WordPress has made it much easier and affordable for businesses to establish a digital presence. After creating and publishing your site, the next concern is to gain a good ranking on Google. It is not an easy task and you need to struggle with tough competition. Numerous websites are being developed daily which is further multiplying the challenges to get a prominent position on Google. However, by employing the appropriate search engine optimization strategies you can steadily increase your chances of getting better visibility on SERPs display. In this blog, we are going to discuss some actionable tips and insights on White Hat SEO strategies or ethical ways to strengthen your position on Google
Create compelling content
Content is the major ranking parameter for any website. So if you wish to get a good ranking then be ready to concentrate your efforts on creating excellent content that is informative, engaging and well-presented.
Your content should not only be reader-friendly but also complies with the latest search engine guidelines. Some of the parameters for writing SEO-friendly content are topic, length, keywords, Links and anchors, etc.
Humanely it is a tough task to evaluate your content from the view of search engine guidelines, especially if you don’t know much about SEO. Thankfully some tools can automatically evaluate your content based o different parameters and tell you whether or not (and how far) it is in line with search engine guidelines. One such tool is surfer.
Many people are quite hasty in creating the content. You need to do proper homework before you even start writing the content. Gather sufficient information from different credible sources to make it authoritative and engaging.
You cannot expect to churn good content within 15-30 minutes. It takes hours, even days or weeks to create the content with a competitive edge. The prime quality of good content is that it precisely answers the readers’ needs and satisfies their queries. By constantly writing such content you can increase the subscribers for your blog.
Adopt Mobile First Approach
The Majority of the users use their mobile devices to browse the net. To assure them a user-friendly experience the Google seriously considers mobile-friendly design as a major criterion while displaying and ranking the sites during a search query.
Make sure that your site matches the mobile-friendly guidelines as defined by Google. By not doing so you may find it almost impossible to gain or retain a prominent position on Google.
To make things easier the Google provides a mobile-friendly test app that helps you to identify the required specific changes in site layout for making it mobile friendly and also notifies you if your site has been penalized.
Don’t ignore the user intent
Every internet user has some intent while browsing through different online information sources. Being a user first search engine the Google makes sure to fetch the results that perfectly match the intent of the users
For tat Google has been constantly developing several powerful technical provisions to match different websites with the user intent and allocate them an appropriate ranking based on their relevance.
Ensure that the diverse factors of your site like content, graphics, design, etc. should match with the users’ intent.
Here also you can take the help of tools to determine the specific topics that users are looking for in different niches. For instance, the TD*IDF tools can offer reliable suggestions on the preferred topics and priority-based subjects depending upon the preference of the users. It is intuitive, easy to use, and offers a high rate of precision.
First understand the intent of your users or the targeted audiences. What are their needs? Do they want deep insights and information on a specific topic? Are they looking to buy a product? Do they need to be convinced to purchase services that they already know about? Such questions allow you to frame your site’s content is the most persuasive and authoritative tone.
Along with the content the other elements like design, layout, and graphics should also match the needs of the users. For instance, if your targeted audiences are shoppers looking for fashion clothing, then give a prime position to the apparel’s images on your home page and other pages with a catchy quick description of each apparel and a choice menu. The interested shoppers can land on your website, read about the clothing they are interested in, select their preference, and shop online.
Offer excellent User Experience (UX)
UX or user experience is another major factor to consider while designing a ranking strategy for your website. Google has lots of parameters and corresponding provisions for checking the user experience delivered by your website and accordingly rewarding or penalizing it.
User experience is a vast term and you need to deeply evaluate your site to ensure better UX. The task is not an easy one but thanks to Google, you now have a Google UX guide where you can learn about diverse UX standards from Google's point f view. It will help you to accurately modify and fine-tune your site to meet Google’s UX standards.
Deep keyword researching
The unethical use of keywords for many years has led to massive reforms in the keywords policy of Google. Now it is not just about stuffing your site with numerous keywords and expects a good position in search queries. Such risky attempts can get your site penalized or blacklisted. However, you still need to use keywords strategically. Without a proper keyword strategy, you cannot expect to get a good ranking.
Unlike the past strategy of using a few specific phrases, you now need to do deeper research on keywords. Google now emphasizes on ensuring that the keywords are employed authentically and genuinely to meet the user requirements.
So instead of individual terms or short phrases, the keywords now refer to intent-based longer phrases matching the specific context in which they are used.
For gaining a deep and actionable insight on the keyword effectiveness you can use tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and TF*IDF. Along with a list of preferred keywords of top sites, it will also help you monitor the recent changes in keyword trends.
Google My Business compatibility
Geographical relevance is another parameter that Google considers to satisfy user intent. For instance, people looking for dining out or salons are looking for the nearest options in their city. So it doesn’t make sense to show them the results from other regions.
So one of the best strategies to gain a quick highlight is to ethically manipulate the local searches as you have much less competition in this segment. You can rank higher in local searches with reasonably modest efforts. Start by claiming your Google My Business (GMB) page
After being claimed, the GMBs are displayed on a specific page just above the general search results thus giving a prominent position to GMB results. Besides, each result is displayed with a physical location, profile, contact details (email, phone websites) price, reviews and other quick info that influence the shoppers' decisions.
This prominent display position will help you gain better visibility, more clicks, and possibly more customers.
Conclusion
To gain a good ranking on Google, you need to optimize your site as per the search engine guidelines. In technical terms, it is known as search engine optimization or SOE. There are several factors to consider while creating your SEO strategy. In this blog, we presented the major factors and actionable tips to build a powerful SEO strategy. The users are also advised to monitor the latest changes in algorithms and optimize their site accordingly to ensure that it aligns with the latest guidelines.