There are a lot of ways to improve your website’s rankings on Google, but some methods are more effective than others. What do you want your site to rank for? Put yourself in the shoes of your audience — what words would they search with to find your content?

The following five tips can help you improve your site’s visibility on Google and increase organic traffic without having to spend a ton of money on paid advertising.

1. Start with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The first step in search engine optimization by Impressive Digital – SEO Agency in Dallas is actually to make sure your website is worth optimizing! Some companies spend thousands of dollars on fancy software that they use to measure how their site stacks up against the competition. 

2. Improve your site speed

Site speed is a ranking factor for Google. If your site is too slow it may affect your rankings and bounce rate. To find out how fast your site loads, you can use Google PageSpeed Insights. This tool will tell you what needs to be fixed and how you can improve it. It also comes with a PageSpeed Score that informs you about the current performance of your web page.

3. Optimize for mobile

Mobile has been a ranking factor since April 2015 and affects mobile searches in all languages worldwide. Google rolls out mobile-first indexing in 2018 and if you haven’t yet optimized your website for mobile, now is the time to do it.

To find out more about optimizing for mobile check out this guide by Google: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide.

4. Optimize image alt text

The image alt text describes an image on your website to help screen readers understand what the image is about and give context to search engine crawlers.

5. Concentrate on two or three keywords for each page

If you’re trying to rank for more than a couple of terms on a single page, you’re going to have a much harder time. Why? Because it dilutes your link equity across multiple keywords, the keywords with lower volume will be impossible to rank for.

For example, if you’re targeting “Florida real estate” and “best real estate agent in Tampa,” Google may see that as two different topics. You’re better off creating separate pages for each topic (see my disagreement with Rand).

6. Don’t overdo keyword insertion and rich snippets

Keyword stuffing is bad, but so is keyword insertion at scale. Using rich snippets can also be risky business if you’re not careful. Yes, they help with click-through rates, but they can also get you into trouble if your pages are thin and of low quality.

7. Strive for simplicity

It’s easy to make a mistake when building complex pages that use multiple moving parts. It’s not easy to build simple pages that address the needs of users and provide an outstanding experience. But it’s worth the effort because simple sites build trust, and trust is important for rankings.

Suggested:

8 Ways To Improve Your WordPress Website’s Customer Service.

The post 7 Simple Ways to Improve Your Website’s Google Rankings appeared first on Tricky Enough.

Modern web crawlers used by most search engines index your whole resource, rather than its most recent pages. In simple words, a ton of foul fish lying in your cellar for years will definitely make your living room on the ground floor smell funny, especially if you have completely forgotten about it. Below, we discuss 5 alarming signs that may suggest that your old website pages require an update. If you encounter some of these indicators, chances are it is time for a major clean-up.

1. Your Freshness Score Is Too Low

Search engines use crawlers to continuously reappraise your website quality and adjust its position in search outputs. Content ‘freshness’ is one of the most critical characteristics, since sites that have not been updated for many months are less likely to possess up-to-date and accurate information sought by most users. If your SEO specialist says that your PageRank score on Google has lowered substantially, this is a clear sign that your materials need an update. While publishing new articles can require a lot of effort on your part, revising your old publications usually takes up less time. Hence, this is a great way to quickly boost your ‘freshness score’ without breaking the bank.

Additionally, regular updates actually increase the ‘interest’ of Google crawlers checking all of your materials every time and increasing their PageRank results. This means that the piecemeal approach of devoting 15 minutes per day to revising your old content is actually more powerful than the constantly delayed intention to change everything in one sitting. Start small and watch for improvements as you proceed to identify the optimal balance in terms of revision scope and SEO results.

2. The Keywords Are Inconsistent

When you are just starting out, you probably want to just publish interesting content. You view every new article or page as the next major step in your website creation, rather than a small element of a long-term development strategy. While this approach is fine during the initial phase, there comes a moment when you simply do not understand why you are not attracting the traffic you want despite your best efforts. Keywords are one of the reasons your resource may not be ranked in the desired categories in search outputs or get lower Google rankings. This is the moment you need to use some specialized SEO tools to explore the keyword focus of all website materials. 

Imagine that you used to write about PC hardware and computer assembly tips several years ago. However, your recent materials are focused on video editing and audio production for Mac users. In this scenario, it is highly probable that some of the older pages may be producing different keywords than your newer ones. To avoid these problems, you may need to re-write your past articles and posts in order to link them with your new focus. Try changing some of these materials to see if you start getting more quality traffic in your desired search category.

3. New Visitors Are Dissatisfied

So, a popular YouTube blogger or a renowned industry expert has recently mentioned in their interview that they find your website materials extremely helpful in their line of work. Such sincere recommendations are called ‘earned media’ in e-marketing and are considered some of the best ways to promote your resource. With great traffic comes great responsibility, as thousands of new visitors will critically appraise your website. Many of them can leave dissatisfied if they find its contents outdated, its articles full of spelling mistakes, and its URL links broken. This scenario may be especially problematic if the original referral guided them to some older materials, rather than the recently published ones. If you get mostly negative reviews or direct messages from new visitors, it is clearly time for an update.

Some of the popular problems with old website pages include the lack of modern presentation instruments and limited mobile-friendliness. Have you considered recording audio podcasts for some older articles to let people listen to them while on the move? How about putting some infographics right under the page heading to instantly demonstrate the key findings of the article? You need to keep in mind that new visitors can start browsing your website from any page or choose to read all materials from the earliest date, especially if you publish some connected materials progressing in a longitudinal manner.

4. The Bounce Rates Are Higher for Old Pages

Bounce rate is a simple Google Analytics metric reflecting the share of people leaving your website after visiting a single page on it. If this problem affects both old and new posts, this may be a sign of the keyword targeting inefficiencies mentioned earlier. However, higher bounce rates for older website pages is a completely different problem. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Are older pages on my website optimized for mobile users reading them from smartphone devices?
• Do they match the loading speed expectations of modern visitors?
• Do these pages contain valuable links to newer pages convincing the users to stay on your resource and continue using it in the future?
• Is the published information still relevant and accurate?

In many cases, adjusting the loading times and links freshness may be sufficient to decrease the bounce rate for your old website pages. If this does not resolve the issue, try updating their content to ensure that it is in line with visitor expectations.

5. Conversion and Engagement Rates Are Too Low

Most websites are focused on engaging their visitors and motivating them to perform some actions, such as:

• Following the company on social media;
• Providing an email for newsletters;
• Purchasing some paid materials;
• Buying paid subscriptions,
• etc.

If older pages produce lower conversion rates than newer ones and have low engagement indicators, this means that they need to be updated or refreshed. Some options in this sphere may include:

• Focusing on engagement rather than information provision;
• Adding motivating phrases to stimulate subscriptions or website e-store purchases;
• Insert links to other website pages in order to link their content with newer materials.

Ideally, all pages of your website should follow the same ‘pull marketing’ plan, starting with interesting and fresh content and convincing your visitors to ask for more. A very popular idea in this field is the provision of some summary tables, short educational courses, or audio recordings of website materials via email upon subscription. If your older pages do not follow a consistent engagement and conversion plan, now is the right time to introduce greater consistency across your platform. Many website owners fail to maintain a coherent focus for all website materials and do not understand what outputs they seek to produce beyond basic advertising income. Revising your old and new posts is a great way to get some valuable insights into this field and better understand why you are running your resource the way you do and what alternative strategies you may pursue. 

While many tactics can be used to address the above-mentioned problems, you need to use them in a consistent manner to minimize unnecessary expenses. To achieve good results, we would recommend applying one instrument at a time and measuring the results with the same set of metrics. If you suggest that the keywords inconsistency may be your core problem, focus on this issue for one month, and observe the differences in traffic, engagement, and other indicators. Try to also introduce changes gradually to realize the effects of small and regular updates mentioned earlier. This way, you can see if the described strategies work for your resource specifically. Keep in mind that the audience of every website is different, and your strategy should be practice-based, rather than copied from industry leaders or competing platforms.

Suggested:

Should You Optimize Your Existing Web Pages?

The post 5 Alarming Signs That Your Old Website Pages Require an Update appeared first on Tricky Enough.

There is no doubt in the fact that Google holds the topmost position in the search market with a 65% percent share and this makes it very much imperative to make your business on top in search results. The prime objective behind a full-fledged Google My Business is to enable local businesses to render to their potential clients what they’re up to and how they strive to cater to their needs. So, you shouldn’t take it lightly as it could be of immense worth. And as it is pretty much simple to do, there shouldn’t be any delay in its maintenance.

With Google’s new 3 Pack, the significance of local search results has only raised like never before. Look at a few of the screenshots below for better reference.
Don’t they look familiar? The latest 3 Pack appears on the top of organic Google search results even on local searches. It means a lot to have these 4 listings and the only way to make the most out of them is to have a right-directional SEO. And this is why it becomes necessary to create and maintain a healthy Google My Business page.

It is completely shocking to see that many businesses don’t pay heed to the information mentioned on their profiles on Google My Business. This way they are supposed to lose out crucial clients. Let’s have a look at ways through which you can optimize your page.

Get access to your Google My Business Dashboard

Let’s say that your business is already verified. Now you need to move to Google.com/business to look over to your business dashboard. Login and you would get a screen.

It is Google My Business Dashboard that gives folks all kinds of information such as traffic and impressions of over the last 30 days, customer reviews. Here you can choose to share these elements right on your Google+ and YouTube accounts.

Choose Edit given in the top right corner to access your Business info page. From here you can ensure success to your page.

Optimize Your Google My Business Page Info

Once you fill all the mentioned fields, the business info bar on top would reach 100%. Don’t take a break in between as this is super important.

These fields include:

Business Name

This is where you should mention your real business name. Do not embed in extra words just with a purpose to get some sort of help in regard to SEO. Take care of spaces between words so as to avoid any language mistakes.

Address

Your address and regions would come out immediately from verifying your business information. But if you wish to change, just hover and click to edit. If you are a local business that caters to a closer-knit geographical region, keep the geographic area small so your results are concentrated to those regions only.

Contact Info

Make sure the contact information you put here is genuine and reachable. For best results, use a local number in regard to the phone number.

Category

This is truly important. This is where most of the businesses commit mistakes that further affect rankings. You can also choose to list multiple categories that would certainly add value but make sure it is not spam. Choose many categories that are relevant to your business.

Also Read: Local SEO Company in India

Hours

Here you need to mention your working hours for each day.

Introduction

This is more likely an opportunity to mention something relevant for your business and the services it offers. You can also choose to link out from your introduction to various sections of your actual website.

Manage Your Photos

Go back to the main dashboard and click on “manage photos”

Identity Photos

There are several sections in The Business Photos section. The first section is called “Identity Photos” and this is very important. You need to upload 3 photos – A Profile Photo, A Logo Photo, and a Cover Photo.

Always remember that these photos may appear in search results, so, always choose good photos that exhibit a strong appeal of your business.

Interior Photos

Here you can display your office, shop, and workshop photos that would define what your ambiance looks like.

Exterior Photos

If you want customers to know what your place of business looks like from the outside, this would be the place to put recognizable photos so they can find it.

Also Read: Best PPC Marketing Company In India

Photos at work

This section gives you an opportunity to exhibit more about your business, its philosophy, working culture, people, job profiles, and a lot more.

Team Photos

Here you can show the picture of your people working together as a team.

Additional Photos

If you’ve any photo that doesn’t fit perfectly to the above categories, but still relevant for your business, this is where it should go.

Summary

The above-given steps may be of immense help for you to make your Google My Business page up and running. By maintaining it properly, you would make your business appear in local search results. Always follow best practices when it comes to complete and maintain your business page.

The post How To Ensure That Google My Business Page Rank High? appeared first on Tricky Enough.

Many content owners mistakenly believe that SEO is no longer relevant in 2020. SEO continues to evolve – which means it remains very relevant for determining a website’s organic search rankings on Google. Therefore, if you want your content to reach your target audience, you must follow these best practices to maximize your website’s Google rankings.

1. Publish Original Content

Every piece of content published on your website must be original. If you publish content found elsewhere online, the plagiarized content won’t show up in any search results. That means Google won’t be sending any visitors to your pages with republished content. Also, your site could earn a Google penalty and get banned from the search engine altogether.

2. Publish High-Quality Content

Do not publish poor-quality content on your website. First, it won’t help your Google rankings so it will just be a waste of time and effort. Secondly, if your visitors don’t consider your content high-quality and engaging, you will have a low conversion rate. Therefore, you must focus on publishing high-quality, valuable content that your visitors will enjoy reading. The goal of your content should be to convert visitors into customers.

3. Use Main Keywords Early in Content

Your most important target keywords should be placed early in your content. However, your keywords should fit naturally into it. Your site will get penalized if its content looks like spam – which will hurt its Google rankings. A good SEO rule of thumb is to use your focus keywords in the first sentence and once again somewhere else in the first paragraph.

4. Offer Visitors a Good User Experience

Good SEO is about creating a good user experience for your website’s visitors. If your site has broken links, confusing navigation, or outdated content, then its Google rankings will suffer. Therefore, you should continually focus on improving your visitors’ user experience. Use a 404 checker and hire an SEO consultant to help you (if needed).

5. Improve Your Website’s Loading Speed

A big part of your website’s user experience (and SEO) is how long visitors have to wait for your site to load. Sites with slow load times (longer than five seconds) experience a high bounce rate because most visitors will leave. A high bounce rate due to a slow load time will hurt your Google rankings. There are several free website speed test tools available to check your site’s performance. An SEO consultant or web developer can help you improve your site’s loading time if it’s an issue.

6. Optimize Your Title Tags for SEO

Don’t overlook your content’s title tags when it comes to optimizing your site for higher Google rankings. Google will read your title tags to determine the topic of your content. An SEO-friendly title tag should be no more than 60 characters long and contain one target keyword.

7. Optimize Your Image Tags for SEO

An image tag is used to tell Google was your image is about. Just like title tags, these should be under 60 characters in length. You should also use one keyword in each image tag.

8. Build Internal Links

Creating internal links between your web pages is a good way to boost your site’s SEO by getting your new web pages indexed faster. For example, when Google crawls your site, internal links help the search engine discover your new content. However, you should use internal links to build links between pages with relevant content.

9. Only Accept High-Quality Backlinks to Your Website

Backlinks are a great way to improve your website’s Google rankings. However, the key is that they should be backlinks from high-quality websites. Unfortunately, if spammy sites link to your site, it will hurt your SEO. Luckily, there is a disavow tool in the Google Search Console that allows webmasters the option of disallowing a link to prevent it from hurting the site’s SEO.

10. Track Website Stats with Google Search Console

Every webmaster should set up a Google Search Console account to analyze their site’s traffic. A few of the key stats you can analyze from Google Search Console are your site’s traffic sources, page visitors, the length of time spent on a page, and the bounce rate. You can also use Google Search Console to create a sitemap so that the search engine crawls your entire site.

Conclusion

In short, if you want to maximize your Google rankings, you must publish original, high-quality, engaging content that your visitors will want to read. Make sure to use your most important keyword(s) early in your content (a couple of times in the first paragraph). Your website should load quickly and offer visitors a good user experience. Take advantage of title and image tags by optimizing them for SEO. Use internal links to improve your site’s SEO. Lastly, analyze your web traffic with Google Search Console.

Suggested:

How to Incorporate Best Practices of SEO into Copy?

The post 10 SEO Best Practices for Better Google Rankings appeared first on Tricky Enough.

While most businesses understand that a part of their content marketing strategies needs to include keeping a watch on Google’s search technology and how they can maintain a good page ranking, the task can be quite stressful as all the efforts can become unstuck because Google has released a new search algorithm update. The fear is all too real because Google does release hundreds of updates, most of them minor but a few of them are so radical that they can significantly impact the SERP rankings and lead to a substantial loss in organic traffic generation. A recent survey has revealed that the number one fear among B2B marketers is the concern about search algorithm changes. The concern is not unfounded because websites do drop off the radar and lose traffic due to unexpected Google updates coming into play. Because Google, typically, is not in the habit of announcing its updates, even the most experienced SEO experts can be caught unprepared, however, attempting to understand the priorities and value system of Google can help in putting together a robust SEO strategy.

Google Changes Its Search Algorithm Continually 

While there is a lot of noise when Google announces a major update that can affect search results significantly, the world’s leading search engine keeps on tweaking its algorithms thousands of times in a year. According to estimates, Google made over 3,200 changes to its algorithm in the space of just one year. Most of the updates are subtle and the impact may not be even noticeable, but sometimes, the updates can shake up SEO. The different types of Google updates are:

Official Named Updates:

These are updates that are formally announced by Google and sometimes even given names. The updates are discussed the most in SEO forums and journals and are typically released to tackle specific problems that the earlier version of the algorithm encountered. For example, Panda devalued low-quality content and Penguin penalized link spam by driving the sites down in the rankings. It is usual for Google to keep on improving the stated goals of the updates by making continual improvements for a long time thereafter.

Broad Core Updates:

These more common updates are announced by Google, however, without any specific information on their purpose. They get the SEO community talking and giving unofficial names that stick, for example, Pigeon, Medic, etc. The reluctance of Google to disclose details is attributed to the fact that Google thinks that it would be counterproductive and reveal too much on how its algorithm functions. Much of the information available on the impact of these updates is actually the result of SEO professionals analyzing the impact on numerous websites and identifying commonalities.

Smaller Functionality Updates:

Very frequently, Google releases updates that improve specific functionalities like giving priority to sites with faster loading speeds, boosting rankings of sites that are optimized for mobiles, when and how featured snipes are displayed, etc. Sometimes Google announces these updates but many times it just releases them silently and leaves it to SEO professionals to recognize and analyze them.

Tips on Maintaining Your Ranking Superiority in 2025 and Beyond

SEO practitioners should evaluate the impact of each Google update and find out if their SEO strategy has to be changed to meet the new challenges. However, most of the time, the updates only serve to reinforce the value system of Google and stay true to what Google wants to do to serve its users with content that is accurate, relevant, and value-added. To this end, even if it is not possible to predict the exact type of update Google is planning to release in the future, you can count on the following tips to keep your online visibility consistently high:

• Make the website mobile responsive: With half of the global Internet traffic already coming from mobiles, it is evident that Google will give priority to searches conducted on mobile devices. It is vital to switch over to a responsive web design that ensures that your website displays equally well on the much smaller mobile screens as it does on desktops.
• Ensure the website loads fast: With bandwidth increasing, Internet users, especially those who are using mobiles on-the-go are becoming increasingly impatient. According to studies, if a site does not load within three seconds, more than half of the visitors abandon it and move on to some other website for the information requirements. According to Forbes, quoting Unbounce data, as many as 70% of consumers say that the speed of loading of the webpage is a primary factor affecting their willingness to buy.
• Identify what the target audience cares about: More than page ranking, good SEO is about getting displayed for the right queries. It is critical to perform keyword, audience, and competitor research to obtain insights into the concerns and types of queries that your audience is most likely to have.
• Create high-quality content: Discovering and delivering content that addresses the search intent of users is the prime intention of Google. It is also the reason for SEO to drive content marketing. If you take care to address the needs of your target audience with content that satisfies them, your rankings are bound to rise.

Write to Satisfy the Needs of Humans Not to Beat Algorithms

Many of the updates released by Google in recent years are a reaction to attempts by smart marketers to manipulate the system by leveraging weaknesses in the algorithm in web design and content creation. However, by putting real human needs before everything, you can automatically insulate yourself better against updates in the future. However, this does not mean ignoring SEO trends and approaching your content creation strategically. In the current search environment, this includes optimizing content for voice search and featured snippets, among others.

Conclusion

Any attempt in refining your approach to Dental SEO to counter the impact of Google updates should begin with understanding how you rank at present for your target keywords and researching what wins the best rankings. This is not a one-time exercise but a continuous study because results can and do change very frequently. By analyzing your data, you can gain important insights into SEO because you can get to know what works and what does not. Use the information gathered by website analytics to maintain the focus on the target audience and improve your SEO.

The post How to Prevent Google Algorithm Updates from Affecting Your Page Rankings in 2025? appeared first on Tricky Enough.

Several times a year there is a disturbance in the Force. Or Google rankings, same thing. At any rate, it causes immense unrest for SEO professionals across the world as we see massive fluctuations in rankings. Some good, some bad, depending on the Google core update.

Dealing with these updates as a form of best practice is vital for SEO professionals, as a badly-handled update can be the downfall of any SEO campaign.

So, with that in mind, here is the best way to identify and deal with any ranking fluctuations which may occur following a Google core Update.

Monitor the Fluctuations

The first step to dealing with a ranking fluctuation post-Google Update is to do nothing. No, really. Making quick, panicked, changes can be the worst thing to do following any change in rankings. But especially following an update.

And so, the best course of action in these cases is inaction.

Monitor your rankings, note what pages and keywords are dropping in particular and try to determine any correlations between the pages. Are they all related to a similar topic? Are the pages with poor links, thin content, etc.? In most cases, there will be a determining factor which has contributed to the post-update drop.

You may not be able to identify the issue outright based on your site data alone, but it is always important to monitor and try to understand the drop as far as possible. As, then, you will be able to determine whether or not there is a correlation with the findings from across the industry.

Which you can discover via some quick research… 

Research the Update

When a Google Update drops there is a lot of chatter online about the results. Losers, winners and all those in between will share their data across forums and in chat rooms. Of course, you don’t have to trawl through all of this information to find out what you need to know. Many SEO news sites like Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable put together roundups in most cases.

In some cases, Google will be specifically targeting a niche or industry. For example, in the Medic Update of 2018, the main target of the update was YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) sites. These are sites that present information in regards to health or money and, if inaccurate or deceptive, could have an impact on an individual’s quality of life. The update was aimed at filtering low-quality results from Google with respect to YMYL, so that results would not have the potential to negatively impact users.

Improving results following this update meant proving that a site could provide information in relation to YMYL well, i.e. it would not have a negative impact. This meant improving a site’s EAT (Expertise, Authority and Trust).

To improve following the Medic Update, a site had to prove it had expert authors who produced great content (Expertise), good link metrics (Authority) and positive reviews across sources (Trust).

All of which, likely, you would not have discovered yourself. Rather this data and research came out of the SEO expert community, helping the whole community at large improve and recover following the update. Which is why thorough research and knowing who to follow in the digital marketing community is important. As it could mean the difference between continued fluctuation and recovery following a Google Update.

Audit Your Site

Once you have done effective research in regards to the update and how it may be affecting your site, it is time to audit your site. An audit allows you to discover areas that your site is perhaps lacking in. Whilst also allowing you to potentially cross-reference your site issues with the findings across the industry.

Audits should be conducted on a site regularly, no matter if it is suffering ranking fluctuations or not. This is the best way to monitor and avoid potential issues regularly.

Key factors to include in your SEO audits include:

• Technical Factors – Speed, XML sitemap, indexation, crawl rate, robots.tx, duplicate content, etc.
• Content Analysis – Content structure, keyword density, metadata, UX, internal links, schema, etc.
• Rankings – Comparing keyword movement over a set period of time, identifying areas of loss and gain.

Sometimes conducting an SEO audit may not, on a surface level, reveal the reason why your site is being penalised by Google. But, it is a good first step to determine the overall health of the site and what might be impacting ranking fluctuations. Which is always a valuable asset in these instances.

Implement SEO Fixes

So, ideally following an update you should be able to determine what the issue is. Most often you will find an issue such as a bad link profile, thin content or something equally as basic will have been brought to light as a result of the update. In which case, focusing on these areas for improvement is the simplest way to recover following any drops/fluctuations.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Wait. Just wait. Let your rankings fluctuate even out and settle before implementing any changes or fixes. In some cases, the ranking may return to its pre-update positive after a week or so. If it does not, then you may consider the drop to be permanent and the necessary ‘fixes’ can be implemented in order to attempt recovery.

On the whole, if a definitive problem is not discernable you may just have to do a checklist of best practice. From here, you may need to experiment and try to recover your lost rankings over time instead.

The Best Defense…

Is a good offense. It’s an age-old saying, but applies to many things in life; including SEO.

Realistically, in order to try and avoid fluctuations following Google Updates in the first place, then you need to have a good baseline to begin with. Following best practice, avoiding tactics which may be considered ‘black hat’ and ensuring your site is technically sound should be part of your SEO Manchester campaigns as standard.

However, this isn’t always the case. Bad practice and poor SEO is implemented every day. And, in some cases, you will be presented with a site that is in desperate need of recovery following an update for that very reason. In which case, the key strategy is not necessary to recover from the update. But, instead, to ensure that the site is following best practice in the first place. As in most cases, one will result in the other.

Suggested:

How To Use Google Algorithms To Promote Your Website In 2019?

A Quick Look At The Major Google Algorithm Updates Throughout The Years

Final Thoughts

Overall, a Google Update isn’t the end of the world for your rankings. Even if your site does experience fluctuations. But you do need to handle it in a way that follows best practice and allows for your site to recover following fluctuations. No drop is ever permanent, if you ranked well before you can do so again. 

Finding your way back after a drop, however, is not always straightforward. Understanding and working with this in mind, then, is the only way to effectively circumnavigate this complicated SEO scenario. Google Updates are there to improve the search engine. Keep that in mind in all instances and you should be able to recover following Google’s basic principles. 

The post How to Deal with Ranking Fluctuations After a Google Core Update? appeared first on Tricky Enough.

In such circumstances, SEO has to be one of the biggest priorities of a webmaster, especially because Google changes its search engine algorithm roughly 500 to 600 times a year. If you administer a website and want to ensure a higher ranking in Google searches, then you should conduct a thorough SEO audit to eliminate bugs and make improvements.

Our post will show you seven ways to run an SEO audit and boost your ranking relatively quickly. Let’s begin!

1. Choose the Right Tools

You don’t start an SEO audit without the right tools. Doing all the work manually would make the job extremely difficult – if not impossible – so it would be wise to test some of the best SEO platforms and use them in the process. Our recommendation is to consider the following tools:

• Google Analytics: This platform is Google’s native tool and it will tell you everything you need to know about website performance.
• SEO Site Checkup: Just like the name suggests, SEO Site Checkup helps webmasters to conduct thorough audits and eliminate optimization blunders.
• NinjaEssays: Most websites outsource content creation to ensure the highest quality of their posts. If you are looking for a professional paper writing service, try NinjaEssays.
• Screaming Frog: It’s a website crawler that explores every single page and the corresponding URL.

2. Fix Broken Links

Not too many things can ruin the user experience and jeopardize ranking as fiercely as broken links. Fortunately, you can remove broken links quickly using almost any SEO audit tools, but we will stick to Google Analytics because it’s free and widespread.

You just need to open the main dashboard, set the timeframe of your analysis, and create a search filter containing the “404 error” notification. Google Analytics will display all broken links and you’ll know the magnitude of the problem.

The next step is to redirect broken links through your content management system. The way it works depends on your system, but most platforms contain the redirect option where you can create new redirects and take visitors to functional pages.

3. Create Keyword-Rich Content

Another important task is to reevaluate your content and make it keyword-rich. This is where you’ll have to be patient and improve articles to match the search intent of the target audience.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t compete for simple keywords only. On the contrary, it is also important to target longtail keywords and common search phrases. For instance, content creation services rely heavily on word of mouth marketing, which is why they highlight keyword phrases such as Essay Shark reviews, Superior Papers reviews, or GradeMiners review.

You should follow the same pattern – understand the needs of your audience, come up with the corresponding keywords, and revise the content in a way that makes it highly relevant and keyword-rich.

4. Optimize Metadata

Metadata optimization represents a big part of the SEO audit. It’s not a complex process, but it is incredibly significant for your ranking. Generally speaking, you need to focus on three elements:

• Title tags: Title tags are the first thing users see in Google search results, so you have to make them relevant and easily discoverable.
• Description: Meta descriptions don’t influence ranking directly, but these short paragraphs reveal the nature of your content and inspire searchers to click your link instead of someone else’s.
• Image tags: Users also look for images. It means you’ll need to mark each photo correctly so that Google can display it in related searches.

5. Eliminate Duplicate Content

If you find large portions of the same content across various pages, then you are facing the issue of duplicate content. Google is not exactly thrilled about duplicate content and might even penalize you for it, so you should try to remove such elements as soon as possible. A simple tool like Copyscape will help you to discover duplicates and remove them from your website, thus preventing ranking downfalls.

6. Improve Page Load Speed

Google and users appreciate speedy websites and hate slowly-running pages. For instance, if you search for the best resume writing services and learn that VelvetJobs takes more than a few seconds to load, you would probably consider it irrelevant.

Now, if you don’t want the same thing to happen to your website, you need to increase page load speed using tools such as Pingdom. It’s a simple platform that scans your site, assesses its performance, and gives you suggestions on how to improve. The process is smooth and simple, so you better get it done quickly.

7. Optimize for Mobile Experience

The year is 2019 and we should not talk about mobile optimization, but lots of websites and their HR software still don’t pay attention to it the way there are supposed to. All you have to do is test your pages via Google Search Console to measure the mobile-friendliness of the website in general. Just copy/paste the URL and Search Console will tell you whether the content is mobile-friendly or not.

Conclusion

Ranking in the first page of Google search results sounds like a dream come true for every webmaster, but earning this position is out of reach for most of them. It takes a lot of work and optimization efforts to boost the ranking of your site, so you’ll have to do the homework and begin with an SEO audit.

In this article, we showed you seven ways to conduct a basic SEO check of your website. Remember our tips and leave a comment if you have any questions – we will be glad to answer you quickly!

The post SEO Audit to Get Higher Ranking on Google appeared first on Tricky Enough.