How many times have you searched something and tried to find it in the last pages of search engines?
You have hardly done, have you?
On the other hand, will you trust of a website, which is full of errors and seems to be very suspicious?
Nobody will. Here the importance of SEO ranking comes.
Regardless of what you search, you give your preference to what you meet first. In short, you trust the information, which Google and similar search engines trust.
The same is for businesses. When people want to buy something online, they search for it. Meeting thousands of similar products, they try to find it among the websites that appear in the first pages of search engines results. SEO is the practice of improving your website ranking in search engine result pages. It really sounds great; nevertheless, it is not an easy and a very short process. It may take you time and effort. However, due to SEO services that digital marketing agencies suggest the process becomes less challenging and easier.
In order to avoid SEO mistakes, increase sales and grow your business you need to follow some common tips, which will help your website ranking and bring your business to the top of its success:
1. Improve Website Loading Speed
According to a number of studies, even 1-second delay can make 11% of your customers abandon your website. Among the top issues that can harm your website performance and ranking is its speed. However, speeding up your website is not an issue that is hard to solve. Although it may take you some time, it can provide you the sales and traffic, which your business really needs. Involving different activities in your strategies and making your website relevant to Google’s changes and updates will keep your website away from loading speed errors. Including among the most important signals of the algorithms of Google, SEO ranking and website speed go hand in hand.
2. Publish Relevant and Quality Content;
Regardless of successful SEO services, if you do not optimize your content for search engines, your website will hardly rank. Content can either build or harm your business. If you publish quality, informative and relevant content, it will reach and target most of your website visitors. In case your content appears more than in one place, it is copied or plagiarized, Google and other search engines find it difficult to understand which of them is unique, and it brings harm to your website overall performance and ranking. If you include duplicate content in your website, your business will be under the risk to drop its ranking or even worse; your site will no longer be listed in search results and it will get a Google penalty.
3. Optimize Images
Images help better understand your information. However, you need to optimize your website images for search engine optimization ranking. The process includes publishing high-quality images with relevant description, right format and dimensions. Optimizing images can take you some important and minor actions; however, it can bring success to your website ranking. It has become more important with the massive use of image search. It is not only important for your SEO ranking and attracting people’s interests, bur more: it has a direct connection to website speed. Nevertheless, while optimizing images it is important to think of image quality and try to avoid sacrificing them.
4. Audit your Website
Any small error can harm your website ranking. The solution is to audit your website. There are many tools, which make the process effortless. Hence, fixing your website errors is critical for your traffic goals. You can greatly optimize your website. However, it is not enough. With the new coming trends and updates, you need to keep your website up-to-date for its current and future success. Auditing is a process, which you need to do from time to time. If you do not know where to start from you can plan and outline your most important actions to avoid the possible errors and mistakes. Choosing a good audit tool will be your most important step, which will simplify some vital details, including:
· Technical problems of your website, if exist;
· Possible SEO issues;
· Broken links (both internal and external) and files that can harm your ranking;
· Non-relevant content;
· All other possible website errors (including navigation, speed, images, etc.).
Hence, the process will allow easily finding solutions to these issues.
5. Optimize Site for All Type of Devices
There is a tendency that all businesses will go to a mobile-first approach. It is a great tool for successful businesses. If not, at least that you can do is building a mobile-friendly website. Mobile-friendly test tool by Google can give you exact information whether your website works the same way on all devices. If you fail to find and fix the linking gap between mobile and ranking, you will not only fail in having a high ranking, but will lose a lot of traffic, who start their search form mobile gadgets. Besides, mobile friendly website is a sign of a good user experience, which is among the most important ranking factors. Giving your website a mobile-friendly design or making use of mobile first approach, you will increase your sales, build your brand reputation and appear in the SERPs.
6. Do Keyword Research
Keywords are for better targeting searchers. You need to avoid the danger of overusing SEO keywords, besides you need to understand the searchers’ intent. You can do it through keyword research. Although keywords are no longer the most important ranking factors, they continue keeping their role, and they will hardly get out of the list of important tips. The closer you are the search, the higher your ranking will be. It means that your marketing effectiveness is in some terms connected to your keyword choice.
7. Make a Competitive Analysis
Although some marketers avoid competition, it makes your business better. Making a competitive analysis can help in building your own strategies. By collecting the success stories of similar brands, mixing and improving them can bring you great advantages. If you look at your competitors as your motivators, you will get better results than you think. The reason is that each of your competitors can use a key tactic, which can become an ideal ranking factor. If you find out and bring them together, you manage to get a stronger strategy and bring your business some vital advantages.
8. Pay Attention to URLs and Meta Description
Both may seem small technical elements, but they are important on-page SEO factors. They help to understand what information to expect from your website. You should optimize them for not harming your website performance by Google Panda Algorithm update. The reason is that if they are descriptive and error-free, your website will drive more value and you will get more chances to get ‘valuable’ clicks.
9. Do not forget about Navigation
Have you ever left a website because of its poor navigation?
Many marketers have encountered the issue of dropping ranking and losing potential buyers because of the poor and complex navigation of their websites.
Your website navigation should be available for all people. Avoid complications. Keep it simple and fast. People like everything in order. If they enter your website and do not find a menu bar, which will easily give directions to their actions, they will abandon your site immediately. For improving navigation, at least that you can do is:
· Using relevant and descriptive titles;
· Making them easily clickable;
· Keeping dropdown menus to their minimum;
· Making parallels between website navigation and positive user experience.
10. Include Payment Options and Contact Information for improving UX
Imagine that a customer has just made a buying decision, and oops! They do not manage to pay, as you do not have a proper paying option for them. Including different options can keep you away from this and similar problems. You can even include e-wallets and m-wallets, which are accessible to all people around the world. For this and such issues, people need to contact you. If they do not manage to have access with you as soon as possible, you will lose your sales and your customer will not come back again. Before your actions think of your users: even your SEO ranking is for them.
These tips will have a great influence on your website ranking, this is the reason you need to take into consideration each of them. However, there are many tips adopted by professional marketing agencies that are also very important. Each marketer can develop a good strategy following marketing trends. If you do that, you will surely avoid Google penalty and manage to boost your chance of business success.
Author
Tigran is a marketing and creative content specialist at Smarketa.com with a primary focus on SEO, PPC and customer satisfaction for eCommerce business. Being a true humanist he draws inspiration from the simple thing as everyday life and the matters one come across on a daily basis doing his best and above to help everyone around.
