Why is Google SEO essential?

A lot has evolved in search engines and especially Google SEO policies. However, several underlying policies remain firm.

For instance, targeting keywords to increase organic rankings no longer goes with search engines, but picking the appropriate keywords is still an indispensable piece of the puzzle.

Beyond getting SEO sauce, keywords expose a lot more about users and what they’re coping with.

With all of these SEO methods, it’s somewhat impossible to decide which ones to hold to and which you can safely move away from.

Is the link establishing a thing of the past? Should you dedicate your time and enthusiasm to on-page SEO? How to write a title tag to push your rankings with search engines? Where do SEO and social media meet? Is SEO worth investing in?

And, thoughtfully, what are the truly best SEO tips that’ll drive returns?

Both B2B and B2C marketers want more search leads because they result in 8.5X more clicks than paid search results.

If you focus on these techniques solely, you’ll drive more organic traffic to your blog and increase your search rankings without gambling a Google penalty. So Let’s begin with clicks, especially getting more clicks from Google without really ranking higher because that’s one of the interesting things about SEO. You don’t have to rank higher to get extra traffic if you get clicks from the rankings you already have. So let’s talk about some specific policies for generating more clicks without raising rankings.

I want to show you the essential Google SEO tips you need to know to help your site rank right now.

 

 

1. Optimizing Your Favicon

Now I’m amazed more people didn’t talk about this in 2021. Google reveals favicons in mobile search results, and they can affect your click-through rate if they’re high contrast, if they’re noticeable or not visible. Having a good favicon can make a minor percentage points difference, but it does make a difference if you can get it right.

2. Breadcrumb optimization

What is a breadcrumb? 

A breadcrumb trail on a page shows the page’s place in the site hierarchy, and it may help users understand and explore a site effectively.

Let’s take a peek at breadcrumb optimizing. Google displays breadcrumbs in both mobile and desktop search results. They can be breadcrumbs rich with keywords, which can impact your click-through rate. Now Google captures its breadcrumbs from a lot of spots. That can be your schema markup, your uniform resource locator(URL), your actual breadcrumbs on the webpage.

You need to make sure Google displays the breadcrumbs you want them to show, using those keywords you choose. The most reliable way to do that is to ensure that you have breadcrumbs on your page with links and that you’re employing schema markup. Ideally, it would harmonize your URL structure, but that isn’t always important.

 

3. Meta descriptions

Let’s hone those meta descriptions. Meta description optimization is a traditional Google SEO method. But a new study shows that 30% of websites don’t even use meta descriptions. Now that’s expected because another study shows that 70% of the time, Google will rewrite your meta description, generally because it’s not utilizing the keywords that the user is seeking. But suppose that we write a well-crafted meta description. In that case, it can compel users to click. That involves using keyword-rich descriptions that people are searching for, so when Google uses your meta description, it promotes those clicks and acts as a marketing copy for your web page.

 

4. Numbers in titles

A study showed that dates added to titles improved rankings for a particular brand regarding the use of numbers in titles. Numbers are commonly one thing that I constantly experiment with my title tags that usually present pretty consistent results. Those who use dates in title tags are mainly the winners,

Don’t be spammy about it. Don’t include it if it doesn’t make sense, and don’t fake it. But if you can consist of a number, it will often increase your click-through rate for any given query.

 

Linking out to other blogs is crucial for your growth.

People may think that link building is not relevant and wrong because it takes people off your page.

But I don’t think so. Link building continues to be a crucial part of intelligent search engine optimization. It would be best if you linked out to tons of high-quality sites and sources, even your direct competition!

Why? Because it helps your readers.

Linking out sends trackable traffic. It gives your site a more relevant and scalable resource.

It would be best if you regularly linked to different sites. Whenever you write a new post, try to reference other reliable websites where suitable.

You can’t anticipate getting links from others if you’re unwilling to give first. For instance, if you’re trying to get inbound links from authoritative blogs, one of the most straightforward ways to do that is to show your enthusiasm to link out to those blogs from your content.

And, of course, you should only link out to content pages that offer great value. It’s a good Google SEO practice.

More importantly, you can tell an influencer if you link out to them, and if your post is worthy, they may link back to you, share the post, or even email it to their extensive email subscriber list.

Building links is all about quality and not quantity. You’ll raise more trust in your niche if you have a few reliable links rather than thousands of poor-quality links.

 

Remember Humans First, Search Engines Second.

Recently, I’ve seen that more and more bloggers and content creators are traveling back to the old ways of Google SEO, where keywords intended to drive search results exceeded the fundamental key points of pleasant, relevant content. If that’s you, it’s time to shift your mindset today.

Many people still aren’t benefiting from long-tail keywords, favoring instead to attempt to trick search engines.

That’s the incorrect strategy.

Never prioritize search engines over the actual humans viewing your product. Instead, create content for the user, people who have eyes to read, and cash cards to buy your product and support you.

Search spiders are just script codes. They don’t buy products, and they certainly don’t interact with you on social media, and they won’t become loyal customers. ( CTA )

So, what does it mean to create for users first and then search engines?

Well, it’s simple.

Ignore the fact that Google and other search engines exist when you’re writing content. Instead, create content that will help someone. This is known as SEO copywriting.

Funny enough, when you put users first, you’ll write helpful content that search engines compensate for because search engines follow users. It’s not the opposite round. At the same time, you’ll be improving the user experience and raising trust with your readers.

 

Use a Simple, Readable URL Structure.

If users can’t read or follow your URL, then search engines will be confused too.

Just look out the URL of this article:

Yes, the URL above is long, but it’s simple to understand for users and search engines alike. There are no numbers or extra characters other than the words and dashes.

and then we also have these:

https://www.xyz.com/article/272531

Those figures don’t tell users anything on what to anticipate from the content. Stay off from page URLs like this:

Remember, search engines follow search users.

Google bots are like newborns who need to be spoon-fed constantly. And, he’s true.

Even in this era of search evolution, search spiders are still programs, not humans. It would be best if you guided them accordingly.

Make the URL memorable to the user, search engine-friendly, and easy to type. Copyblogger does the same thing:

Also, avoid stopping words like a, an, the, but, or in.

 

Boilerplate

How about making a boilerplate audit for your upcoming title tag? First things first, What’s boilerplate? Boilerplate is the part of your title tag that repeats.

For example, here at PurpleZ, we put “PurpleZ,” our brand name, at the end of every title tag. So for boilerplate, you need your titles to be an original, present unique value. So I would encourage you to trial and error with your boilerplate and see if removing it increases your rankings.

Sometimes it’s not going to. Sometimes you need that boilerplate. Experiment to find out.

 

 

FAQ and how-to schema

Now, we are going to talk about Schema, specifically FAQ and how-to schema. Google gave us an excellent gift when they introduced them in search results. FAQ schema provides you a lot of SERP real estate. You can’t always acquire it, and you can’t always win the how-to schema, but when you do, that can improve or influence people to click on your result, expand those FAQ schemas out.

It’s not suitable for every page. You want to ensure that you have those FAQs on your web pages. But it is one way that you can boost clicks without improving your actual Google ranking.

 

Relaunch top content

All right, now  I want you to relaunch your top content.

Content can go stale after a few years. So we launch content. Your website has a blog and you share it on social media. Most people forget about it after that. So go back, look at your top content over the last two to five years or even ten years. If you want to go back that far and see what you can relaunch by updating it, you can even keep it on the same link. In some cases, you can see gains of 500% to 1,000% just by relaunching some of your old content with some updates.

So do a relaunch audit in 2021.

Increase internal links.

How do we increase internal links? Now, many top agencies need to quickly improve clients’ Google SEO rankings, and there are generally two things they know are the shortest levers to pull. First, title tags and meta descriptions get more clicks, but second is increasing the internal linking.

You know that you can add more internal links on your site, and there are definitely some opportunities there that you just haven’t explored. So let’s talk about a couple of easy ways to do that without having too much work.

Update old content with new links.

This is a move that we see most people skip time and again. When you write a new blog post, publish a new piece of content, make sure you’re going back and refreshing your good old content with those new links.

So you’re staring at the top keyword you want to rank for, operating in checking tools like Keyword Explorer or Google Search Console to check what other pages on your site rank for your desired keyword, and then adding links to the new content to those pages. I find when you do this, time and again, it reduces the bounce rate. So you’re not only refreshing your old page with new content and fresh links and adding relevance. You’re also adding links to your latest content. So make sure that you’re updating your old content with those new links when you publish new content.

Delete unnecessary links.

Adding useless links from your old writings is a stupid SEO practice. Now, this is a sort of PageRank sculpting. PageRank sculpting is a wicked word in Google SEO, but actually, it works to a certain degree. It’s not a no-follow link page sculpting.

It is removing irrelevant links. Do you necessitate a link to your contact us on every page of your web page? Do you want a link to your about us form on every page of your website? In most cases, you don’t. Sometimes you do. But if you eliminate the redundant links, you can give more link equity through the links that are worth it, and those links are an important factor in Google’s SEO ranking signal.

The use of H1, H2, and H3 and text formatting

Don’t rush and publish pieces of unorganized text on your web page without first doing some primary formatting. This is not good for the end-user experience and works versus your SEO efforts.

Basic guidelines for formatting a post or page on your site:

Use H1 tags for your post’s main title.

Use H2 tags for your post’s main headings.

Use BOLD and Italics to draw the user’s attention.

Don’t overuse H2 tags for all your headings; we also have H3.

Write short paragraphs

Use a comfortable font size that is simple to read

When formatting your site posts, the first thing to have in mind is the user experience. Can they identify the main divisions of your post (H2 tags) by gazing at the page? Is the text simple to read on all devices and operating systems? (smartphones, Apple Ipads, Android tablets, etc.)?

 

Image Optimization

Image files are crucial to improve the user experience but should not produce other side effects like problems with load speed or delayed response.

If you choose to utilize images, remember the following:

Use Alt Text to define the image. You can add keywords but don’t exceed them.

Use keywords in image filenames and use dashes to separate them.

Avoid utilizing file names like image23.jpg or picture56.jpg. Instead, use meaningful names with dashes. For example cute-puppy-running.jpg

Keep all of your image files in a dedicated folder on your website, i.e., www.xyz.com/images/

Optimize the image size. The lesser the size of the image (in KB), the quicker your website will load.

 

Mobile-friendly websites

A substantial amount of searches performed each day are through mobile devices. Over the last six months, many studies recognized that smartphone searches are increasing, especially when making online purchases.

Looking at your analytics data, you will see a good percentage of your daily visits coming from mobile.

It’s not in the range of this post to go into detail about mobile SEO, but there are some easy steps to follow to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly.

The first thing to understand is between a mobile-friendly website and a native Android, iPhone, or Windows Mobile app. After talking with several web admins, I understood that most people fail with their mobile strategy because they do not recognize this discrepancy and have not yet learned the immense potential of mobile markets.

A mobile-friendly website is optimized for browsing on mobile browsers (i.e., Chrome on Android devices or Safari on iPhone’s IOS). I will cover this further in another post, but you need to implement a mobile-friendly version for your users arriving through mobile browsers for SEO purposes.

 

Content is king

For these tips to work, you require, first, to have decent content on your website. And a website with excellent, unique, premium content can far exceed in the long run (Even without SEO!) than an SEO-optimized website but without good content.

But what is premium content?

When people search on search engines, they are essentially looking for a solution to their question. Great content is a post or page that solves their questions.

We have some of the best content writers at PurpleZ, so give us a call if you need some help.

 

How should I know if my content is valuable?

There are two main ways to know if your content is valuable.

First, you can review your analytics and particularly the time users spent on a page. A user will stay longer on the page if the content is high-grade, and the second is the number of social media shares (Facebook likes, tweets, etc.).

This is a great way to recognize what users require and content to publish on your web pages and blogs.

 

How to write good content?

There is no easy answer to this question, but there are specific guidelines to put you in the right direction:

Make sure that your content delivers what is declared in the title. If, for instance, your title is “How to lose 15 kg of weight,” ensure that your post presents an accurate description (or steps) that someone can follow to obtain the desired outcome.

Check your text for typos, spelling, and syntax mistakes.

Format your text (I explained this above)

Give links within your content (where appropriate) to other pages on your website (or other websites) to get further information.

Insert references from well-established analyses or studies (where appropriate) to confirm that what you tell or advise is true.

 

Quantity Or Quality

Several people regularly ask me, “How long (in words) should I execute my posts?” Please understand that no 100% solution fits all problems. It depends on the nature of the post and topic.

For instance, the post you are browsing now is more than 2500 words because it is a broad topic. To demonstrate to someone the fundamental rules of Google SEO, I had to make a long post.

If, for instance, you are providing information about the benefits of milk, you won’t have to address that much.

This is precisely where quantity vs. quality comes into the spot. It’s more beneficial to write a quality post without counting words rather than a lengthy, dull post for the sake of implementing more word count.

Google’s official belief about content length is apparent: Short content can be helpful to rank well.

What does Google consider good content?

A couple of days after Penguin was released, Google announced a set of guidelines for accessing a website’s position. Among the advised guidelines, they included some questions to ask after you finish a post to help you decide the worth of your work.

 

Always Provide Fresh Content

Having fresh content is an excuse for visitors to come back and search engine spiders to crawl your website more often.

This is true when you have something new to say about the niche or topic you are covering. Avoid posting pages with the same content to renew your website or blog.

 

Move Important Pages Higher in Site Navigation

This method can’t be used for all pages on your site, but it can do much for your most valuable pages.

One way Google evaluates the relevant value is its distance from the home page via your inner navigation.

Your homepage typically gets the most external links and, consequently, the highest page authority on your website.

Moving your most critical pages closer to the home page will improve their authority and, therefore, their ability to rank higher.

 

In Conclusion

Beginning an SEO campaign from scratch can prove challenging. First, you need to choose which SEO service is more suitable for you and your company. And then, many steps are included, and the whole process needs extensive attention to detail, but the rewards can revolutionize your enterprise. Once you learn how all the aspects of Google SEO can work together, its concept becomes more evident.

Every element of your SEO campaign will run together, from the on-page to off-page optimization. Concentrate your energy on specific keywords (both long-tail and standard keywords), and you’ll begin to see actual results on Google and in your company. The need for a high-quality SEO plan has never been more critical, and it’s necessary to take it seriously. If you don’t, you can trust that your opponents are!

We hope that this article on search engine optimization proves helpful. If you are curious about learning more about Google SEO policies and how they can boost your business, please contact the PurpleZ team to discuss your strategy with one of our specialists!

 

Source

Chris, A. (2021, June 27). Seo tips for beginners- Google boost your website. reliablesoft. https://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-tips-for-beginners/

 

Traphagen, M. (2021 June 24).8 Google SEO Tips for Page One Results. searchenginejournal. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-seo-page-one-tips/352704/