Understanding SEO Beyond The Keywords And Backlinks

White Hat Seo Techniques

Way To A Front Page On SERPs

There’s a common misconception that SEO is all about keywords and backlinks. Many people believe that when you choose the right keywords and get a good number of links back to your web pages, you’re on your way to a front page on SERPs. But this can’t be any further from the truth. A while back, it was technically possible to quickly get top rankings but this is no longer the case. To rank well, you’ll need to spend time and energy on white hat SEO techniques.

How Google Ranks Websites

Search engines like Google will rank websites depending on how relevant they think the pages are to whatever the user is searching for. There are several factors that Google looks into when determining relevancy. They include:

Quality Of Content Published

Does your page have a large amount of quality content on a particular topic or subject area that the searcher is targeting? You must invest in keyword optimized, well-written copies on every page of your site. Avoid stuffing keywords because it makes your content unreadable. The more content you have the better because thin pages don’t do well on Google search.

Important Tags

Two tags that are important to date are the meta title and meta description tags. The meta title is what appears as the heading of a page on SERPs. Keep the meta title about 60 characters and make it as clear as possible for users. Try and include as many keywords as you can in your meta title. The meta description is the block of text that appears below the title on SERPs. It can be any length since Google will truncate it so make sure the important keywords and CTAs are within 150 to 160 characters. Write descriptions that are relevant to users to increase click through rates.

Page Load Speed

How quickly your website pages load can also affect your rankings. Make sure you make technical changes to optimize your web pages for the web. Simple adjustments such as compressing all your CSS and Javascript files can instantly improve page load speed.

Switch to HTTPS

HTTPS is a better version than HTTP because it shows your site is secure. Make sure your site is running on HTTPS full time so that users don’t get the “insecure warning” signal when they browse on Chrome or Firefox.

Responsive

You must ensure all your web pages are mobile friendly. Search engines are now factoring a site’s mobile friendliness into their algorithm. This is because with the increase in mobile search, it’s important to give all users a great experience regardless of the device they are browsing with.

Bounce rate

One metric that can easily tell you which web pages are performing best is the bounce rate. This is simply a measure of how many users come to your site and leave within 10 seconds which is an indication that they didn’t find what they are looking for. To avoid a high bounce rate, post relevant content, improve your site load speed and ensure all your web pages are optimized for mobile. Hire a SEO company that you can trust to deliver white hat techniques that build your brand online.

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