This is the right time when you need to evaluate the organic reach of your website for the year 2023. If you were not satisfied with your organic reach this year or you want to improve it further, consider these 3 best SEO practices for the year 2019.
- Focus
on On-Page SEO:
On-page SEO is one of the most important things when it comes to improving your rank on the SERP. It has always been an important Google algorithm for ranking, and it will remain the same in the coming year.
You might be wondering why I am stressing so much on this point. Well, because behind every great user experience (UX), there is always a well-planned and well-practiced on-page SEO.
What actually on-page SEO does?
It helps users by:
- Providing context to your content
- Organizing your content
- Creating pathways for them to navigate through other relevant content on your website
Here I am sharing 4 tips to improve the on-page SEO of your content:
(I) Improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Until a few years ago, marketers used to improve their ranking on SERP by stuffing keywords in their meta titles and descriptions. This is, however, no longer practical.
Although it is still important to use focused keywords in the meta title and description, you need to be creative while
using them.
Write meta titles and descriptions that are relevant to your content and compelling enough to make users choose you over your competitors.
(II) Create Captivating Relevant Headers:
Imagine you are reading a newspaper that doesn’t have any headlines. Now, how will you know what the news is about? You won’t until you read half of the content. Boring isn’t it?
Adding headings and sub-headings to your content is just like that – adding a headline to the news.
A header gives context to your content even before a user dives into it. It also helps you in organizing the information in your content.
One of the best SEO practices is to use your focused keyword in the h1 header.
(III) Internal Links:
For a great user experience, create internal links so that your visitors can easily navigate through other relevant information on your website. However, don’t try to over-optimize the content. Don’t give Google the impression that you
are forcefully stuffing a link by keeping it natural. Similarly, don’t create too many internal links on one page.
(IV) Fix 404 Errors:
A 404 is the last thing on the planet that your user would like to interact with – it’s a UX killer. Decrease your bounce ratee by reducing the amount of 404 errors on your website.
- Make your Website Mobile Friendly:
In the past couple of years, the use of smartphones has increased, and thus, accessing the internet through it as well.
Keeping this increase in mind, Google has introduced Google’s Mobile First Indexing. This means that Google would prefer websites that are mobile-friendly and rank them higher as compared to the ones that are not optimized for mobile devices.
Although Google will not penalize your website, if it is not ready for mobile devices, its crawlers will overlook it.
Here are three things you need to do:
- Either design your website for mobile or make it responsive
- Optimize images so they can load faster
- Create your website blazingly faster for slower internet connections
- HTTP vs HTTPS – Security Wins:
It is not even debatable now.
Google prefers HTTPS over HTTP. Just a little more to add to your information, if you didn’t know it already, S in the HTTPS means the site has an SSL certificate.
This certificate tells the users that there is encryption between them and the website’s server. In other words, this certificate ensures users that any communication between them and the server will be kept secret.
You can have an idea of its importance by the fact that Google Chrome now notifies the users if a website they are accessing has an SSL certificate or not by displaying a warning for the user.
This SSL certificate not only helps in boosting your SEO with Google, but it also helps you in building trust with your users.
These are some of the best SEO practices that can help you increase your organic traffic. Remember, with SEO, you cannot gain results overnight. However, when done right, in the long run, you can enjoy a lot of benefits.
