Search Engine Optimization is the new term on the Internet. When you read the articles online to start a new blog or have your business seen, you come across SEO.
Let us not
only explore how to improve your website ranking with Search Engine
Optimization but also understand what is SEO?
Are you looking for
tips to improve your website or start one? I have plenty of articles, which
will help you perform better online.
- Blogging
Tips
- How
To Select The Best Web Hosting Platform
- How
to Start Blogging in 2022?
What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimization which is for short called SEO. SEO is
a process or method used to increase organic traffic to your website from
search engines.
In the other words, SEO is a process of making your website more
attractive to search engines and thus, appearing on top of the search results.
These SEO processes can be classified into two methods:
- On-Page
SEO Method
- Off-Page
SEO Method
Let us see in-depth what each of these two methods means:
On-Page SEO Method
On-page SEO is the optimization of items on your website. This
optimization includes keyword optimization and internal linking. So that you
can rank higher for the keywords you target. On-page SEO is the one in your
control.
Off-Page SEO Method
Off-page SEO is an effort, such as through social media marketing
or influencer marketing. This method is used to generate links and ratings, so
your site rises in credibility and rank. Off-page SEO is out of your control.
Why You Should Care About SEO?
If you want to find the information about products, services, or
new stuff you just heard from a friend?
Well you go on the Internet and search, right?
What do you do after your search engine displays a huge amount
of results? You probably click on the first few results. Then read it. If that
does not satisfy you, you check other results.
If you are thinking what does this has to do with my caring for
SEO. Then, it definitely has.
Just looking at your own habits, you see how ranking in those
first few results of a search makes you more visible to the world.
Let
us take an example:
What if I do not do SEO on Insta Code Blog? Probably I have
written better articles but my competitor’s article will be shown on top. Those
people trying to find the best article will never know my article exists.
When you provide services, products, or information to your
customer, it is essential you are seen online. That is why you must care about
search engine optimization. Else you lose your potential customer to the
competition.
Why Do Search Engines Care About SEO?
Why should Google, such a huge company care if I do search
engine optimization or not? If you think that, then they do care. Not only
Google but any search engine that you use.
Google knows that people search for different kinds of stuff
online. These terms/words are called “Keywords”.
Google sells the space to show ads for such keywords. This is
one of the huge businesses for Google.
When we use SEO techniques in our website, we want traffic
without paying money to Google, right? So the best result will be shown below
the advertisements. So we aim to be on top of this result list.
Still, why do they care?
What would happen if Google Search starts to show any random or
poor information in their first page results? Well, people will stop trusting
their quality.
Just as we aim to provide the best information to our viewers,
search engine companies want to do the same.
How Does SEO Work?
So now you know why search engines work so hard to provide you
with great results and why you should care, we can talk about how SEO works in
a little more detail.
Did you know Google uses over 200 factors to rank your page?
There are bots or also called spiders, which are automated
scripts that visit your website. When it visits your website it will check for
various factors. These are the factors that you set up in On-Page SEO Method
mentioned earlier.
They
collect things like page
speed, title tags, social signals, internal linking, backlinks,
and so on. There are both on-page and off-page ranking factors that determine
how well your site is optimized, and therefore how well it ranks.
5 Ways To Improve Your Website Ranking
After understanding the SEO, let us now see the ways to improve
your website ranking with Search Engine Optimization.
1. Improve Your Page Loading Speed
Page Load Time is the time taken to load one single page. This
factor plays a crucial role in your ranking because:
- Search
Engine automatically ranks LOWER the page will longer load time.
- Longer
the load time means people will leave your page quickly. Thus, making
search engines understand that your contents are not engaging.
However, if your page loads fast, visitors’ time retention will
increase, and Google will ensure you rank higher on their search engine.
Optimize your page speed and server response time to give
visitors a pleasant experience that will ensure they revisit your website.
Your web
hosting is one factor to determine page load speed. You can read my article
on How to Select the Best Hosting Platform to get the best
service for you.
2. High-Quality Contents
“Content is King”
When you create an article, you just don’t do it for sake of
creating. You need to consider the following factors:
- You
need to constantly keep your content up to date. It is not that you need
to write once and forget it.
- Original
Content. Yes, the search engines will not rank the copied contents. After
all your viewers want to read something new.
- Informative
Content. This includes the content that explains in depth. Which means you
have longer articles and engages user further.
3. Use Keywords
As I have explained in how SEO works section. The keyword plays
an important part in ranking.
When you write your content, you write it around keywords. You
need to understand it and have focused on it.
For instance, this article is focused on the keyword “Improve
your Website Ranking”. So all the details flow around this point.
Asides from following the keyword density formula, here are a
few other rules for you to follow:
- Make
sure to add keywords to your header tag and image captions.
- Insert
keywords naturally into your content.
- Using
long-tail keywords should be prioritized.
Remember overdoing the use of keywords will negatively impact
your ranking.
4. Optimize Your Website For Mobile Devices
It is already the 2020s and you have no excuse to make your
website for desktops only.
More people are using mobile devices than PCs now. So if your
website is not ready for the mobile/tablet then you are missing out.
Search engines recognize this and have begun to rank sites
accordingly. Because a website without mobile phone optimization will
negatively affect its visitor’s user experience, and search engines care about
their users.
5. Use Outbound And Inbound Links
You are not alone.
Using outbound links is one of the great ways to increase your
website ranking as well as credibility.
When the bots from the search engines go through your content,
it will see your references to pages outside your own website. Simply link to
relevant, authoritative, and trustworthy sources when you make certain claims,
this will back up your content and have your visitors come back for more
content they can trust.
Just like external links, internal linking is also advised when
using an outbound link, so visitors can find similar and relevant content on
your website.
BONUS: Create Sitemap
The sitemap is very important. It is one place where all the
different pages of your website are found. It is like a Map for your website.
I will
show you how I use the plugin in my WordPress website to auto-generate the sitemap.
How I Improve My Website Ranking
It is time for the truth.
For my website, I ensure that the search engine optimization is
done. I use the five methods mentioned above to achieve it.
Apart from that, I use some tools to make the optimization task
easier. This tool helps me while writing the content.
YOAST is the most
trusted and used SEO plugin for WordPress websites. I cannot agree more. If you
are just starting out you can use the free version. Even with the free version,
you can achieve a higher ranking on Google.
How do I know that? Because I did it. Yes, I was surprised at it
but I did.
Try searching “Upload Flutter Project to Github”. A page from
this website will be on top (if not in the top 5) depending on your location.
You can
see that article at Uploading Your Flutter Project to GitHub.
I hope I have explained all that you want to know regarding how
to improve your website rank with search engine optimization.