Have you ever heard about search engine positioning?
Are you looking out for ways to improve your search engine positioning?
Yes, then this post is going to be of great help to you.
In this post, we will discuss the best search engine positioning strategies
But before that let’s tell you what exactly search engine positioning means.
What is Search Engine Positioning?
Search engine positioning is known as the art or way or maximizing SERP rankings for individual or separate web pages.
The Best Search Engine Positioning Strategies:
1. Optimize Your Webpage for Mobile Search:
From the past few years, mobile browsing has surpassed PC or desktop browsing. As per TechSpot, tablet, mobile, and other gadgets account for up to 51% of complete browsing.
The mobile-first indexing was introduced by Google in November 2016. It implies that the mobile version of your site must be the beginning point for what is being indexed by Google.
Additionally, Google introduced AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages to confirm that most of the internet browsing across the world was happening on mobiles.
There was a separate HTML version used by AMP in order to load content fast and have the bare essentials.
It is essential to set up the WordPress website for AMP for efficient search engine positioning.
2. Optimize Your Webpage for Voice Search:
Voice search is increasing at a fast pace. Even, Google announced that more than 20% of searches are presently voice search.
According to a report by Jody Nimetz in 2020, 50% of the searches will be voice search.
The fast growth in voice search in the previous few years clearly indicates the same.
For voice search, searchers use different sorts of digital assistants like Teneo, Cortana, Siri, Braina, Google Assistant, Alex, and Hound.
In the textual search, we use short forms of search terms. However, in voice search, they are likely to speak out the complete details.
Some of the finest ways to optimize webpages for voice search are:
- Including an FAQ page that allows searchers to gain simple answers for their queries.
- Using highly conversational phrases and words in your writing.
- Using long-tail keywords as voice search mainly contains more words than the textual search.
- Using structured data markup to offer voice search gadgets clues regarding your content.
3. Optimize Your Webpages for Rich Answers:
These are the answers that Google offers to the search queries directly in the search results.
For example, you entered the pageless design.
The answer box presented by Google is a kind of Rich Answer.
When you optimize webpages for rich answers then it helps your post-stay ahead for other posts for the same search.
Here check some of the ways to show up your webpages for Rich answers.
- Integrate Schema Markup
It allows Google to conveniently fetch relevant details from the source code to be utilized in the Answer Box.
During a search, Google pulls out some of the expert results and positioned them in the SERP. This way, you can help your webpage to stand out from the crowd.
- Include a Question and Provide an Answer for the Same
If the content is in a form, which Google is able to understand, it is likely that Google will showcase your answer or definition in the Answer Box.
- Design a Page for FAQs
Further, Google searches for content for the Answer Boxes from the FAQ pages. This is another way to boost the chances of your webpage landing in the Answer Box.
- Convert Your Headline in a Question
Turning the headline of your webpage into a question is an excellent way to grab Google’s attention. But this is possible only when your headline includes a keyword phrase.
The way to find questions, which you may be able to post an answer, is:
Enter a seed phrase into Google using an asterisk. Even, you can gain more ideas by clicking on the keyword research and then considering the ‘related searches.’ They are often in the form of queries that are frequently asked by the searchers.
4. Create Longer Form Content:
Though a lot of you already know about it, it is still worth mentioning that longer-form content has higher chances to rank in the search result.
Considering again the study by Brian Dean of over 1 million search results the length of content has a direct correlation to ranking.
One major reason for long-form content achieving higher ranking is that it takes more time to read. And when a visitor spends more time on one page, it ultimately means increased satisfaction and hence higher rankings.
This is, in fact, the most important search engine positioning strategy to consider.
5. Create Blog Posts Containing High Topical Authority:
Before the introduction of the Hummingbird algorithm, Google estimated the relevance and authority of a website by the total number and kind of external links pointing to the website.
Links incoming with specific keywords as anchor text were the important factors in the way Google estimated the authority and relevance of a site.
But all of it changed completely with Hummingbird.
Now, Google uses latent semantic indexing for understanding the context and meaning.
It is possible for Google to measure the authority and relevance of a site without depending on the anchor text and incoming links.
With topical authority, using a single keyword becomes less vital. What’s important now is the way your content covers the topic entirely.
Rather than using single keywords, the algorithm is now searching for semantically associated keywords and looking for context and patterns.
Even, Market Muse confirmed that topical authority is now the newest way for keyword research. Dominating the topical authority in a specific niche is now the way to gain higher SEO rankings.
In addition to this, practice some ways to boost topical authority.
- Be specific about the 6-10 topics, which focus on your niche.
- When you write content on such topics, make sure you cover details related to sub-topics.
- Design pillar pages, with each one acting as a hub for a group of related posts.
- Design internal links between the pages or posts of your website, which are related to similar topics.
- Incorporate LSI keywords in the post.
- Utilize ‘related searches’ in Google results to search semantically associated keywords.
- Have a clear understanding of user intent. It is important that your webpage answers the query of searchers.
6. Create a Website with Fast Loading Speed:
The speed of a webpage is an important ranking factor. Along with it, the other important ranking factor is the bounce rate.
If your webpage takes a long time to load, people will hit the back button and visit the search results.
This will push up the bounce rate.
Hence, practice these ways to increase the speed of your site.
- Check the Speed of Your Website
It is first vital to check your website’s speed.
The two best ways to check the website speed are:
- GT Metrix
- Pingdom
If a page loads in less than or in 2 seconds, it is great website speed.
Increasing the speed of your site has two sides:
- The way your web host configures the servers
- The way you put up content on the web pages.
For the first aspect, you can only alter the web host. Luckily, you have complete control over the second aspect.
- Improving the Speed of Your Site
Some of the important areas where you can boost your website speed are:
- CDN or Content Delivery Network
- Reduced Size of Image
- HTTP Requests
- Enable HTTP/2
- Minify JavaScript and CSS
- Reducing the number of plugins
7. Reduced Bounce Rate:
The bounce rate is defined by Google as the total percentage of visitors to a specific site who navigate away from the website after viewing only the single page.
In simple terms, your webpage’s content is not exactly what your visitors are looking for.
The main business of Google is to match search queries to the search results. If your webpage experiences a high bounce rate, it sends bad signals to Google. This way, your search result will move down.
Remember, to achieve higher rankings in Google, it is essential to reduce the bounce rate of your website.
- Find the Bounce Rate
You can find the bounce rate of your webpage by using Google Analytics. Then check the behavior, content of your website, and all pages.
The acceptable volume of bounce rate depends on your niche or industry. Hence, there is no fixed figure for the bounce rate.
- Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate
Some of the ways to reduce the bounce rate are:
- Create more readable content by using shorter paragraphs, shorter sentences, headings, and sub-headings, images, large font, bullet points, and leaving abundant white space.
- Increase the loading speed of your website and try to keep it less than 2 seconds.
- Have a clear understanding of the searcher’s intent behind keyword you are targeting.
- Have a clear CTA or message. Your reader must know immediately about your webpage and what action you want your visitors to perform.
- Design valuable content, which is in relevance to the targeted keyword. It must help people gain adequate answers for that keyword.
- Include transitional phrases or words in your writing.
- Utilize internal linking to engage your visitors with other posts on the related topics.
8. Improve CTR or Click Through Rate:
CTR or Click Through Rate is a vital factor for SEO in the algorithm of Google. The higher the CTR is, the better is your site position in search results.
Enhancing CTR from SERP is an important strategy for search engine positioning.
You can increase CTR through the following ways:
- Include any number and a powerful adjective with your targeted keyword.
- Use symbols and numbers in the Meta title as they are very helpful in standing out in the SERPs.
- Conclude your Meta description in an interesting way so that people become more curious to read your next post.
- Incorporate keywords in the webpage URL.
- Include keywords in the Meta description and Meta title.
9. Boost ‘Dwell Time’:
Dwell time is also known as time on a page. It is an important ranking metric in Google.
Dwell time is vital for Google as the more time an individual spends on a page the more likely it is your content answered their query.
Moreover, the longer time people spend on a page, the higher you will appear in the search results, which is again a great way to enhance search engine positioning.
10. Your Webpage Must be Convenient to Scan:
How can you help visitors to easily scan your webpage?
This is possible by breaking the texts into short paragraphs, using headings and sub-headings, including images, and making your content readable.
People prefer scanning content, which is easily readable. In addition to the above-mentioned points, you can use a rich visual hierarchy to improve UX and draw visitor’s attention.
11. Include Featured Images:
This is a special image that is relevant to your blog post. Usually, it contains graphics and title of the blog post.
You can include a featured image with the blog post in order to improve search engine positioning.
For beginners, when a link is posted to the post, the featured image appears in the post. According to a report by Buffer, content with featured images receive 86% more clicks and likes than those without it.
In order to display the featured image on Facebook and Twitter, edit your blog post screen and click on the ‘shared’ icon.
In addition to search engine positioning, featured images deliver the following benefits:
- It helps to grab visitor’s attention.
- It indirectly enhances SEO.
- It informs visitors about your content.
- It reinforces site branding.
- It breaks the content into a readable format.
Conclusion:
Well, there are more other search engine positioning strategies you can consider. But for starting out, you may implement two or more of the above-mentioned strategies. Once you start gaining results, check our next post to explore other search engine positioning strategies. Try them out and see your webpages start reaching the top of the SERPs.