(Newswire.net — January 18, 2020) —
In order to have a high ranking webpage, you need to execute a well-planned SEO strategy. Thankfully, there are plenty of excellent free tools that can guide your SEO decisions. Combine these with the SEO tips below to get your webpages ranking higher in the search engine results.
#1 Put SEO analytics in place
Before implementing any SEO tactics you need to start analyzing and measuring. There are some fantastic free tools that you can use to get started. Two of the most important are Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Start by setting up your Google Analytics account and adding the tracking code snippet to your website. Use Google Search Console to identify which keywords you are currently ranking for and where you can improve your search engine rankings.
Finally, you can use a free keyword analysis tool like Uber Suggest to find new keywords to target. These tools will show you the monthly search volume and relative competitiveness of keywords in your industry.
#2 Install YoastSEO to improve your on-page SEO
YoastSEO is a free plugin that you can use on any WordPress website. It’s a simple way to ensure that all of your pages are optimized to target relevant keywords. To start you will need to install YoastSEO and then follow the setup wizard provided.
After this is completed; use YoastSEO to add a meta-title and meta-description for each page. You will want to include the target “focus” keyword in both the meta-title and meta-description. If you are unsure which keyword to target with your content, use a tool like Uber Suggest to identify relevant keywords that have good search volume and relatively low keyword difficulty.
Enter your focus keyword for that page in the field provided. YoastSEO will then provide a range of helpful suggestions to modify the content to improve your targeting of that keyword. When you complete one of these items you will receive a green tick.
#3 Use a clear URL structure
A clear URL structure will make it easier for both human visitors and GoogleBot to understand the topic of your content. A poorly designed URL structure would be:
www.acmeresources.com/184234234
If that page is selling office water coolers then an improved URL structure would be:
www.acmeresources.com/office-water-coolers
A couple of other tips for URL structure include; limit the URL to between two to four words and use hyphens to divide each word.
#4 Aim for fast-loading pages
Studies have shown that every 100 milliseconds delay in a page loading, leads to a 7% drop in conversion rates. (2) Users quickly become frustrated with slow loading websites and will navigate away. What’s more page load speed is a ranking factor because it harms the user experience. Slower loading pages ranking lower in the Google SERPs.
There are a number of tools that you can use to evaluate your website pages and look for areas of improvement. One of the best is Google’s own PageSpeed Insights: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
A slightly more user-friendly website performance tool for non-developers is GTMetrix: https://gtmetrix.com/. GTMetrix can provide you with plenty of actionable, insights to enhance your page load speed.
#5 Improve existing content with Google Search Console
As mentioned above, Google Search Console is a powerful SEO tool you can use to improve the rankings of your content. If you don’t already have a Google Search Console account, you can create one by visiting: https://search.google.com/search-console/
. Once you have your Google Search Console account setup, enter the URL of the page on your website you want to target. Next select the following tabs:
· Impressions
· Clicks
· Position
Sort all of the results by the number of impressions. This will show you which keywords that your page is currently ranking could potentially deliver the most search engine traffic. Next look for keywords where you have a position ranking of between 10 – 40. These are keywords where your page is currently between the 2 and 4th page of the SERPs.
Look at the current content on your page for that keyword and look at how it could be improved. This may mean covering the topic in greater detail, improving the quality of the content or including the target keywords in the headline or paragraph text.
The first five organic results receive on average 67.60% of all search traffic. In contrast, 91% of all webpages on the internet receive zero traffic from Google. (1) Google’s organic search traffic is high quality, targeted and best of all free. So you want to make sure your webpages are in the former, not the latter category.
Conclusion
Ranking your webpages higher in the Google search engine results won’t happen overnight. But by consistently identifying keyword opportunities, analyzing your webpages and making informed improvements, you can outrank your competitors and achieve a steady stream of free traffic. If you liked this article and would like to learn more, please see these Professional SEO Tips by Orange County company SEO Agency.