the same UX as the one they see on their desktops. So, you need to make sure your site is formatted for mobile devices the same way your site is formatted for desktop users.
6. Use short paragraphs
The average Google reader is 6’5″. Thus, for most SEO experts, the text on your website should not be longer than 150 characters. Make the text engaging and interesting to read. If it isn’t, there is no point to it. A long paragraph can be intimidating. You can use many tools to easily add images or infographics to your text. However, as discussed earlier, short paragraphs are more engaging.
Colors and combinations of colors are important to any website. A big tip that most people have found to work best is using different colors. This is more beneficial than using one color. Colored text is easier to scan, it’s easier to distinguish between one color and the next, and it helps fill your text.
7. Add more links to relevant pages on your site
If your site has multiple pages relevant to your products, adding more links to these pages will help your site rank higher in search engines. This is best accomplished by adding internal links within the site itself. Google wants to know where visitors are going after landing on your site and whether the link itself will provide the desired value, and this is where a call to action (CTA) is important. Adding buttons to internal links will get you in good stead. Please make sure you have strong CTAs on all your internal links so that when you click on them, your visitors will get the desired value that you want them to receive.
8. Use internal linking to refer users and search engines to related products
Being on the first page of Google is, of course, very important, but for some, it’s just as important to be among the first pages of relevant search engine results, such as Bing and Yahoo. The reason is that Google has been improving its algorithm for quite a while now, and the only way to get the best results is to follow its algorithm.
Linking out to similar sites is a very simple hack, but it is also the simplest one. If you are writing a blog, you will likely want to link to at least three or four blog posts of people in your industry to show off your expertise.
9. Use title tags
Nowadays, we see more spammy title tags than ever before. People take a title tag, pick a keyword, and then get as many people to click on it as possible. Google loves keyword-rich titles, but don’t be one of them. Start with a keyword-rich title, and then write the description for that title using specific SEO language. For instance, if your keyword is “Wine Festival,” your title is most likely going to be something like “The Best Wine Festivals In the World.”
10. Use relevant keywords
As stated before, you should focus on keywords that are most relevant to your content. Google will return organic search results that are relevant to what its human-readable page expects. Unfortunately, Google has said that they will penalize websites that over-optimize the SERP for their pages by using their pages as a rank booster.
If you can get a website with other sites on the same topic link to your site, this will get you on the radar of many other online publishers. When they link to your site, you will start to rank higher in Google for the search term.
11. Content marketing
There are no magic bullets, no one-click fixes, and certainly no quick fixes for search engine optimization (SEO). You can’t solve everything in a week and expect your site to rank in the top ten within a month or two. Have quality content marketing, and your site will be up and running quickly within no time.
12. Bonus: Write a blog
One of the simplest ways to improve your site’s ranking is to write a blog. Google uses you as an authoritative source, and your website is how people find the information they want. If you are one of those people, it’s important to share your ideas, and they will rank your website higher.
The two best ways to write blog posts that will drive traffic to your website are to write about something you know and write from your heart. Write about a topic that interests you so that your audience will be interested in reading it.
One simple way to write about something you know is to interview someone who has expertise in your topic and ask them some questions.
