Achieving sustainable ranking means that the SEO practice implied was ethical and effective as per the Google set guidelines. Achieving a sustainable ranking is not very difficult if proper SEO strategies are being used there are a few nitty-gritty that you will need to consider.
Using shady link building strategies and a repetitive content base might help you achieve ranking in the short-term. But in the long run, it will do more harm to your site and then good. The best part is that you do not have to invest in an overly expensive strategy to achieve a sustainable ranking.
All you need is a white hat SEO strategies that are ethical and acceptable, therefore, here are a few tips and tricks that can help you help you achieve sustainable ranking:
1. Focus On Quality Content
If you want visitors to keep returning to your website, you need to focus on quality content. Not only does your content have to be of high quality, but at the same time, it has to be relevant.
A factor that heavily impacts your website’s ranking is the dwell time. This is the time visitors spend on your website each time they visit. Of course, if your website has content that is exciting, recent and informative, visitors will tend to remain on your website longer. This will increase your website’s dwell time.
A great way to optimize your website’s content is to break it up with sub-headings. Dividing content into sub-headings makes it easier for people to read it. No one likes going through lengthy paragraphs, and if your site is just a block of text, users won’t spend much time on it, and it will impact it’s ranking negatively.
Keyword optimization is another factor you need to consider. While it is important to use words people often search for, you should avoid going overboard with this. Stuffing your content with keywords will violate Google set guidelines directly leading to a negative impact on your website’s ranking. Keywords should be used in a way that maintains the keyword density and keyword prominence and shouldn’t be sticking out like a sore thumb.
2. Secure Your Website with SSL Certificate
To protect the privacy of the users or the visitors, Google has adhered to strict actions concerning securing the websites. To provide users with an advanced and secure connection, Google declared HTTPS to be a ranking signal. If your website has doesn’t have an SSL certificate, it would be deemed insecure for users and ultimately hurt your ranking.
3. URL Structure
An easy to understand and well-structured URL allows visitors and the search engine know what the page is all about. The impact of URL structure is minimal on ranking, but it is definitely worth the effort.
Remember to never cram unnecessary keywords into URLs. However, the URL should be such that even if the page title isn’t visible, the URL should be an indication the visitor what the page is about. An example of a semantically inaccurate URL would be: “https://www.xyz.com/blog-http://title/tt54996/?ref_=tep “
A semantically accurate URL would indicate what the page is about even without looking at the title: “https://www.xyz.com/blog/10-easy-seo-hacks/”
4. Update Internal Links
Your website structure should be shallow so to speak. This simply means that each page shouldn’t be more than 2 to 3 clicks away from the home page. Visitors are very stringy when it comes to the speed of websites. This does not just include the loading time but also the time it takes to complete actions.
There are many tools available that will help you check how many clicks it takes to reach a URL. If your site is slightly complicated, it will help to use an internal search or breadcrumbs and tag clouds.
You should also check for broken links. A great free tool to use for finding broken links is Google Analytics. Typically, checking broken links once a month is recommended. You can even set an email alert to get a report for broken links. Once you have the report, you can simply redirect the broken links. Some of the broken links will have more users or traffic making it vital to fix on priority basis.
5. Improve Page Speed
There are a few reasons why it is important to focus on the page speed. For starters, if your page loads at a slow pace, Google will be giving you a low score. But at the same time the page loading speed also impacts visitors.
According to research over 40% of visitors will abandon the website if the page loading time is more than 3 seconds. But the worse part is that 80% off these users won’t bother returning to your page again. In the long run, this will reduce the incoming traffic to your website significantly.
If your page loading speed is fast, visitors will keep returning to it. Google’s algorithms recognize your website as a popular one and will adjust your website ranking in accordance with this.
There are a few ways you can do this. The easiest method is to use software for compressing files. It reduces the CSS, HTML and Javascript file size. The software will compress any file that exceeds 150 bytes.
Another way to speed up your page speed is to reduce the number of redirects. Each redirect increases your page loading time, so keep them to a minimum.
You may also leverage browser cache. This means that when a visitor returns to your website, the browser won’t have to reload the page from scratch since the cache stores images, stylesheets and Javascript files.
6. Fix Broken Links
In most cases if you are using authority sites for hyperlinks, you should not have a problem with broken links. But this does not make it an impossible phenomenon. A broken link can impact your SEO ranking and at the same time put your visitors off when they clink on a page and it brings them to a dead end.
There are tools that scan your site for any broken or dead links. The best free tool you can use for checking broken links is Google Search Console. Not only will it help you locate broken links, but you can also redirect the broken links that attract a significant amount of traffic.
7. Fix Internal and External Duplication
Duplicate content presents issues for search engines which in turn impacts your site’s ranking. If there is internal or external duplication search engines fail to comprehend which links to include and which ones to exclude. In the long run not only your site’s ranking but traffic is also impacted.
You can use tools like CopyScape or Grammarly to identify if your site has any kind of duplicate content.
Having an original and appealing content can help you rank better in the search engine and at the same time provide your visitors with some unique content.
8. Optimized Meta Tags
Another ranking and most crucial ranking factor is the meta tags. Make sure that your meta tags have front loaded keywords and is relevant to the content. One of the most common mistakes is using the same meta tag for each page. The meta tag for each page should be unique.
Last but not least, the meta tags should be short and sweet. The limit for meta title set by Google is 60-70 characters and for meta description 160-170 characters, so don’t try to cram excessive information into them, but keep them simple yet catchy.
9. Image Optimization
This one is a no brainer. While images enhance the aesthetics of your website, they can have a negative impact if not properly optimized. Large images can have an effect on the page speed by increasing the loading time. Of course, slow loading pages repel visitors.
Fortunately, there is a simple fix to this. All you need to do is resize the images on your website and compress them. This will optimize the images and make sure that they do not impact the pace at which your site loads. The easiest way to reduce the size of your images is to use the “Save for Web” option on Adobe Photoshop or a free tool TinyPng. From there, you can just look for the right balance between image size and quality and you are good to go.
10. Mobile Friendly
According to statistics more than 60% of Google searches are through mobile devices. Of course, Google’s algorithms keep track of this. Therefore, if your website is optimized for mobile phones, you will gain favor with Google and your site will be ranked accordingly.
If your site is not optimized for mobile devices, it will hinder user experience and ultimately have a negative impact on your ranking. You can also get the JetPack for WordPress, which includes a mobile theme that can easily optimize your website for mobile users in just a few clicks. These 10 hacks alone will not improve the overall ranking of your site, but this is a sure-shot way to kick start your SEO strategy towards a sustainable ranking. Once you have mastered these hacks, you will have ample time to dive into advanced strategies and boost your ranking further.
