The world has evolved so much in the span of just a few years, and these changes are seen almost everywhere. One area where these changes are seen the most is in marketing. No longer can businesses depend on traditional marketing methods; digital marketing is what reigns supreme in 2022.
As a business owner, you want to do everything in your power to increase your SEO ranking. But with so much information out there, it can be difficult to know where to start. In this blog post, we’ll outline five important things to keep in mind when boosting your SEO ranking. Keep reading to learn more!
Traffic is Important to a Degree
One big mistake that many business owners make is assuming that traffic is the most important metric, and often ignore other metrics, or don’t pause to do any further investigation. One example is that your site might have a high traffic volume, and on the surface that’s good, but your site also has a high bounce rate, but if you don’t look further than the traffic you wouldn’t know that.
Conversely, when building links, many business owners look for sites with the highest traffic. Whilst this is a good metric, you need to know where the traffic is coming from, Cozab explains. Upon further investigation, you might find that the traffic that arrives at the site won’t be part of your target audience, and as a result, nothing will come from having your link on that site.
How Essential Are Keywords?
Another factor that you will need to keep in mind when increasing your SEO ranking is that while keywords are important, they are not the most important thing. This is because search engines, like Google, have shifted more towards a content-driven, user satisfaction-based algorithm.
Why? Because Google, and other search engines, realized that websites were spamming keywords to rank higher, the actual content wasn’t good, and the primary function of Google is to bring relevant content to its users. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use keywords, it just means that you shouldn’t think your job is done once you have added them.
Focus on Great Content
This leads to the next tip that you should follow; focus on creating great content. Many business owners make the mistake of thinking of the search engine first when creating content, which naturally leads to not-so-interesting reads.
By focusing on creating great content, and putting your audience first, you will be creating content that is educational, informative, entertaining, and relevant. This in turn will be rewarded, since you will get better traffic, people staying on your site for longer, and you will become an authority within the niche or industry from which you are in.
Your Site Speed Matters
The speed of your site is far more important than you might think. Gone are the days when consumers would wait a few minutes for a site to load. If your site doesn’t load within 3 seconds, it’s estimated based on research that 80% of your previous visitors won’t come back, and around 40% of people will just leave.
What does this mean for you? This means that your bounce rate increases, telling search engines your site isn’t worth visiting. It also means that you will lose conversions, and it prevents you from being able to provide the great content you spent hours curating to your audience.
Link Out First
The next tip, which is incredibly important, is that you should change your mindset from wanting to have your link on sites first, to linking out first. What does this mean? This means that you should, when possible, link to high-quality sites.
Why? Because it enhances your readers’ experience, increases trust, and you become the place to go for information. The great thing about this is that the relationship can become reciprocal, meaning that if those sites become aware you’re linking to them, they might link to you in return, especially if the content that you are creating is high quality and is bringing traffic to both your site and theirs.