How Can I Improve My SEO Ranking?

Competing for attention online is only becoming more challenging. Companies in every industry are realising just how many customers can be reached via digital marketing.

What does this mean for you? Even though your business already knows to prioritise your SEO rankings, reaching the first page has never been more important. 

In fact, research has found the number one result in any search can expect to receive a staggering 10 times more organic traffic than a website at the bottom of the first page. 

But with a myriad of on-page and off-page SEO optimisations to choose from, understanding which ones suit your needs will help you outgrow your rivals. 

On-Page SEO Ranking Techniques

On-page SEO is the strategic process of improving your ranking – or, how your individual web pages attract search engines and relevant users browsing the internet. 

By creating content on your website optimised for engagement and readability, you can ensure your traffic has their most important questions answered.

Plus, on-page SEO ranking factors include everything from page load times to internal links, so your customers can effortlessly navigate from one page to the next.

Here, we highlight some of the top on-page SEO ranking factors to ensure your website climbs the search results and attracts its ideal target market.

Focus on Creating Useful Content

Algorithms want the search engine results at the top of the page to answer a user’s question as accurately as possible. To do so, Google has promoted its E-A-T guidelines: Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. 

With the internet swamped with poor-quality websites, search engines now highlight content that’s up-to-date, detailed and referenced by others. If you want your content to rise above the competition, focus on creating long-form articles that are genuinely informative.

By putting time and effort into producing high-quality content, your customers will view you as a trustworthy news source, which helps you rise up the search engine rankings.

Conduct Superior Keyword Research

Selecting the right keywords to use in your SEO campaign is critical to driving relevant customers to your website. But how do you choose the right ones? 

The best way to go about this is to think like a customer. By having a detailed understanding of what your target market cares about, you can discover short- and long-tail keywords that lead them to your products and services. 

There’s also a wealth of helpful keyword research tools for SEO analysis – meaning you can study the volume, competitiveness and trends related to how your ideal customers conduct a search.

Always Use Title and Header Tags

There are numerous benefits to using title and header tags when crafting content. Importantly, these tags act as an SEO ranking factor because they help search algorithms understand what a specific page is about.

Considering that Google is known to favour long-form content, making sure your blogs, articles and guides are elegantly broken up with header tags will make it more readable for users. This means they will spend more time reading your content without getting bored or frustrated. 

In addition, publishing clearly formatted pages also improves your website’s accessibility, as screen readers can understand the HTML code that underpins this content.

Include External Links

External or outbound links are a great way to improve your Search Engine Optimisation standards. While you might think sending people away from your website is harmful, the opposite effect is true for improving your search engine results.

As Google gives preference to websites with exceptional content, it makes sense that linking to relevant sources and information that assists your website traffic is rewarded with better search engine rankings. 

By including external links that are related to your message, well written and published by respected organisations, you can grow your content’s authority. This is why many SEO experts believe external links are an essential on-page ranking factor.

URL Structure is Important

Despite many businesses ignoring their URL structure, this website improvement can have a positive impact on your search engine results. 

Instead of simply using a bunch of random numbers or abbreviations to organise your pages, developing readable keyword-driven snippets helps attract attention on the search engine results page. 

A clear URL structure might only be recognised as a minor ranking factor, but users browsing Google will know what your page contains before they even click the link. 

As the search engine results page only becomes more competitive, these small on-page SEO details help make a significant difference.

Add Keyword-Driven Meta Descriptions

If your business wants to maximise its search engine rankings, use every opportunity you have. This includes meta descriptions, which appear in the search engine results and help customers to assess a page before visiting. 

While meta descriptions don’t leave you with lots of space to explain, this excerpt of information can be carefully optimised with keywords to drive organic traffic to your website. 

By making meta descriptions highly relevant to your target market and including a compelling call-to-action, you can capture the attention of your customers and convince them to visit your website.

Off-Page SEO Ranking Techniques

You can’t maximise your website’s SEO ranking without also paying attention to off-page optimisation techniques. This involves making considered improvements to areas outside of your immediate website – helping to spread more brand awareness and attract increasingly relevant customers.

By implementing strategies that grow your company’s authority or increase your social media following, these changes will also drive your business up the search engine results. Consider these off-page optimisation methods and ensure your website reaches your ranking goals.

Attract Backlinks

Finding a way to attract backlinks is one of the best ways to increase your visibility on the search engine results page. However, quality will always reign supreme over quantity. 

While there are many ways to approach link building, creating high-quality content ensures people view you as an authority in your area of expertise. This naturally encourages others to include links to your website in their own content. 

You can also reach out to bloggers and journalists to see if they want to include a link to your content in their articles. Although this is a time-consuming process, the rewards can be huge.

Social Media Marketing

Growing your reach on social media is another way to ensure your website climbs the search engine results. 

As customers get to know your brand and engage with your content, this translates to more website traffic and social shares, signalling to Google that customers find your website useful. 

However, benefiting from high-quality social media marketing involves far more than a few status updates. 

You need to undertake a precise campaign that ensures you build your relationship with consumers – ranging from highly engaging content to stellar customer service.

Get Active in Online Communities

In addition to running your own social media business pages, you can improve your SEO rankings by engaging with customers where they discuss products and services like yours. 

Whether you get active in Facebook Groups, Reddit communities or industry-specific forums, taking part in these conversations shows customers that you care about what they have to say. But refrain from promoting your business too much as people want to know that you’re being genuinely helpful.

Meanwhile, don’t be afraid to respond to negative feedback, as it boosts credibility in the eyes of your most diehard customers.

Get Local and Thrive

If your business needs to attract nearby customers to succeed, there’s no shortage of high-powered local SEO tips to explore. One of the most crucial steps to take is optimising your Google My Business profile. 

You also need to generate positive reviews that display why you’re the best in the business. Plus, you’ll need a sharp way to respond to any negative feedback you encounter.

Alongside voice search and a mobile-friendly website that users love to browse on the move, dramatically improving your local SEO standards is within your reach.

Chat with the Experts

Need to catch up to or overtake the competition? Using the benefits of SEO to your advantage is the best way to make it happen. 

As a full-service marketing company, have led thousands of hugely successful search engine optimisation campaigns for companies across every industry, ensuring we have the expertise to deliver outstanding results for your business.

Get in touch with our talented digital marketers to ensure your SEO rankings do your first-class products and services justice.