You Should Follow These 9 SEO Best Practices

The harsh reality is that if your website does not appear in Google’s top 10 results for your target keywords, it is effectively invisible.

According to HubSpot, 75% of searchers never go past the first page of results, which is why ranking on the first page of Google is so important.

You can use a variety of strategies and techniques to improve your Google ranking, but if you don’t get the basics right, your chances of ranking on Google’s first page are slim.

You’ll be laying the groundwork for your site’s increased visibility in search by following SEO best practices. You can move on to more advanced keyword research and link-building strategies once you’ve laid the foundation.

In this article, I’ll go over the 9 SEO best practices that you should follow in 2021 if you want to improve your search rankings. 

• 1. Align Your Content with Search Intent
• 2. Write a Compelling Title Tag and Meta Description
• 3. Optimize Your Images
• 4. Optimize Your Page Speed
• 5. Use Internal Linking
• 6. Improve the User Experience on Your Website
• 7. Include Keywords in Your URL
• 8. Focus on Getting More Authoritative Backlinks
• 9. Publish Long-form Content

Let’s get started. 

1. Align Your Content with Search Intent

Every search query is driven by search intent (also known as “user intent”). Google’s top priority is to understand and satisfy search intent. Pages that appear on Google’s first page have all passed Google’s search intent litmus test.

Take a look at the search results for “how to make oatmeal cookies,” for example.

Instead of e-commerce pages selling oatmeal cookies, the top search results are blog posts or videos. Google recognises that people who conduct this search are looking to learn rather than buy something.

Top search results for a query like “buy oatmeal cookies” are, on the other hand, e-commerce pages. Because Google recognises that people are in the market to buy in this case. As a result, there are no links to oatmeal cookie recipes in the top results.

As a result, if you want to rank your pages on Google’s first page in 2021, you’ll need to grasp the concept of search intent and create content that matches user intent.

There are four types of search intent to consider:

1. When a user conducts a search with informational intent, the user is looking for specific information. It could be a simple search like “what’s the weather today?” that yields immediate results, or something more complex like “best SEO strategies,” which necessitates a more detailed explanation.
2. Navigational: The searcher is looking for a specific website or app in this case. “Facebook login,” and “Amazon” are all examples of navigational searches.
3. Commercial: When a user is looking for a specific product but hasn’t made a final decision, the search intent is commercial. Searches like “best SEO tools” and “best DSLR cameras,” for example, are all commercial.
4. Transactional: The goal is to make a purchase. The searcher has already decided to purchase a particular product or tool.

Search terms like “buy Nikon d500,” “buy Macbook Air,” and “buy groceries online” are examples.

When creating content for your website, an SEO best practice is to keep the search intent in mind at all times.

If you want to rank for the keywords “best DSLR cameras,” for example, you must understand that the search intent is commercial, not transactional. The user is still undecided about which DSLR manufacturer to go with.

It’s pointless to use those specific keywords to optimise your DSLR landing page. When users search for “best DSLR cameras,” Google understands what they want. They’re looking for alternatives. They’re looking for a blog post or video that ranks the best DSLR cameras, rather than product or e-commerce pages.

In conclusion: Create content that is relevant to your target audience’s search intent. 

2. Write a Compelling Title Tag and Meta Description

The meta description and page title are two of the most important meta tags on your page. Let’s start with title tags. 

3. Optimize Your Images

Images are essential for improving the user experience of your site’s visitors. You probably spend a lot of time choosing the right images to complement your blog posts, product pages, and other key pages on your website.

Do you, on the other hand, devote the same amount of time to optimising your site’s images? Images, when used correctly, can help your site’s overall SEO and increase organic traffic. There are four things you can do to improve the quality of your images.

You can now see all of the performance issues that are preventing your site from loading faster and take steps to resolve them.

Compressing your images is a quick and easy way to improve your page speed.

There are a few other things you can do to help your pages load faster besides image compression:

• Enable browser caching.
• Delete unnecessary plugins.
• Reduce server response time.
• Reduce the number of redirects.
• Minify CSS and JavaScript files.

5. Use Internal Linking

Internal links are important because they help Google understand the content on your page by establishing an information hierarchy for your website. When used correctly, internal links can significantly improve your rankings.

NinjaOutreach, for example, increased organic traffic by 40% by optimising internal links.

Internal links from your site’s top-ranking pages to pages that need a boost are an SEO best practice.

The Internal Linking Report in Site Audit tool can help you identify issues with your site’s internal linking structure.

• Run a site audit for your site to generate an audit report.
• Navigate to Internal Linking and click on the “View details” button. 

Now you can view all the internal linking issues on your site and go about fixing them.

6. Improve the User Experience on Your Website

Google monitors how people interact with your content. As a result, one of the most important factors in improving your search rankings is user experience.

The user experience of visitors to your site is greatly influenced by page speed.

Here are a few more pointers to ensure that visitors to your site have a positive experience:

• Use subheadings: Using subheadings (H1, H2, H3) correctly can help Google better understand your content and make your text more accessible to readers.
• Make your content visually appealing: According to several studies, visuals aid in the comprehension of your content. To illustrate your points, use relevant images, videos, and screenshots.
• Avoid using intrusive popups: Popups are not only ineffective from an SEO standpoint, but they also irritate your visitors. Google has been penalising websites that use intrusive popups since 2017. As a result, use popups sparingly. Use exit-intent popups or show them to users who have spent at least 5 minutes on your site if you absolutely must use them to grow your email list.
• Make use of white space: White space is an important part of good design. White space between paragraphs and in the left and right margins, according to Crazy Egg, improves comprehension by 20%. As a result, think about how you can use white space to make your content more readable and draw attention to it.

7. Include Keywords in Your URL

The structure of a URL is an aspect of SEO that is frequently overlooked. A good URL structure informs both users and search engines about the content of the destination page.

“A site’s URL structure should be as simple as possible,” Google says. Consider organising your content so that URLs are built logically and in a way that humans can understand (using readable words rather than long ID numbers when possible).”

With that in mind, here’s how to make a URL that’s well-structured:

• Use short URLs: According to a Backlinko study, short URLs outperform long URLs in the SERPs.
• Use keyword-rich URLs: To improve your chances of ranking higher in search results, always include your target keywords in the URL.
• Remove any unnecessary stop words from your URL to make it look cleaner and more concise.

8. Focus on Getting More Authoritative Backlinks

Despite several changes to Google’s search algorithm and ranking system, backlinks remain a significant ranking factor. Backlinks are regarded by Google as votes of confidence.

Your chances of ranking higher in search results improve if your web pages have a large number of backlinks. As a result, it’s critical that you concentrate on increasing the number of backlinks to your website.

Backlinks, however, are not all created equal. Some backlinks can exponentially boost your ranking for specific search queries, while others can derail your rankings, which is why authoritative backlinks should be prioritised over other types of backlinks.

You should concentrate all of your efforts on obtaining high-quality backlinks that will help you rank higher for your target keywords. Replicating your competitors’ link-building strategies is one of the most effective ways to get authoritative backlinks.

To uncover untapped link building opportunities, use Backlink Gap Tool to analyse the backlink profiles of up to five competitors.

To get started, follow these steps:

• Navigate to Gap Analysis —> Backlink Gap.
• Enter your domain as well as four of your top competitors’ domains, and hit “Find prospects.”

The Backlink Gap tool will generate a graph and a table that compares the backlink profiles of the five domains. The graph gives you a quick look at your competitors’ most recent link-building efforts.

To find link-building opportunities for your site, use the drop-down menu just above the table to select your domain.

This list will include websites that link to the domains of your competitors, but not yours. With this information, you can begin a campaign to steal the most authoritative backlinks from your competitors. 

9. Publish Long-Form Content

The truth is that long-form content performs better in Google searches. Several studies, including the most recent study on top-performing articles, support this claim.

Long-form articles (those with 3000+ words) get 3x more traffic, 4x more shares, and 3.5x more backlinks than articles of average length, according to the study (901-1200 words).

To cut a long storey short, there’s a strong link between content length and search results.

As a result, you should aim to publish 1-2 in-depth, long-form articles that provide useful information to Google users. Google prefers that you prioritise user needs over SEO, and this is the most effective way to keep readers and convert them. We all know, however, that SEO is also important.

Target keywords that strike a good balance between search volume and keyword difficulty when writing long-form content for your blog.

Long-tail keywords have a low search volume, but they could help you reach the customers you need in some cases. Aim for mid-tail keywords with low to medium keyword difficulty if the search volume is simply too low.

• Enter your keyword(s) in the search bar and hit the “Search” button. 
• The Keyword Overview report will provide key data, including total search volume, keyword difficulty score, and more.

You can see keyword variations, questions, and related keywords by scrolling down. To see different variations of your seed keyword(s) along with useful keyword metrics, click the “View all” button under each of these sections.

With this information, you can figure out which keywords are worth focusing on when writing long-form content.

Final Thoughts on SEO Best Practices

The above SEO best practices are a great place to start if you want to improve your search rankings. Regardless of the niche, you operate in, the competition for the coveted first page on Google is fierce. Once you’ve implemented these best practices, make sure you’re keeping up with the latest SEO trends and employing other SEO techniques on a regular basis to stay ahead of the competition.