Effective SEO is made up of a variety of things. It includes finding high-traffic keywords and terms, to generating organic traffic for your website. We’re already in the second half of 2019, so while waiting for the results of your company’s mid-year performance review, take some of these effective SEO hacks to heart and improve your searchability now!
Simplify your content. Make sure it’s easy to comprehend.
This is one of the SEO hacks you can easily embrace—making sure your content is comprehensible. SEO ranking is directly influenced by the content’s readability. That’s why simplified content is more attractive to users, especially to those trying to find quick answers to their queries. Readability is all about creating content that is user-friendly, which subsequently helps you rank well on search engines. Content management systems like WordPress have built-in readability plug-ins that help content creators check their content’s readability. At best, your content’s readability would rely on whether your copy is easy to read or not, use of active versus passive voice, subheading distribution, appropriate keyword density, content length, and the appropriate use of transition words. Remember, the more you invest in making sure that your content is legible, the bigger chance you have of lowering your website’s overall bounce rate. A low bounce rate means that visitors are spending more time on your website, which can eventually help convert visitors to customers.
Voice searches are a thing. Use it to your advantage.
Voice search has been making headway recently. A popular Google prediction claims that at least 50% of searches will be done using voice search as early as 2020. The obvious question now is whether you should hanker to include voice search into your SEO strategy or not. You can, although it’s important to note that voice and text have different search patterns and that incorporating voice search would mean rethinking your overall strategy. While it can be challenging, you must acknowledge the importance and growing popularity of voice search. This will help your brand transition better for when voice searches finally dominate the digital landscape. Aside from accounting general voice search, you should also focus on local voice searches, especially when you’re dealing with a geo-targeted audience. This would entail accounting for local keyword searches and incorporating these keywords to your overall content, so you could target your local audience better.
Pump life into your previous content. Repurpose your content for new audience.
While it’s important to consistently publish content to establish relevance and rank well, it could sometimes get overwhelming and time-consuming. To overcome this problem, we suggest repurposing content. Not only does repurposing content help shorten the time it takes for you to publish content, but it also has a direct link to creating greater SEO impact. Repurposing could either be changing an original content’s format or refocusing your target audience. Any additions must be substantial though, as according to Moz, “the amount of change on your webpage (or content) plays a role.” Either way, repurposing content aims to pump life into your old content and introduce them to a fresh audience.
Drop in long-tail keywords to your content in order to rank well.
Neil Patel swears by this point’s effectivity: long-tail keywords for him provide more insights into what people are searching for online than the one or two focus keywords we’re used to. When you publish content time and again, it could get difficult to input new keywords for articles covering similar topics. Long-tail keywords account for an entirety of search phrases, leading more visitors with the same searches to your website. To effectively find the right long-tail keywords, you can use several keyword search tools like the Google Keyword Planner or its alternative Keyword Tool. These tools help build your search network campaigns based on the most popular keyword searches and show how certain keywords perform. Do note that this doesn’t necessarily mean jamming keywords into your content. It means strategically modifying the content so that your keywords don’t look forced or out of place. Finally, the more you incorporate long-tail keywords to your content, the bigger chance you have of connecting with your target audience.
Mobile-usability is key. Design your websites to be mobile-friendly.
Now I don’t know if you’ve heard the latest, but Google now prioritises the mobile version of your website than the desktop version. It’s called mobile-first indexing. First introduced in 2016, mobile-first indexing is a result of the growing mobile penetration. Since more and more people are spending most of their time on mobile, connect with them there. Based on this mobile-first theory, design your website in a way that will allow it to run smoothly across platforms. This is especially important for eventually converting your visitors into customers.
The more you publish content, the better chance there is of people finding you. So, write consistently.
Google takes cues from your website’s activity. The more you post, the more active your website becomes. As a rule of thumb, you must publish content at least once a week. This should be easy, especially if you have dedicated content creators for your website. Whoever handles your content must remember to just keep at it by following tried-and-tested content marketing tips, as well as writing and publishing consistently. This consistency shows people that you could be trusted and is serious about providing quality content. Search engines tend to identify and index websites that release new content. So, consistently posting new content also improves your site’s ranking.
Subscribe to these SEO hacks for 2019 and improve your website’s searchability now!
The rules of SEO are continuously evolving. Every year, the trends bring something new to the table. So, it’s important for business owners and marketers to adapt well and adapt fast. These SEO hacks only give you a glimpse of what’s hot in the industry. Actual application could, of course, be a challenge. Hiring SEO and digital marketing experts can help you sift through the trends and aid your strategy better!