It’s no brainer that SEO is a highly dynamic field. If you are relying on outdated tactics, you would be outnumbered. Keeping up with the new trends is essential for anyone with a web presence. Fortunately, some trends haven’t changed, they have simply improved. So, it’s likely you just have to improve your current SEO strategy only.
Steps to improve your SEO Ranking in 2020
Take note that SEO in 2020 has gotten more complex. It takes more than creating quality content and adding keywords in the sales copy to improve your site’s visibility. Can’t figure out what and where to get started with? Don’t fret, this guide reveals all the information necessary to improve your brand’s search ranking? Let’s begin…
1: Write Skyscraper Content
Content is always going to be a part of SEO practices. But plain high-quality content isn’t enough. Work on writing skyscraper content. It’s an inbound marketing technique that revolves around finding a topic performing well on social media and search engines. The key is to use reverse engineering for creating content that is better than the existing one out there on the web.
Let’s say you are writing a blog post on “Qualities of the best marketing recruitment agency.” Improve your content in the following ways:
- If the existing content includes 25 tips, your content should include 30 or more
- Add newer images, statistics, or information to update your piece
- Make the piece better with visuals
- Go into depth and write details
2: Work on the Technical SEO Part
Get the technical SEO or On-page SEO right. Here’s what must be done:
- Add keywords in the page titles and make sure they are relevant
- Use header tags for adding content hierarchy (i.e. H1, H2, and H3)
- Create a unique meta description for each page and include keywords in them
- In the image alt tags, use keyword phrases to show how they are relevant to the content
- Use schema markup for letting Google know about the type of content produced
3: Make the Most Out of Social Signals
Although social shares are not a direct ranking factor, social signals matter. The more social shares you get, the more it will help generate traffic to the page.
Therefore, make your content easy to share by including a share button. This way, when a visitor lands on your website and likes your content, if there are social buttons, they will be encouraged to share your content.
4: Optimize Your Content for Voice Search
In 2019, 20{e68b7490c33b031e176c2bf33b49addad56d24bced82f0be9f22b910d6b7f66c} of the mobile queries were voice searches. These searches have become an integral part of SEO. Instead of typing the queries, people like to use the voice search feature to run a Google search. If you have noticed, these searches are very specific. They answer the user’s question directly.
Therefore, a part of your content strategy must also include optimizing it for voice search. For instance, bullets increase the chances of ranking voice queries. Also, most of the voice queries are local.
5: Use Featured Snippets
The featured snippet is the summary of an answer to the user’s search query. The result of the query is displayed at the top of the SERP result.
Although featured snippets have been around for a while, they have now become a significant part of Google’s search engine result page. This way, the user doesn’t have to click open the blog post or URL to find the answer to their query. They get the answer directly from the SERP.
Better start optimizing your content for featured snippets. A study by Ahref says that these snippets get more traffic than the 1st organic search result. To make the most of it, answer question-based search queries in your content.
6: Offer Digital Experience
People now want digital experience. About 44 percent of companies have started adopting the digital-first approach to offer a better customer experience. Your focus must be on the user experience to help them find the information they need. In other words, make it easier for your visitors to proceed to the next step.
How to offer the best user experience, you ask? Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and identify what roadblocks in a smooth UX. Sometimes your message isn’t clear. If that’s the problem, it could be increasing the bounce rate hence negatively affecting the ranking of your site.
7: Content-Length Matters
When it comes to content, quality still beats quantity but now webpages that contain lengthier contain rank better than those with limited content. To make your blog post appear in the top 10 results, make sure it’s well-researched as 2000 words. Long content should be filled with engaging images, infographics, informative, crisp, full of headings, bullets, and digestible paragraphs.
Conclusion
The thing with SEO is when you think you have fully understood it, new algorithms appear. For now, follow this guide and stay updated with the latest trends to work on the SEO of your IT staffing site, eCommerce store, blog, or any other online business.
