SEO Best Practices: 10 Tips to Improve Google Rankings

Search engine optimization (SEO) remains as relevant in 2022 as ever. By adopting the latest techniques, your business can climb Google’s search engine results page (SERP) and increase its visibility over the competition.

Not only does a successful campaign send highly relevant traffic directly to your website, but just appearing on the first page of results also skyrockets brand recognition and trust. No matter your niche, everyone from e-commerce operations to professional services like architects and engineers benefits from effective SEO.

So, where should you begin? As the world of search engine optimization is constantly evolving, we’ve highlighted 10 powerful tips that will increase your SERP rankings and help you overtake your rivals. 

1. Enhance Your Website User Experience

Conducting effective SEO keyword research is critical to your success. However, simply making your website user experience more appealing to consumers is a great way to keep them browsing your pages for longer.

Research has proven that optimizing site loading speed is essential for SEO, with Google’s experts recommending businesses strive for under three seconds. This means you can’t have any unnecessary code or large image files slowing things down.

You should also reflect on your website’s overall design. Are the fonts easy to read? Does your website cause issues for colourblind users? Enhance your website user experience to ensure your brand is inviting to the largest potential audience.

2. Focus on Backlinks

Backlinks are an important Google ranking factor because they verify your content’s quality. In the eyes of the algorithm, if other websites consider your content good enough to link, this signals that everyday users must find highly relevant information.

Alongside internal links that help your traffic navigate your site, establishing an organic, expansive backlink network does incredible things for your SERP rankings. Reach out to news organizations and influential voices to see if they’ll link to your website from relevant articles.

3. Update Your Old Content

Older content that has gradually become less relevant over the years doesn’t have to go on the scrap heap. Instead, you can rejuvenate these blogs and product pages with fresh ideas and messages that save you time and effort.

For example, you might delve into the latest industry research to pick out key highlights to include in your articles. With the right approach, this work can help your business climb the SERP rankings.

Meanwhile, you might decide to embed YouTube videos, include quotes from experts, or add your latest SEO keyword research that captures the current direction of your business.

4. Create for Humans

Although search engine optimization is about leveraging what we know about Google’s algorithms to our advantage, you can’t forget that your content must still appeal to real people.

In the past, when the search engine was significantly less sophisticated, it was possible to push your website to the first page with underhanded tactics. However, Google has become far better at detecting inorganic content.

Today, the search giant encourages its E-A-T principle – Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Keep these fundamentals in mind when crafting a new blog or landing page.

5. Review Your Technical SEO

Don’t overlook technical SEO when looking to improve your rankings. Using the Google Search Console, you can measure your website’s performance and identify potential issues limiting your growth.

In addition, your site’s metadata is another technical area that requires your attention. Craft optimized title tags and meta descriptions to grab the attention of your ideal target market.

You must also optimize images for SEO on your website by compressing them to the smallest file size without compromising quality. Plus, include alt-text to contextualize the image for search engine crawlers.

6. Search Intent is Key

When conducting SEO keyword research, you must factor intent into your decision-making. What does that mean? Consumers have a specific goal when searching, such as buying today or discovering more information. 

You can successfully convince the most relevant consumers to visit your website by optimizing your content with intent-driven keywords that align with your goals.

For example, transactional keywords are search terms that typically include words like “buy”, “cheap” or “free shipping”. Alternatively, informational keywords that reach customers earlier in their buying journey include “how-to” or “what are”.

7. Fix Broken Links

Broken links are bad news for SEO. If a user is reading one of your articles but gets stuck because the links go nowhere, they will click away from your website within seconds.

This won’t just happen with internal links where the URL has changed. Carefully selected external links are also likely to break eventually as content gets moved or deleted. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of SEO tools dedicated to solving this problem.

8. Repurpose Video Content

Creating high-quality website content is a time-consuming process, but there are some clever strategies you can adopt to streamline your efforts. With video marketing one of the most popular content formats, consider repurposing your YouTube videos into blogs.

You might transcribe your script into a carefully formatted article with headings and optimized images. You should also embed your YouTube video at the end to transform some readers into new channel subscribers.

9. Include an FAQ

Many businesses have included FAQ sections on their websites for years, but we are increasingly recognizing the SEO benefits of doing so. By providing straightforward answers to common consumer questions, you can attract users conducting informational queries. 

However, there are other advantages too. Rather than customers needing to contact your team about shipping returns or delivery dates, your FAQ section can offer a transparent answer that frees up your team’s workload.

This process only increases consumer trust in your brand, as buyers appreciate it when businesses are upfront about information that affects them. 

10. Complete an SEO Audit

As Google is constantly updating its algorithms, SEO is an ever-changing process that requires frequent revision. By completing an SEO audit, you’ll understand the strengths and weaknesses of your current standing.

This information can help establish an innovative SEO strategy that quickly improves your Google rankings. 

Whether you need to optimize site loading speed, increase backlinks or redefine the website user experience, an SEO audit will highlight a way forward.

Chat with the Experts

Don’t let the competition overtake you on the SERP because you’ve ignored your SEO for too long. Instead, chat with the expert team at First Page to discover how our personalized SEO campaigns will take your business to the next level. 

With our experience planning and executing SEO strategies for leading companies, we have what it takes to deliver an optimized campaign for an unbeatable ROI. Contact our friendly team to learn more.