Effective SEO Techniques to Drive Organic Traffic
Google’s getting smarter and more powerful all the time — not only at analyzing and understanding web pages, but also at how effective it is at keeping people within its framework.
Why? The better Google is at answering queries within the SERPs, or directing users to ads instead of organic listings, the more money it makes.
It goes without saying that your goal is to get your website to the top of this list. Higher ranking equals more organic traffic and should boost the overall ROI of your SEO strategy.
Here are 9 SEO methods that will help your site dominate the SERPs in 2020.
1) Improve User Experience Across Your Entire Site
poor-quality sites are less likely to rank. And Google’s getting better at determining site quality.
If your website looks untrustworthy, outdated, amateurish or is slow to load, potential users are likely to bounce back to the SERPs and click on another result. You’ve lost a user and a potential conversion, and your bounce rate of affected pages is going to increase.
Although Google hasn’t officially declared it, there is evidence to suggest that the search engine giant does reward sites that have low bounce rates with better rankings:
2) Optimize for Voice Search
With 25% of U.S. adults now owning a smart speaker (a number that is expected to hit 55% by 2022), it’s safe to say that voice search is definitely something you should be factoring into your SEO strategy.
Here are a few more juicy voice search stats:
- 72% of people who own voice-activated speakers say that their devices are used as part of their daily routines
- 65% of people who own an Amazon Echo or Google Home can’t imagine to going back to the days before they had a smart speaker
- 2 in 5 adults use voice search once daily
- 25% of individuals ages 16-24 use voice search on mobile
- Voice commerce sales reached $1.8 billion last year (and predicted to reach $40 billion by 2022)
- 22% of U.S. smart speaker owners have purchased something using their devices
According to Backlinko, 40.7% of voice search results are taken from featured snippets, but bear in mind that this figure will constantly be changing. The remaining results could be extracted from anywhere on a web page.
3) Design for Mobile First
While voice search is important, time has shown that it’s not quite as essential a tool as we predicted — especially when it comes to conversions.
Whether this means voice search will never be critical to e-commerce marketers, or whether it simply needs to evolve, remains to be seen. But what we do know is that for the time being, the majority of searches — and half of all purchases — take place on mobile. Moreover:
- 77% of Americans own a smartphone
- 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last 6 months
- 40% of all e-commerce purchases during the 2018 holiday season were made on a smartphone
- 80% of shoppers used a mobile phone inside of a physical store to either look up product reviews, compare prices or find alternative store locations
More importantly, Google’s gone mobile first.
4) Write Longer Content
An SEO study by Backlinko concluded that longer content tends to accumulate more back links, which can often translate to better rankings and more traffic.
However, writing 2,000+ words for every blog post is not for everyone. It’s not only intensive and time-consuming, but it’s usually not necessary.
Remember what we said about satisfying user intent? Few search queries are from people looking to read a long blog post. They might only need a few words or sentences to get their answer.
5) Take Advantage of YouTube SEO
Videos, predominantly from YouTube, are a common feature in the SERPs.
YouTube is:
- The most popular video site on the Internet, with 2 billion monthly active users watching 1 billion hours of video every day
- The second most popular social media platform
- The second largest search engine
- The second most popular website in general:
6) Create a Diverse Back link Portfolio
Even in 2020, links are still a very important part of search engine optimization. Keep in mind, though, that quality matters. Spammy links can hurt your site. Links from very low DA sites are unlikely to pass much value, while links from older domains have been shown to pass more value than those from newer sites.
7) Never, Ever Overlook Technical SEO
You could be doing everything right, but if your site’s not technically sound, it may well be under performing.
Here are a few advanced search engine optimization techniques you need to consider regarding technical SEO.
A) Ensure that Your Entire Site Loads on HTTPS
B) Enable AMP for Mobile
C) Invest in Crawling Software
D) Correct Your Semantic Markups
E) Fix “Page Not Found” 404 Errors by Redirecting URLs
8) Target Local Searchers with Landing Pages and Listings
Almost half (46%) of all searches on Google are from people looking for local information. That could include:
- Local shops
- Opening hours
- Telephone numbers
- Addresses
So, if you have a brick-and-mortar business, you can’t neglect local SEO and listings.
Here are three huge SEO techniques to capture potential customers who live locally. After all, 72% of people who perform a Google search for local businesses online end up visiting stores within a five mile radius!
9) Measure SEO Performance
Reporting and analytics are two critical elements of SEO — both of which are indispensable to improving your overall marketing strategies.
Effective reporting means that you can understand key questions such as:
- What content really appealed to your customer?
- What part of the website had the most UX issues?
- Which page was the least (or most) visited, and why?
- Which on-page SEO changes resulted in the highest rankings?
- Which style of keyword should you focus on in future?
It’s tricky to understand those intricacies (and use them to your advantage to make further improvements) without regularly monitoring and reporting your results.
Source Content – https://www.singlegrain.com/seo/effective-seo-techniques-that-work/