SEO Techniques That Will Work in 2018

Unlike in the past, most businesses today have some type of online presence.

Companies more than ever are investing heavily in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which is the process of optimizing your website to rank for particular search phrases. Search engine marketing is extremely effective at turning prospects into customers, since people feel as if they found you, instead of feeling like they’re being advertised to.

By utilizing search engines like Google, companies are able to receive organic traffic from potential customers that are looking for their products or services. However it’s not as simple as just having a nice website. SEO is becoming more and more competitive, since many companies have started investing in search engine optimization.
In this article, we will be looking at some of the most recommendable SEO techniques that will work for you in the year 2018 and beyond.

Improve the Speed of your Website

Many people browsing the internet suffer from internet attention deficit disorder. Most people will bounce off your website if the load time is too slow. Since many people are impatient, they will not wait until a page finishes loading. As a business or organization, it is crucial to make use of tools that will foster the speed of your site. Importantly, cut all the unnecessary information from your site that might affect the loading speed to get your customers pleased whenever they are visiting your website.

Gain Quality Backlinks

With today’s competition, most people and even organizations struggle very hard to get ranked well. Bearing in mind that lately there has been a lot of paid links, it is time to get out there and get yourself high-quality backlinks to help achieve the ranking you have been dreaming of. At all cost, do not compromise quality over quantity. Content marketing backlinks are what you need to assist you in moving your business to the next level.

Foster Engagement on Your Website

User engagement is becoming more and more important in Google’s ranking algorithm. By increasing the user engagement of your website, you will be able to get higher rankings for your web pages. Having a web page that keeps users engaged, and that doesn’t have a high bounce rate is a good sign to Google that your content is relevant to a particular search phrase. Therefore it rewards web pages that have strong user engagement.

It’s important to analyze your website’s content to increase your user engagement. A great way to do this is to check out WEBRIS Tools, and use their Content Audit Tool. It will paint a clear picture as to where you’re web pages are lacking, and what you can improve to increase user engagement.

Do Keyword Research and Optimize Content Accordingly

A big ranking signal to Google is whether or not a particular keyword is featured on the page you’re trying to rank. It’s important to do in-depth keyword research to figure out which keywords are worth targeting in your website’s content.

To do this, simply download the Keywords Everywhere plugin. This plugin will tell you how many searches a particular keyword receives on a monthly basis. The numbers are estimates, but they paint a good picture as to what words are worth targeting and which are not.

Create In-Depth Content

As the old saying goes, content is king. This tip goes hand in hand with user engagement. If you’re content is not quality, and isn’t answering a user’s question or solving their problem, there’s a good chance you won’t rank based on bad user metrics/engagement.

To achieve long term, sustainable rankings it’s important to create awesome content. Be sure to write as many words on whatever subject your particular page is about, since Google favors larger content over thin content.

Develop Optimized YouTube Videos

It’s pretty commonly known that videos will keep users engaged longer than long worded content. For this reason, Google loves pages that have relevant videos embeded on them. By creating some relevant videos and sticking them on the pages you want to rank you will accomplish a few things. You will likely increase the average time spent on that page, since videos typically keep users engaged. You might even see a ranking increase by doing so.

Videos can do a great job at supporting your content, since most people would much rather watch a short video as opposed to reading a 1000+ word article.

Create Click Worthy Content

One of the biggest hurdles is getting users to click you’re listing in the Google search results, instead of clicking on a competitors listing. To do this you need to create click worthy meta titles and descriptions. If you’re unsure what I mean by “meta title” and “meta description” see the example below:

It’s important to include your target keyword(s) in your meta title. Your meta description should explain your content and make users want to click your listing instead of your competition.
Click through rate (CTR) is a huge ranking signal to Google since it means that users favor your content over the other search results. Be sure to create click worthy meta’s when you’re publishing your content.

Add Analytics to Your Website

While this isn’t a ranking signal, it’s very useful data for you as a webmaster to have. By installing Google Analytics to your website, you will be able to learn more about your audience as well as track the performance of your website over a given time period.

Analytics will tell you where your audience is located, how they found you, how long they stayed on your website, and much more. It’s very useful data for you to have, and it’s essential information for you to have as a webmaster. This is something that will help you track your progress and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Overall it will help you grow your traffic.

Deal With Any Technical Issues

It’s important to deal with any technical issues on your website. Some errors can occur naturally, many by accident but never the less, all of them can be corrected.

Various technical problems such as 404 errors, dead links can really negatively affect your website’s performance since your user engagement will suffer as a result. It’s important for you as a webmaster to analyze your website’s content to ensure nothing is out of place or incorrect.

Guest Posting

Guest posting by definition means creating a unique and original post and having it published on a blog that you don’t own. Ideally with a link included in the content that points to your website. There are many benefits to guest posting. By publishing your content on relevant blogs with high traffic you stand to gain some of the traffic that the post gets. You will also see SEO/ranking benefits from the link embedded in the article that points back to your website.

With that being said, it’s important to try and get your link featured in the content body, and not in the author bio. The reason being is that in-content links carry more weight in Google’s algorithm than author bio links. It’s also important to note that you should aim for do-follow links, instead of no-follow links. Read more about do-follow’s vs no-follow’s here.

To conclude, many SEO techniques that have been preached by industry “guru’s” can benefit your site, while many are simple outdated and will not benefit your site. It’s important to only use SEO techniques that will stand the test of time. A good rule of thumb when trying to gain rankings is to ask yourself “is this something only an SEO would do?”, and if the answer is yes, avoid doing so. It’s important to remember that Google doesn’t like SEO’s that are trying to manipulate their algorithm to gain ranking increases. Therefore you should only do what looks natural.