SEO: How do I improve my SEO?

Grozina / SEO: How do I improve my SEO?

SEO: How do I improve my SEO?

When people type or speak a query for the search engines, they receive a list of sites that are ranked in the order of their likely relevance to the query.  The higher your website ranks on the SERP, the more attention and clicks your content will receive. Studies indicate that the percentage of people who click on content on the first SERP is 82%. The second SERP drops to approximately 13%, and on the third SERP the percentage of people clicking on content is only around 5%. 

Within the first page, the first five results get 67% percent of all the clicks, while the results from six to ten only get 3%.

Where a particular website falls on SERP has a serious impact on how many clicks and visitors a particular website receives.  Therefore, brands who discover how to increase their SEO rank can have a dramatic impact on the success of their site and their bottom line.

The search engines want to find websites that best answer the query of the user. Therefore you want to make your site appear:

  • Relevant. It should clearly show the search engines and the potential readers that your content addresses the needs of your visitors. This means that it should contain relevant keywords including semantically related keywords, helpful metadata, and a trustworthy website design layout.
  • Authoritative. The content should be written to demonstrate authority on the subject. Ideally, it should be well-cited, proving that the content is not just the opinion of the creator, but carries weight. Ideally, the author has expertise in this field and is not trying to click-bait or misrepresent their products or services.
  • Expertise. The creator of the context should have demonstrable expertise in this area and their credentials should be featured prominently on the website so that visitors, and search engines, can easily see why they should trust this particular person.
  • Trustworthy. The content should be trustworthy, which means that the content and the entire domain should appear credible and give readers a reason to remain on the page. This means designing a website according to the latest secure search best practices, and not creating a site that could be mistaken for spam. It also means asking yourself how this particular piece of content will help users in their quest to find answers.

To improve SEO rank, brands should therefore focus on the user experience they create within their site and the level of content they produce. Ensuring that their content addresses the needs of their users and provides an in-depth, expert-level understanding of the topic will help to raise an SEO ranking and help the page bring in more traffic.

Related: SEO: How do I write SEO content for my website?