Today, we use Google more than once a day. We search for every little thing in the search box. It is like our new go-to place and a friend in need.
You might be wondering how Google knows which website has the best information about the things we searched for? How does your website come at the top of Google’s search?
To find the answer to these questions, please keep reading.
Also read:
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Why Is It Important To Have A Good Blog Strategy?
A good blog strategy translates to a well-planned blog/website.
In today’s competitive world, if you just put your blog on the internet and simply hope for a miracle, not many people will be visiting your blog.
You need a strategy; you need a way to reach those people who are searching for you.
With the help of their algorithm, Google is doing exactly that job; connecting who wants the information to who gives the information.
There are various ways you can tell Google that ‘this is what I am doing and these types of people are looking for me’.
A lot of people don’t know the language of Google, how it works or how to reach those people who are looking for them. However, it is not so hard to understand that.
This blog post is for those who want to reach out to the world and gain an audience in an organic way. This can be achieved by a method called SEO optimization. Many entrepreneurs hire SEO experts to ensure that their sites are ranked higher in the search engine.
5 Seo Trick For Optimizing Your Blog
- Do Thorough Keyword Research
First, you may ask what is a keyword?
A keyword is anything that a user puts in the search box of the search engine (Google or Yahoo).
For example, a person searches for the word: fish
So now ‘fish’ is the keyword
But the word ‘fish’ doesn’t really tell much, so Google is not sure whether the person wants to go fishing, wants to know the method of cooking a fish, or wants to fight against overfishing and save the ocean?
Google is not sure, so it will show all the results.
However, in most cases, the person is clear about what s/he wants to get from the results. So they will search for those exact words.
Let us assume that they search for how to do fishing in India?
Now, this is much more precise, and thus, Google will scan through all the websites and show the results for the same.
Which contains: how to do fishing in India
So the first thing you, as a blogger or website creator, should know is what people are searching for. What are the exact words that you want to target?
This doesn’t mean that you should change your content for more traffic at your website.
What really matters is to get to know what people are specifically searching for, and then you can target them with those particular words and phrases.
How to do this? Let’s find out.
There are a lot of ways you can find your keywords. You can start with Google’s auto-search; if you type ‘fishing’ in the search box, Google will autofill the box with some common suggestions:
This is one of the simplest ways of knowing what people are searching for.
Apart from this, there are websites in which you can type your keywords and see the different keyword sentences which you can use and improve your SEO this way.
You can also search and go down the page and over there Google will also show some related keyphrases:
Also, there are various websites like ‘Answer The Public’ which are good places to find and explore different phrases. Here you can decide which keywords people are mostly searching from this website, and on which keywords most of these websites are made.
For example, if ‘fishing’ is a very common keyword, then your competition is high. However, ‘how to fish in India’ might not be such a popular keyword. You can target it and get ranked high on the search list. You may also use platforms such as ‘Ubersuggest’ to know all about your keywords.
Look at things differently:
In a world where most people are doing keyword research, if you want to stand out, use the keywords which are not directly related to your work but people do search them and end up at your website.
Not all the time people know exactly what they want. So they wander around and end up where they want to. For example, a person searches for ‘sea pollution’, from there he could go on to know about overfishing and eventually end up on your website looking for ‘how to not overfish’.
So you can target those keywords which are not related to fishing but are related to the person who is going to search for fishing. It is about knowing what the user is searching for and what are the related things.
You can get more insights about this from Quora where you can understand user behavior. For example, you can know about how fishermen are working these days, what are they searching for, and what are they talking about these days by looking at questions and answers on Quora.
You also have to understand that there won’t be just one keyword. You need to hold on to all the types and you must keep changing. Continuing the example, if a documentary comes out on Netflix explaining why fishing is bad, and people start searching about it, then you must address those keywords too. In a nutshell, keeping up with the trends and current happenings of your topic is essential.
Keep your keywords long:
In our example, only the word fishing has more than 2,14,00,00,000 results. Think about the competition and amount of users not finding what they are exactly looking for.
However, if you search ‘how to fish for beginners’ – the results of websites come down to 7,90,00,000. That is 95% less than the previous keyword.
Hence, keep your keywords long as it helps to cut down your competition and also increase the traffic by way of keywords. There are still many ways available on the internet, but using this technique can get you results in the short-term itself by increasing traffic to your website.
- Improve Your Site’s User Experience
Keywords will help bring visitors to your website, but what will make them want to stay?
Google’s algorithm not only works on the keywords on your website. It functions in a way that helps deliver the best and optimum content to its users.
While Google is openly giving some idea of how its algorithm works, it has not given information on all of its algorithms. If it did, it would give power to all to manipulate and get maximum visitors to their website.
So, how would it know if your content is good or bad?
Now, if you have very solid keywords and you are using them properly, you will get visitors. However, if your website’s user experience is not convenient or pleasant, the users will not stay on it for a long period.
If more users start to leave your website, Google will get to know that this website is just using keywords and SERP for more traffic and that the content or user experience is weak on the website. Hence, Google will stop ranking you on the top.
Understand this:
If you are very popular with a powerful domain and you have written a book due to which people around the globe know you, it cannot guarantee visitors. You need a great blog that offers a pleasant user experience.
On the other hand, if someone who is not so popular writes a blog explaining your theory and your book has a smooth running website (that means there is no lagging and could handle more traffic), then that website will be at Google’s top list.
At some point, there are chances Google would recommend that website above yours.
Don’t keep a lot of animations:
If you have more animation it takes more data speed to run your website and if there is too much traffic then some people can’t even open the website.
Keep your website as simple as you can and ensure that people are able to access it even with a low internet speed.
Consider mobile users:
People are browsing the internet on their smartphones more than they do on their laptops. If your website runs smoothly on the laptop, it should work great on the phone too, because more audience comes through mobile than through laptops or PCs.
Try it out yourself:
Use your website from the phone, understand some people might have small-screened phones, while some may be using it from their tablets.
Avoid pop-ups, as, on the mobile phone, it is difficult to operate and very distracting if your website keeps popping on something.
Use: Google Search Console
There is a famous saying “Write the book you want to read” by Austin Kleon. Similarly, create a page that is so easy that you would like to visit it. This will help you know if your users are having trouble with their phones or not.
- URL Optimization
URL is the first thing that your website’s users and Google are going to see. However, know that they both look at the URLs very differently and we must keep them both satisfied.
Does the name of your website matter? Yes! If your website’s name is ‘https://fishing.com’ then just by looking at it you can tell it’s all about fishing. Google will also know that you are talking about fishing.
However, if your website’s name is ‘https://atlantic-salmon.com’, not everyone would know that you are talking about fishing and Google will also think that you are only talking about a specific type of fish.
So getting a domain name that is similar to what you are doing is important. However, if you don’t have that then it won’t stop you from getting more traffic.
Keep reading, there are different ways to optimize your URL.
Add your keyword in the URL
All the research you did now comes to play, your URL should have a small 3-4 word keyword.
For example, if your website is about fish and you find a keyword that is not so popular and perfectly matches your website.
Then your URL would be: https://fishing.com/learn-how-to-fish/
As you can see my keyword is: ‘learn how to fish’ in the URL and I used it to explain what my website is about.
So, even if your domain name is not specific to fishes, you must put a proper keyword in your URL which is the very basis of an SEO strategy.
Keep your URL short and clean:
As I mentioned before there will be humans checking your website along with search engines. If your URL is longer than 70 characters Google will recommend you to go for less.
Think about it! If you have a lot of words in your URL, it will be confusing and Google will not know which word to focus on.
If you have a URL within 60 characters, you are safe, but after that, Google will slowly start to refrain from ranking you at the top.
Keep your URL clean:
Now, this part is the humans part – the cleaner your URL looks the more trustworthy your website looks to the visitor.
Here are some examples,
1. https://www.fishing.com/learn-how-to-fish/
2. https://www.fishing.com/Pub/post?ID=77&kw=how+to+fish/
3. https://cdn07.fishing.cc/9rf7e2/i?HXID+iaj34089jgt30hgqa3&qry=f#/
Now, if you look at these, you will definitely click on the first link. You might even go for the second one, but you will think before you do it. However, the third link doesn’t look trustworthy and hence people might avoid clicking it.
No matter how good your website is from the inside, users will only click if they feel safe.
Your website should be safe to use:
Nowadays cyber attacks are increasing and people want to know if your website is safe to use or not, here are some ways you can make it safe.
It should have https not http:
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (https).
As you can see the ‘S’ stands for secure and your URL must have https.
You can secure your website from many other sites.
One provider is Namecheap.
It is technical stuff but once you have https then there is encryption between you and the user. This provides safety and assurance to the user.
Use hyphens:
This is a very basic tool but is often missed by beginners.
You have two options in the URL:
1. Hyphens (-)
2. Underscore (_)
Let me give two examples of the same URL.
1. https://www.fishing.com/learn-how-to-fish/
2. https://www.fishing.com/learnhowtofish/
Now focus on the highlighted part, which one is easy to read?
The first one, right?
Therefore use hyphens instead of the underscore.
So by using these simple tricks you are helping Google and people to know that your website is good and trustworthy.
- Enhance Your Content With Infographics.
An infographic means, Visual representation of facts or figures by a drawing, photo, or illustration.
How does it help SEO grow?
It is important because infographics are easier to understand than only text.
Think about it! A blog with only texts or a blog with visual presentations. like, highlighted sentences, photos, graphs, etc. They make your website easy to understand and that translates to increased traffic.
Here’s a good example, as you can see it is a lot easier to read instead of just text.
Make user-specific content
If your website is about fishes then make it about fishes, if you make them eel personalized then they will keep coming back
On such a website, if you take some engineer reference and put it on your website, your users won’t understand it and it will lead to a disconnect.
So when you research for keywords you will have a good idea of what people are searching about. You can talk about what your users are interested in through infographics.
Don’t add too much information
Make your website as simple as you can. In case your audience wants details or data to support what you are saying, you may include them below the graphic, but not in it.
To make it more simple you can add visual graphics. Just by adding a photo or a visual story, you can boost up the user experience. - Add Links To External Sites
Backlinks are one of the most effective ways of boosting up SEO, and if you manage to pull it off then your website may come at the top in a very short span of time.
As effective as they are, they are equally hard to execute too.
But first, let us understand what backlinks are and why they are important.
For example, a user searches: ‘fish’
Google shows websites that are related to the word ‘fish’
Nowadays, Google doesn’t only rely on the keywords, how powerful your domain is or how much you have paid, they also want to know which website is the most trusted one. So Google scans through all the sites and sees which website is recommended by other websites.
For example, if there is a website for traveling in India,
Now, this site puts your website address (https://www.fishing.com/) on their website
Saying you can fish here and it is a very entertaining place to visit.
Now, this is one backlink to your website. In other words, you can call them ‘votes’ from other websites, the more votes you have the higher your rank will be.
Focus on quality backlinks
It is far better to get linked by one highly authoritative and trusted website than it is to be linked by 10 different not-so-trustworthy websites.
Also, if you get linked by one website, again and again, every time the vote gets weaker. According to https://backlinko.com, 100 different websites voting for your website is far better for credibility than one website linking you 1000 times.
There is no denying that it is hard to get backlinks, but that is the way if you want to increase your traffic and get at the top of the search results.
What to do to get more backlinks?
It is very simple to understand, but a little difficult to accomplish. If you want people to link your website, then make your website as good as possible.
It could be videos, blogs, photos, or a survey, anything that people want to share.
Link claiming
If someone just mentioned your website’s name but didn’t link your website, you can find that too using tools such as BuzzSumo and Mention.com
How to find out how many websites have linked to you?
Here are some websites you can use:
https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker
https://moz.com/blog/find-competitor-backlinks-next-level
https://neilpatel.com/backlinks/
Conclusion
Nowadays if you are doing something, you have to be on the internet. Just by spreading the word and informing your close friends and family, your website is not going to reach everywhere.
SEO is an effective and organic way to increase traffic.
There are ways where you can pay people to visit your page, but SEO helps you understand the user and is the best way to increase traffic organically in the long run. Even those who pay for ads have to consider SEO tools for a long-term solution.
Author Bio
Hetvi works as a Product Associate at Refrens.com – India’s most powerful platform for freelancer’s finances and growth. She has worked for some renowned companies as a Brand and Digital marketing associate.
