Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process of methods and strategies used to increase your website’s visibility on the search engine result pages (SERPs). As a result, it brings your website organic traffic, which is the main difference between paid advertising.

SEO as we know is an ever-changing landscape, so it’s important to stay in the trend if you don’t want to fall behind your competitors.

So we made a quick guide to help you improve your site’s rankings in 2022.

Here is what we’ll focus on today:

• Content Quality
• Updating Your Content
• Website Loading Speed
• Metadata
• Cross Linking to Relevant Sites
• Brand New Keywords

So let’s get started!

1. Content Quality

The quality of the content present on your page is probably the number one driver of your search engine rankings – so it’s not exaggerating to say with great content comes great respo …results.

Quality content created specifically for your intended user increases site traffic, which improves your site’s authority and relevance. Always try to fine-tune your web writing skills and present yourself as an authority on the topic you are writing about.

There are content optimization tools. With their help, you create high-quality, semantically-rich content that ranks higher in Google.

Using similar NLP algorithms as Google, these tools identify keywords, subtopics, synonyms, and even common questions search engine crawlers are looking for on the page when promoting content.

Keywords

Put yourself in the reader’s perspective, how would they come to your content? What combination of keywords would you have to use to reach your audience?

Another thing you could use is multiple Keyword phrases

Identify and target a specific keyword phrase for each authoritative content page on your website. Consider where it would be the perfect place to put your keyword for it to make perfect sense.

Things to look out for when considering placement;

Should you use it in the page URL?

Can the keyword phrase be in the page title?

What about placing it in page headings and subheadings?

All of these can seem a bit complicated, but a general rule of thumb you should stick to is to be natural and user-friendly. As we mentioned, content plays a very big part in search engine rankings. You can reuse your keyword phrase several times throughout the page (no more than 4 uses). Be authoritative. Strategically link to relevant sources and additional information—both within your organization’s broad website and even to other websites which are useful.

Don’t forget to use bold, italics, heading tags (especially an H1), and other emphasis tags to highlight these keyword phrases—but like with keywords, don’t overuse them. You still want your language and writing style to read naturally.

Summary– Good quality content is the best SEO strategy. The results will come naturally if your content is written for the user and not for the search engine.

2. Update Your Content

Let us emphasize this next sentence. Search engines feel strongly about content.

Regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best indicators of a site’s relevancy, so be sure to keep it fresh. Audit your content on a set schedule (semesterly for example) and make updates as needed.

Write additional content regularly, with targeted keyword phrases. This is where blogging comes in handy, as they are a great way to boost your rankings. Blog posts can even be shorter updates about the specific topics you are targeting. Interlink your related CMS web pages and blog posts when it helps give the reader a better picture or additional information about the topic.

3. Improve Your Website Loading Speed

Google has stated that depending on your website’s loading speed, it can have a direct impact on page ranking.

Check out this study by Neil Patel. The result of the study shows that pages that are at the top of the rank of Google’s first page usually load significantly faster than other pages that are positioned on the bottom part of page 1.

So you’d want to have a more quick response from the site rather than a slower one.

So what can you do to help you with your website’s loading speed?

There are tools that can help you ascertain your web’s speed and give you a quick benchmark of your site such as:

Google’s PageSpeed Insights

WebPageTest.org

Pingdom

They give you a measurement score (along with explanations for that score) which operates on how the page is doing loading wise, as well as a quick breakdown of which part of the page should be adjusted

In short, all these places will show you in which directions you should gravitate towards in order to fix your issues and optimize your website’s speed.

Here are some quick tips that we usually found to be helpful:

Use compressed images

Move to a better host

Try to cut down your website’s page file size

Remove all the unnecessary 3rd party scripts

4. Metadata

There are invisible meta tags on your pages which provide information. They are called “metadata” and while they are not displayed on the page itself, they can be read by search engines and web crawlers, and thus are a vital part of SEO.

Google uses this metadata collected from the meta tags in order to understand web page better. They can use this information for ranking purposes, to display snippets in search results, and sometimes they can ignore meta tags.

The Meta tags are placed in the <head> section of a HTML document, and so they need to be coded in your Content Management System (CMS). This can be easier or harder depending on the platform that powers your website: an “out of the box” solution like WordPress will have a dedicated section for meta tags like canonical links or meta descriptions.

In short, they make it easier for search engines to determine what your content is about.

As your site is going through occasional changes it is important for you to also review and update your metadata.

Here is our recommendation on which metadata you should focus:

Title Metadata

Title metadata is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser window and as the headline within search engine results. It is the most important metadata on your page.

This adds to the importance of using well-thought-out page titles rich with keyword phrases.

Description Metadata

Description metadata is the textual description a browser will use in your page search return. Think of it as your site’s window display—a concise and appealing description of what is contained within, with the goal of encouraging people to enter. A good meta description will typically contain two full sentences. Search engines may not always use your meta description, but it is important to give them the option.

Keyword Metadata

Keyword metadata is rarely if ever used to tabulate search engine rankings. However, you should already know your keyword phrases, so it doesn’t hurt to add them into your keyword metadata. You’ll want to include a variety of phrases. As a general rule, try to keep it to about 3-7 phrases with each phrase consisting of 1-4 words. A great example would be “computer science degree.”

5. Link Towards Other Relevant Sites

If you have a page whose content consists of objective, authoritative and rich information, or in short its content quality is high. it will most likely help readers learn about what they are interested in. Those high-quality web pages tend to attract links from other websites, which helps you place higher in the rankings.

Linking to other relevant sites increases your authority and credibility. One often mistake that people make when linking websites is having bland “click here” links. On its own, “click here” has minimal to no search engine value beyond the attached URL. Instead, try inserting the name of the destination, such as “trusted link building agency”. Not only can you improve your page’s ranking but you will also assist the page it’s linking to if the keyword is rich enough.

In short: Aim to use descriptive links by linking keywords as it gives additional value to the engine and your visitors which in turn helps your rank better.

6. Target Brand New Keywords

One of the ways to get your page to the desired rank is to use popular, yet low-competition keywords. But that’s easier said than done.

So how can you achieve this?

As you know, the majority of popular keywords are competitive simply because a big number of other websites are using them as they are trying to rank as well.

You can try to come up with new words that encapsulate the same meaning. With new terms, you’ll automatically compete with fewer people and usually skyrocket towards the top of results.

In short- aim for totally new keywords.

We hope this guide helped you to achieve optimized content for both your visitors and the crawl bots. By utilizing these quick tips and tricks you’ll have a clean, engaging experience, and should stand out amongst your competitors in no time.

The post 6 Creative and Actionable Ways to Improve your SEO in 2022 appeared first on SiteProNews.

However, about 70% to 90% of the time, visitors don’t appreciate your efforts, as that is the average landing page bounce rate, i.e., the percentage of visitors who loaded a page but didn’t click on anything.

To minimize your website’s landing page bounce rate and maximize leads, you’ll need to resort to landing page optimization.

What is Landing Page Optimization?

Optimizing a landing page means tweaking elements of a web page (design, copy, CTA and more) to create an overall better page performance and user experience and thus engage and inform visitors well enough to encourage them to perform the desired action.

Besides ensuring the maximum possible conversions from visitors who arrive on these pages, landing page optimization is also essential behind the scenes.

If you run a paid campaign via Google Ads or social platforms, optimizing your landing page will improve its quality and relevance and thus lower your ad’s price per click.

In case you aim to improve your organic traffic, optimizing your landing page for faster loading and targeted keywords will boost its search results rankings.

Now that we’ve covered its benefits, we’ve talked with the optimization experts from a custom web design company to share their steps for successful and effective landing page optimization.

1. Focus Your Landing Page on a Single Action

Both website visitors and Google’s ranking algorithm appreciate landing on a page that unambiguously expresses its intention.

Conversely, a landing page that presents a product, offers its free trial, calls for newsletter subscription, and invites you to apply for a webinar is so all over the place that it’s bound to fail.

On such a disorganized landing page, users won’t know what they’re expected to do, and Google won’t understand what keywords the page tries to rank for.

To optimize your landing page for conversion, opt for a single target action and create content, visuals and CTAs that reinforce the key message.

Within the landing page copy, try to use bullet points to hone in on key aspects of your offer and make information easier to digest.

2. Improve Page Speed

Recent research suggests two seconds as the new threshold for an online shopper’s expectation for a page to load. Moreover, nearly half of the questioned users won’t wait more than three seconds before abandoning a website.

Besides customer expectations, page load time is a major Google ranking factor. Good page speed benefits your organic rankings, as well as your site’s quality for paid campaigns.

3. Straightforward Contact Forms

Think of your website’s contact forms as an extra step in your lead generation funnel. Prospects that take the time to contact you are genuinely interested in your offer and thus more likely to convert.

Lengthy, inquisitive contact forms may dishearten potential customers, so make sure to ask only for the minimum information you require to establish effective communication with prospects.

Nudge your website visitors further into contacting you by enabling the autofill feature that auto-populates the contact form with users’ personal info.

4. Optimize Your CTAs

Tell your users what you wish them to do by using unambiguous CTAs.

Make the buttons stand out from the rest of the page using contrasting colors to those used on the website. Be concise, clear, and straightforward, and avoid fancy or complex words in the button text. Optimizing your call to actions is an essential step in improving the quality of your leads, and it’s no wonder all creative digital agencies recommend this as one of the major things that you need to focus on.

5. Provide Social Proof

A study conducted in 2021 suggests that over 50% of consumers read online reviews before purchasing a product. Your potential leads will be looking for social proof of your brand, so why not provide it yourself?

Adding testimonials or reviews to your landing page can help establish trust with new potential customers. Of course, publishing genuine reviews from real previous customers goes without saying. If this step sounds too complicated, you can always find a top branding agency that can help you out.

6. Offer a Free Trial

With abundant options out there, it’s only natural your prospects will have a hard time deciding whom to put their trust in. Asking potential customers to marry into your family will prove challenging if you don’t take them out on a date.

Allow your prospects to experience your brand by providing them with a free software trial, demo product version, or any other short-term, mutually beneficial agreement.

7. Perform Regular A/B Testing

Understanding what works and what doesn’t is the key to landing page optimization.

For successful A/B testing, remember to alter a single page element at a time to determine what actually delivers better results. Test headlines, CTA buttons, page copy, etc., and integrate the best-performing ones into your landing page design.

The post Improve the Quality of your Leads with Landing Page Optimization appeared first on SiteProNews.