Want to rank high on the search engine results pages (SERPs)? Before you call for expert help, assess yourself and your team’s capabilities. Do you have a solid foundation on your roles in search engine optimization (SEO)? Having good basic SEO skills can help you rank higher on the SERPs without needless spending or having to hire expert help. Consider these as your last resort; but, first, let this guide help boost your team’s basic SEO skills.
What Is SERP?
Simply put, the search engine results page (SERP) displays the results of your query on a search engine. The results, relative to the keyword you’ve entered, typically show the title and a short description of the page or its content.
Factors That Will Help You Rank High on SERPs
What rating factors do Google and other search engines look into? The ones listed below will help improve your current rank without having to spend on expensive SERP SEO tools or expert SEO services.
- Keywords – Knowing the most searched keywords your visitors are typing on search engines to find your business will play a huge role in your SERPs ranking. SEO optimization tools such as Ahref’s keyword tool, Google Trends, and Answer the Public can help you discover the keywords people use to find your website or content. Then, integrate these keywords on your website.
- Keywords Research – To take your keyword research to the next level for your snippets, you can take advantage of the 10x case study regarding top searched “near me” keywords conducted by Propelrr, a digital marketing agency in the Philippines, to boost local visibility. The possibility of users seeing you on their search pages will be highly likely, plus the probability that they will search for the same keyword is high. As an example, the table below shows the potential in using these search terms for your content.
Click here to see more results. (Brought to you by Propelrr)
- Relevance of the content of your website – Search engines assesses if your website contains content relevant to the search queries they receive.
- Quality of content – Do users consider your website a reliable source? Search engines decide this based on the quality of your site’s content. Websites with reliable content get prioritized.To do this, search engines–with the help of backlinks–will check your website’s domain authority and user trust. Through SEO analysis, you can find out how many websites are linking back to yours. Make sure to disavow websites that spam your website with bad backlinks or relate it to bad content.
- Usability of your website – Does your website provide a good user experience (UX)? Search engines evaluate if your website is easy to use or not. To rank high on the SERPs, use a SERP checker to assess how good your site’s user experience (UX) is. See, Google, for instance, checks the pain points of a website to evaluate its usability. The search engine giant prioritizes websites and pages that provide better overall UX.
- Context – Is your website set up for local SEO? Google and other search engines use the location of your business/website to deliver relevant content to users near or in the same location. The nearer your business is to users, the higher you will rank on the SERPs.
- Search settings – Website settings can play a role in dominating the SERPs. One way is to opt to tick a safe search on. This will tell not just the search engines, but your potential audience as well, that your website is safe to visit and can be useful to them.
SEO Marketing Techniques That Can Help You Rank Higher on SERPs
With the right factors now taken into account, strengthen your business’s chances at SEO success by putting into play the following key SEO marketing techniques:
1. Align your content to your audience’s search intent – This refers to creating your content based on the keywords that users are typing into the search engines. By aligning these with your content, your website stands a much better chance of providing value by answering your audience’s questions and addressing their needs.
Check Google’s auto-fill form whenever you search for something. Use the suggestions you see to create relevant articles or videos for your website. With 75,000 searches per second on any given day, you’re sure to find several keywords or phrases that you can use.
2. Backlinking – This refers to the links that other websites created to point to your website. In most cases, search engines consider these links as “votes of confidence” from other websites. The more backlinks you get from credible websites, the better you’ll rank on the SERPs. On the flip side, backlinks can also be used to destroy the reputation of another website through spamming. You always have the option to disavow such links.
3. Page authority – Developed by Moz, page authority is a score from 0 to 100 that predicts how a website will rank on the SERPs. The score is based on data-driven factors, like domain authority and backlinking. The higher the score, the better.
4. Page speed – Page speed is one of the most important aspects of your website that you need to improve if you want to rise on the SERPs. According to Google, the probability of a visitor leaving your website–if it takes one to three seconds to load–goes up to 32%. To boost your site’s speed, optimize the images you upload, and use alt tags and video hosting sites to speed up loading time.
Key Takeaways
- Solid SEO basics can go a long way – This guide clearly shows you can take ownership for your SERP ranking success by learning solid basic SEO skills and using them properly.
- Explore search intent – Search intent is a great technique to use to create great content and build backlinks and page authority. The good thing about this is that it’s practically free to get the data you need.
- Optimize your website, first – Many people forget that the optimizing their website should be the first step to gaining ground on the SERPs. With the groundwork laid outright, it will be easier for you to apply other, more advanced SEO techniques in the future.
Reaching the first or the top page of the SERPs may seem a daunting task. By building a solid foundation using basic SEO knowledge, you’ll be able to climb the rankings effectively sooner than later without spending a fortune.
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Aby League is a researcher with a Masters Degree in Biology. More than doing her job, she is a technology and innovation enthusiast with a passion for data and writing. She writes mostly about Technology, Online Banking and Shopping, Investing, and Market Research. Her work has been featured in multiple online publications including AdAge, BestTechie, 60SecondMarketer, and many more.