Customers are of great value to every business enterprise. It is because of the customers a business expands and flourishes in the market.
In the conventional business model, attracting customers was not an uphill task. The shop owner had to set up a great storefront to catch the passerby’s attention and lure them to visit the shop. However, that’s not how it works for an eCommerce store.
In the current era, businesses have to use multiple channels to reach their potential audience. One of the most common channels is through search engine result pages.
Google.com has become a one-stop solution for internet users for all their problems. People enter their queries and google displays all the websites with relevant content or answers to their questions.
Google handles around 3.8 million search queries every minute worldwide. It means businesses have a remarkable opportunity to appear on the result pages and reach their prospective audience.
So, do you want to unveil SEO optimization techniques to rank higher and increase your visibility on the result pages? If yes, keep reading this blog post.
In today’s article, we have put together an SEO checklist 2021; it will tremendously help your business reach out to prospects and invite them to your website.
Let’s begin…
18 SEO Essentials You Need For Optimizing Your Site
1. Create Quality Content
The first item on the SEO checklist 2021 is creating informative and engaging content on your website for your audience. Creating blog posts on your website is a surefire way to increase your chances of ranking on search engine pages.
Create helpful and interesting articles on your website. Include pictures and infographics to make it more engaging. Marketers can easily integrate core keywords in the article to become visible on the search engine and reach the prospective audience.
Hence, come up with exciting ideas to compose the articles. Do not create blog posts on the abundantly available topics on the internet; instead, think of unique ideas to pique your audience’s interest and keep them hooked to your website.
However, ensure not to stuff your article with keywords. Your content should be first designed for humans and then for search engine bots.
2. Seamless User Experience
There is a reason why people prefer Google over any other search engine. It is because Google is constantly upgrading its algorithms to provide an impeccable experience to its users. The giant search engine displays websites with relevant content to the user’s query and the ones which provide a good user experience across their websites.
Thus, if your website is slow or of poor quality and fails to provide a seamless user experience to the visitors, Google will not rank your website higher.
Therefore, before you roll your sleeves and look for solutions to boost your SEO, work on your website’s layout and appearance. Ensure that it looks professional, trustworthy, and attractive to the visitors. If your website is built on WordPress or Shopify, select an attractive theme for your website.
3. Site Speed
The dependence on the internet has increased manifold because it provides convenience and saves peoples’ time. Whether connecting with a friend or purchasing monthly groceries, the internet and smart technology have made it easier for people to do everything with just a few taps or clicks.
If your website fails to load quickly, people will bid farewells to your website and switch to your competitors’ websites. Ideally, a website should load in under 3 seconds. Websites that take longer than 3 seconds to load lose up to 37% of the traffic. It means that prospective audiences sometimes quit the website without even exploring its content.
Thus, ensure that your visitors do not have to wait for the website to load. Instead, optimize your website speed and make everything readily available for your visitors.
4. Responsive Design
Laptops and personal computers aren’t the only mediums to access the internet and browse different websites. The advent of smartphones has changed the way people connect with the internet. With just a few taps or voice commands, a person can look up and browse different websites.
Mobile devices generated 54.8% of the total web traffic. Hence, web developers have become crucial to make their websites responsive to various digital devices to provide a good user experience to mobile users. In contrast, a website that doesn’t function or display correctly on mobile devices is abandoned by mobile users. Thus, increasing its bounce rate and affecting the SEO ranking on SERPs.
5. Internal Linking
Internal linking refers to the practice of interlinking the website’s pages and content. For instance, a marketer can provide the link of a previous blog post in a recently published article or provide the link of any web page of his website with other web pages on the website.
Search engine bots have limited time to crawl the websites and index them in result pages. Therefore, having a good number of internal links works as a gateway for search engine bots to crawl maximum pages. On the contrary, if the web pages and content are not internally linked, bots will not crawl the maximum pages in a limited time.
Therefore, do not overlook this vital item on the SEO checklist 2021 to optimize your SEO.
6. External Linking
External linking is the practice of linking high-authority websites on your web pages and content. For instance, if you have written a detailed article on COVID- 19, a link to the World Health Organization on your content will increase its credibility.
The content linked to the high-authority website makes your content appear trustworthy and relevant to the search engine algorithms. In addition, your website’s audience will also trust the stats and information that you have shared in your content.
Hence, whenever you state any figure, stats, research, or studies, link it to high-authority websites to build your content’s credibility and win your audience’s trust.
7. Meta Description And Title Tags
Title Tags inform the search engine and users about the content of the website in a concise way. Title tags should be 50 to 60 characters long; more than that will not be displayed on the result pages. Moreover, include your main keywords in the title tag; it increases the chances of the link getting clicked by users.
Meta Description is a brief paragraph that is displayed on the SERPs under the website’s URL. Meta description informs the users about the content available on the web page.
Though Meta descriptions do not play a vital part in improving one’s rank, they are beneficial to increase the chances of getting the clicks on the link. When a user reads that his desired information is available on the page, he instantly clicks the link to learn and explore more. Therefore, always write short paragraphs to summarize what content users can expect on your web pages.
8. Optimized Images
Using attractive images is essential to make your content and website appear interesting, attractive, and engaging for the audience. Therefore, you would definitely want search engine bots to crawl your images, too, right? If yes, then don’t forget to use the alt tag to optimize your images for SEO.
The famous search engine Google cannot see your images. However, it can read and understand what the picture is about if it’s described in the alt tag. Therefore, never leave the alt tag without describing explicitly what the image is about. In addition, include the keywords in the alt attribute to make your image rank higher in the image result pages.
9. Snappy Headlines And Permalinks
Use the old-school method of attracting visitors to your website by writing attention-grabbing headings. Make sure that your headlines contain a maximum of 55 characters. More than that will not be displayed on the search results.
Keep in mind that there is a difference between creating attention-grabbing headlines and clickbait headlines. The latter is a common tactic deployed by many marketers to increase their clicks. While this may be a smart approach to making the users visit the website, it can also backfire in an increased bounce rate if the user doesn’t find the information they were promised in the headlines. Hence, refrain from taking this path.
Keep the permalink of your webpage simple. Make it easy for users to understand the location of the content on your website.
10. Engage On Comments Section
Another tip for optimizing your site is to engage with your audience in the comments section. Unfortunately, many websites turn off the commenting option under their posts. So beware, it is not a good approach. Instead, you should ask for your audience’s feedback and answer their queries related to the published content.
Engaging with your prospects helps you understand the content they like to read and engage with. Their valuable customer feedback can help you create content that can improve your site’s ranking.
11. Fix Broken Links
How would you feel if you click on a link and arrive on a page that displays: Error 404, Page not found?
You will feel frustrated or irritated, right?
Your audience will feel the same way. Hence, ensure that all the links present on your website are working correctly. If not, fix it or remove it from your website to reduce the bounce rate.
12. Switch To HTTPS
Since 2014, HTTPS has been considered an important ranking factor by Google. As a result, HTTPS has become a safety badge for websites to ensure online users can safely browse the website without risking their information.
Websites that are not switched to HTTPS are displayed as ‘not secure’ websites by Google to warn its users.
Thus, make your visitors feel safe and label your website as secured by switching to HTTPS protocol.
13. Build Backlinks
Backlinks are the links that are earned by a website from another authority website of the niche. Remember the example of the World Health Organization, which we shared above? If different websites link to the World Health Organization website, we can say that WHO has earned backlinks.
Google considers the number of websites linked to your web pages for ranking it on the search result pages. Thus, create quality content that people would love to share on their social profiles or link to their website.
14. Take Advantage Of YouTube SEO
YouTube is the search engine for video content. It has more than 2 billion users. In addition, more than a billion hours of videos are watched on this site daily.
Wait… that’s not it… YouTube videos are also ranked on the search engine result pages before the listing of the websites. Thus, use this platform to create informative, engaging, and helpful information for your audience and increase your chances of ranking higher on SERPs.
15. Refresh Your Old Content
Creating new content is no joke. It takes a lot of time, research, and effort to brainstorm, design, and publish content on the website. As a solopreneur, it gets tough to juggle all the business activities, including content creation.
Therefore, when you are drowned in work and have no time to spare for creating new content, put your old content to use.
Update the stats and figures mentioned in your post, attach new pictures, include interesting infographics, and integrate core keywords in your content to make it compete for a higher ranking on the SERPs.
16. Optimize For Voice Search
Did you know 40% of smartphone users use the voice search feature to browse the internet? It results in 1 billion searches each month.
Hence, it’s high time for marketers to optimize their content for voice search. For example, include long-tail keywords in the content to make your site visible to a potential audience who searches the internet by voice commands.
17. Use Schema Markup
Suppose you search for the recipe of a strawberry sundae, and numerous results are displayed on the result page. Which of the following results would you click?
A) The Result with title, web URL, and short description
B) The Result with title, web URL, picture, star rating, cooking time, and customer votes
The majority of the people would select Option B because the result displayed is rich and attractive. Moreover, it provides more information to the user about the content available on the web page.
Use the schema markup tag of HTML to display your results with pictures, ratings, and other information and increase the chances of receiving more clicks than your competitors.
18. Use SEO Optimization Plugins
Tried everything on the list?
Well, it’s now time to take help from advanced SEO optimization tools to boost your website’s visibility and ranking.
However, ensure to set up these tools appropriately. Take help from an SEO expert if required. Failure to set these tools correctly can cause serious damage to SEO.
Wrapping Up
Phew… quite a long list, isn’t it?
But that’s how SEO works. It is not a one-time setup; instead, it is an ongoing process to keep your website ahead of your rivals on SERPs.
Marketers have to pour in real efforts to make their websites rank higher and appear in front of potential audiences.
So, dear readers, what are you waiting for? Roll your sleeves and start planning strategies to optimize your SEO, increase website ranking, and escalate conversions.
Good luck!
