With so many search engine optimization tactics to try out, it’s hard to know which are worth your time and which won’t give you the results you were hoping for.
To thin out the herd, follow these strategies and see how they work to drive more people to your site, as well as increasing conversions in the process.
User-focused content writing: Forgetting about algorithms for once
Content writing is one of the cornerstones of SEO, but for the most part this has been done in order to appease the unknowable search engine algorithms that decide the fate of many sites.
Today, the good news is that you don’t need to be as focused on things like hitting the ideal keyword density or including the perfect smattering of outbound links.
Instead, you need to focus on what the user wants to read, not what the algorithm wants to see. This works because algorithms have advanced to the point that they are far more aligned with user preferences than in the past.
The downside is that this means finding content writers who are up to the task. Quality trumps quantity, and being relevant about your target audience is of paramount importance.
Barnacle SEO: Attaching yourself to a large website
The concept of barnacle SEO is an intriguing one, and is a technique that’s expanded further in the age of social media.
In the past this would mean making sure that your site was listed on local business search solutions, like those offered by Google and Yahoo.
This is still important, but it has since become necessary to also maintain a social media presence on popular platforms as well.
The reason behind all of this is that being linked to from high authority sites will help drive traffic to your own pages, even if this means customers are clicking through from elsewhere first.
The issue with this is that there’s tons of competition on these platforms as well, and you’ll need to use additional optimization techniques to make this work in your favor.
Experiential SEO: Making your site as accessible and intuitive as possible
It’s not just your content that needs to be user-focused, but the entire design of your site. The more accessible and usable each page, the better it will rank because it will be able to capture and convert more visitors, rather than bringing them in only for them to bounce right out again.
The art of UX is a complex, multifaceted one, but it’s well worth thinking about, even though it takes time, effort and money to achieve optimally.
One excellent example is that of mobile-friendliness. If you aren’t capable of catering to visitors using smartphones and tablets, you’re cutting out the majority of your audience.
You also need to think about those visitors with different needs, such as people who have impaired vision and are thus using reading software to interpret pages. Adding metadata to images to describe them will make your site much more amenable to them, and also boost your search rank as well.
Performance-related SEO: Prioritizing page load speed
If your site doesn’t load quickly, it will suffer ranking penalties and also put off new visitors who won’t be willing to wait around for more than a few seconds.
Trimming the fat and making sure every page is delivered swiftly and seamlessly is a tried and tested technique for dealing with this dilemma.
It ties into the role of UX in modern SEO, and so this reveals the truth of all modern strategies that work; the user must be in the center of what you do.
Interesting Related Article: “5 Practical Benefits of SEO for Smaller Online Businesses“
