Only 36 per cent of small businesses employ an SEO strategy. This is a big problem. The truth is that knowing how to rank your website is a crucial part of being a successful business in 2020.
If your site doesn’t have incredible SEO optimization, then your business won’t be working to the best of its abilities. If you’re not appearing on the first page of Google’s search results, you’re losing businesses. It’s going straight to your competitors, cutting into your profits and business profile.
Keeping on top of SEO trends is difficult, we get it. That’s why we’re here to help you out. We’ve collected some of the most important SEO guidelines to help make your webpage more successful this year.
Ready to discover the latest SEO guidelines that can help your business grow? Then read on and start making improvements!
Voice Search Will Grow in Popularity
The popularity of digital assistants and smart speakers is growing year on year. Do you have an Amazon Echo or Google Home in your home?
If you do, then you’ll know just how convenient they can be. Voice search encompasses Siri, Google Assistant, smart speakers, and more. How do you optimize your site for voice search, exactly?
Learning how to rank with voice search is easy. While it’s one of the more recent SEO trends, it doesn’t demand any huge changes to your SEO strategy.
When you type a search query into Google, we’re willing to bet that you use a handful of keywords. It might not even be formulated into a cogent sentence.
When you search using your voice, you’re more likely to ask an actual question. You may ask “what are the best hotels in Dublin”, for example. To improve voice search SEO, you need to start using long-tail keywords on your site.
Speed is Key
Slow sites have worse SEO than faster ones. That’s just a fact of life. It used to apply only to desktop searches, but in 2018, Google added this criterion to its mobile searches too.
Speed isn’t likely to be the first thing you look at when considering how to rank your website. This needs to change.
Happily, these changes aren’t too hard to make.
First and foremost, use a quality hosting service that gives your site enough bandwidth. Compress your text-based elements, edit and optimize your images’ sizes, prune unnecessary data, and utilize browser caching to improve speed.
Aim for the Answer Box
When you google a question, it is common for Google to put what it believes is the most relevant answer in a small box. This appears before the other search results and can give your site’s traffic a boost.
If you want to get your site’s answer in the answer box, your SEO needs to be on point. To get into this coveted position, your site should have clearly presented information that Google’s crawlers can access and understand. Lists and headings can help with this.
Don’t Neglect the Basics
Content is king, now and probably forever. One of the most important pieces of SEO guidance that we can offer is to make sure your website is well put together.
If your content isn’t good enough, your bounce rate will be high, which will drive your ranking into the ground. Aim for well-written content with a keyword percentage of around four to five per cent.
You should use compressed images with solid metadata. Make sure that your site’s tags are composed well, and use headings to split your content, making it easier to read.
These aren’t revolutionary SEO guidelines, but they’re important to remember. They’re not going away any time soon.
Improve Your Mobile Site
Google is now most interested in how your site performs on mobile. This is one of the most important Google SEO updates in recent years. You can’t neglect your mobile site anymore.
No matter how polished your desktop site, if your mobile site isn’t up to snuff, you won’t rank highly.
Your platform most likely already offers good mobile support, which makes it a little easier for you. That being said, you still need to thoroughly test your mobile site. If even one little bit of unintuitive design drives views away, you’ll suffer for it.
Use Videos on Your Site
It is predicted that by next year, as much as 82 per cent of internet traffic could be video. Using videos on your site is a great way to boost your ranking, too.
The logic is simple. When you put videos on your site, people are more likely to stay on your website for a good period of time. Make the video engaging, and they’ll stick around until it’s over.
There’s just one problem with using videos. Crawlers can’t watch videos, so you need to improve SEO through other means.
There a few ways to do this:
- Ensure video metadata is accurate
- Transcribe the video on the page
- Tag it with keywords
- Make sure the title contains keywords
Video is a huge part of the web in 2020. Don’t get left behind.
Get Solid Backlinks
While some SEO trends come and go, others don’t. We’ve already discussed the importance of good content, but another perennially important part of SEO is good backlinks.
If high-authority sites link to you, your authority goes up. This boosts your site’s rankings and gets you more business.
While you can get some backlinks naturally by providing a good service and waiting for people to link to you, you should be active too. One great way is by writing guest posts on other sites that link to your content.
How to Rank in 2020: Creating a Strategy
Knowing how to rank your website can seem difficult, but it needn’t be. Follow the tips that we’ve outlined to create a cohesive, innovative SEO strategy!
Keep an eye on your page metrics and see how your improvements affect traffic. You’ll be noticing a boost in no time!
If you want a hand, we can help. We’re SEO experts and can help create a superb SEO strategy for your business. If you’re interested in our services, please get in touch today!