Truth be told, a first-page ranking on a search engine is a ticket to success. Every year, lots of businesses spend gazillions on Search Engine Optimization to improve visibility of their site, aiming for a top ranking on search results.
In reality, it’s not how much you spend on SEO but it’s about the SEO techniques that get you on the first page in the search engine. Having spam-free, high quality content can help you withstand the changes brought by Google’s complex algorithms– not the money you spend on it.
That’s why, instead of making an effort into trying to fool Google, the best thing you can do to improve your search ranking this year is make your site better by getting updated with latest trends. Here are SEO techniques that may help you develop your SEO campaign to survive the changes this year:
Treat Content like it’s royalty
If your home page contains just few sentences, expect that you will get low page rankings. Remember that it’s essential to write more high-quality and relevant content that your target audience can relate to. For your website to be a good online hub rich in information, here is an article on How to Make High Quality Written Content that is SEO friendly.
Conversational, Long Tail and LSI Keywords
One of the SEO techniques that still works is to always put your primary keyword phrase at the beginning and your business name at the end. However, to achieve higher ranking after Hummingbird’s latest updates, we need to take a step forward in using keywords:
Conversational keywords – Using these can best capture the users’ actual search intent. Try thinking of questions that can help you answer the Five W’s and one H in your article. Below are the following examples:
“When did the social media start?”
“What food lowers cholesterol?”.
Long-tail keywords – are specific phrases that will result in less competition and gathering of higher-quality leads. The best way to go about this is think like a consumer– be exact in what information you want to get. An example of long tail keyword is like this: “turmeric face mask for acne-free skin”.
LSI Keywords – The best thing about latent semantic indexing is they add a ‘natural’ relevance helping Google understand how keywords are related to one another in your page. You can do this by associating related words to your primary keywords.
For example, if you have a page that sells “organic beauty soaps”, you can use keywords like ‘organic’, ‘paraben-free’ or ‘non-comedogenic’.
Read: Keywords Can Help Your Content Rank Faster
Make Sure Your Brand Gets Mentioned
Inbound links are undeniably important in page ranking but this 2015, it is important that you also work on getting brand mentions. Even without using a hyperlink, another website mentioning your brand can positively affect your rankings.
Be Active in Social Media
Getting social is still a reliable SEO technique for any campaign. Active participation in social sharing sites like Google+ and Facebook is crucial for understanding your target market and building up networks that can help share your brand, including your site and its contents.
These are just some of the SEO techniques that will help your site get a better ranking. Of course, future updates that could happen may cause some of these techniques to be of little use. However, you don’t need to worry about that if you already have a good SEO plan. As we have previously said, focus first on producing relevant, high-quality content because that alone will give you good results.
If you have only just started with SEO, or if your website is currently not doing great in terms of rankings, take time and reflect on what your site needs to be optimized for SEO. Being new to the game doesn’t mean that you have no chance against established competitors. As you build your site, just update yourself with the latest trends. Remember that it’s never too late to make a New Year’s resolution by practicing these SEO techniques!
