If you’re a business owner, you probably know how important SEO is for your business. For those who don’t, SEO is the abbreviation for ‘Search Engine Optimization’, the process by which internet marketers and SEO professionals rank a web page on Google’s search results for keywords that are relevant to the business and user query.
If you’re still struggling with SEO in 2020, then you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we will share some simple and effective ways of improving your website’s organic search ranking.
Keep in mind that SEO is a time-consuming process, so you shouldn’t expect overnight results. However, if you consistently adhere to these proven and tested white hat SEO tactics, you will notice visible improvement in your website SEO score.
Use Rich Snippets for More Clicks
Rich snippets are additional blocks of information displayed next to the Google search results. Some common types of rich snippets include recipes, reviews and events. Rich snippets are known to improve the organic click-through-rate by more than 50%, it makes sense to focus on this feature in 2020. To show rich snippets in the search results, Google pulls structured data from your website. Many websites use Schema.org markup to implement structured data.
Secure your Website with HTTPS
Google prioritizes search results from websites having the HTTPS protocol, so it makes sense to make the transition from HTTP to HTTPS in 2020 for many reasons. Your users are also more likely to trust and engage with secure websites, giving you even more reasons to comply with this change ASAP.
Focus on Producing Your Best Content
While many SEO fads come and go, content is still the undisputed king when it comes to improving your SEO in 2020. For this reason, we encourage you to create the best possible content for your website or blog. High-quality and useful content engages the readers and keeps them on your site longer, which is another positive SEO signal.
Improve your Website Load Time
Improving the time it takes for your webpages to load leads to improved user-experience and ultimately benefits your website’s organic search engine ranking. A one-second delay in the website load time can translate into a major loss for your business.
Find out the factors that are slowing down your website and address them periodically. For instance, you may have to compress images, enable browser caching and/or reduce plugins.
Link to Your Older Posts
Google considers the number of internal and external links to a post when determining its ranking. As such, it makes sense to link to your older posts to increase your website’s organic traffic.
Use Long-tail Keywords
It is important to use a mix of long-tail keywords to get high-quality and targeted traffic to your website. With SEO getting more competitive in 2020, the use of such long-tail keywords makes even more sense now than ever before.
Claim your Google My Business Listing
If you have a physical address, you can claim your Google My Business listing on Google Maps for that address. It may take a couple of weeks for Google to verify your business address. Once verified, you will show up on Google Maps when someone searches your local area.
You can also set up a simple, user-friendly website for your ‘Google My Business’ (GMB) listing from the GMB portal if you don’t have the budget to build out a full scale professional website.
Besides your main local city, if your business has presence in any other cities, then you should claim your GMB Maps listings for those locations as well.
Backlinks are Still Relevant
Like content, backlinks are still an important ranking factor. Try to build high-quality backlinks to your site from high authority web pages. You can do this by guest-blogging and/or forum commenting. Keep in mind that many forums are now ‘No-follow’ in 2020, meaning that they do not share any link juice. Some websites charge you a fee for guest post submission, but it still makes sense to invest in this option especially if (1) the website has authority, (2) the website is related to your niche, and (3) you’re getting a ‘Do-follow’ backlink from it.
Struggling to rank your website on Google’s first page? Reach First is here to help! With more than a decade of experience in serving businesses in Edmonton and neighbouring cities throughout the province of Alberta, Reach First is one of the top digital marketing service providers. We offer a complete range of online marketing services in Edmonton, Calgary and other cities throughout Alberta. Additional services we offer include; SEM (Social Engine Marketing), SMM (Social Media Marketing) and full scale website development including graphics and branding. Contact us today for more information.