Three Essential Elements of an SEO Strategy

Overall, your SEO strategy should be centered on understanding how Google’s algorithm works and what Google’s goal is for its searchers. This is required to improve your website based on the variables that have the greatest impact on your ranking. So, what exactly is Google’s goal? They want to display a ranked list of the best and most relevant pages for their search terms to people who use their search engine.

Here are the top three SEO ranking variables on which you should focus your strategy in order for Google to rank you higher:

Content

Google updates its algorithm to improve its ability to show searchers the most relevant content based on their query. Great content is thought to be the best way to improve your website’s SERP rankings because it plays such an important role in SEO.

When the content is more relevant to the search query and the site has a lower bounce rate, this will occur. Lowering your bounce rate and providing relevant content that keeps users on your website for longer will boost your domain authority (including many other factors).

Google will rank you higher in the SERP if people enjoy your content and stay on your website to read your articles and watch your videos. This informs Google that your content must be excellent and relevant to the visitor’s search. Your SEO variables, such as bounce rate, will improve as a result of great content, allowing your website to rank higher in the SERP.

Although the content has been confirmed as one of the most important factors in SEO ranking, backlinks are also important.

Backlinks

Backlinks are, as previously stated, an important factor in SEO. Backlinks are used by Google’s algorithm as trust signals to determine how much authority your site has over others. Google will rank your site higher if it has many backlinks from other websites.

The algorithm will also rank these backlinks according to the domain authority of the site that is linking to your page. The higher the site’s domain authority, the higher the ranking of that backlink to your page, and the more trust Google has in your website. For example, if The New York Times links to one of your pages in an article, this is considered a high authority backlink. Although extremely difficult to obtain, these types of backlinks are much more valuable than those from a less established website.

On-Page Optimization

Google has made it more difficult for black-hat SEO techniques to fool their algorithm. This is why improving your on-page SEO is critical. It increases the probability that the algorithm will rank your website higher in the SERP. On-page optimization provides more context and information about the page to which the searcher may be directed.

How can you put this information to use to improve your SEO strategy? Consider the following variables: bounce rate, keywords, conversion rate, and organic click-through rate.

You will need to strengthen smaller on-page variables to change these factors (which will ultimately improve your SEO). Meta tags, URL optimization, and heading hierarchies are all examples of this. Although these variables may appear insignificant, when combined, they can improve more critical aspects of your SEO, such as organic click-through rate and bounce rate. For example, your meta title and meta description are displayed in the SERP; optimizing these will help increase both your keyword ranking and click-through rate.

Conclusion

It is important to note that, while these are all important factors, they all have smaller variables that must be taken into account when developing your SEO strategy. SEO is more of an art than a science, and there isn’t always a single correct answer. Experiment, analyze the results and make changes as needed. Overall, focusing on improving the three factors listed above will significantly improve your SERP ranking.