When it comes to website optimisation , most businesses focus a great deal of their energy on keyword optimization. Initially, basic search engine optimization techniques focused on keyword stuffing to improve ranking on popular search engines; Google, Bing, and others. Today, however, businesses have to look for more innovative ways of attracting and interacting with their web visitors. They have to analyze other important factors that affect search engine ranking.
Search engine algorithms rate the relevance of keywords used on your web pages, about a visitor’s needs and analyze information like the amount of time a visitor stays on a site, inbound and outbound links, the bounce rate and the particular pages viewed. It narrows down to improving a user’s experience on a website so as to boost search engine rankings. Additionally, renowned search engines like Google are biased to sites that have rich keyword content and exhibit high user engagement. In our discussion, we will highlight other ways of optimizing a website to improve search engine rankings. To learn more about SEO and how to get a website designed and ranked visit: SEO Melbourne – Top Spot
1) Use original content
With business websites left, right and center, business websites are faced with the arduous task of creating original content. Originality refers to the ability to create unique content (content that doesn’t exist in two or more URLs). Republished content not only infringes on another site’s copyright but also ruins a site’s search engine rankings. Plagiarism checker Tools like SiteLiner, Screaming Frog, and CopyScape help verify whether a website has duplicate content.
2) Use updated content
Instead of browsing the internet for a rash of trending stories offering little or no insight, businesses should focus on providing updated content. Thoughtful and practical-based content proves more engaging thus improving traffic and search engine rankings. Here are a few tips for creating updated content:
· Use sub-directory root domains instead of subdomains: e.g. using seobasics.com/category/seo as it improves the overall site structure.
· Avoid using hyphens (seo-basics.com) as they are considered spam domains.
· If your site doesn’t include the prefix www. ensure the user is still redirected to your site
· Include a keyword-rich domain name and ensure the content is of high-quality.
· Include a comments system on your website. It indicates a thriving community of regular commenters engaging in conversations about your content.
· Use attractive and descriptive headlines (usually less than 55 characters) to ensure visibility in search engine rankings.
3) Leverage on multimedia channels
Videos, images, and slideshows enrich a user’s experience and allow businesses to provide more engaging information. Research shows that websites that use videos increase their conversion rates by 4.8% compared to a 2.9% rate on sites that don’t use video content. Multimedia also indicates the use of quality content in search engine ranking.
4) Optimize your outbound links
Businesses can also create more engaging content by linking out to authority sites for additional information useful to web visitors. It also improves the relevance of your content and the dwelling time. However, using too many outbound links can prove distracting and create a difficult time for users to navigate.
5) Internal links
The more a page is linked to your website, the higher it will rank in search engine pages for relevant inquiries. Internal links also:
· Provide users with further reading options thus reducing bounce rates.
· Improve a site’s ranking for particular keywords. For example, a business that wants to improve rank for the term website optimisation , can link the text from other posts using varying anchor texts.
6) Improve your site’s load speed
Research shows 40-50% of web visitors leave sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load; still, businesses don’t focus on optimizing a site’s load speed. Google and Bing take a site’s loading speed into account when ranking a search engine not to mention the reduced user’s dwell time, increased bounce rate and the reduced number of pages viewed. Amazon, for example, realized that a one-second increase in a site’s load speed led to a 1.6 billion loss in sales. Businesses can optimize a website’s load speed by caching plug-ins, optimizing images (improved images reduce the file size and improve the load speed), and reducing the redirect links. Tools like Pingdom or Pingomatic may come in handy to help analyze elements that increase the page-load speed.