SEO is a dynamic craft that is continuously evolving. If you want to solve the algorithm’s equation for ranking high in search results and driving traffic to your site, you need to keep up with the organic search developments religiously.
If you follow up on industry experts such as Minttwist, London, you can get to grips with organic search insights. Sifting through monthly Google updates reports can help to get a good understanding of how the algorithm is changing and the type of content that can get your pages high on the first page of the search engine page results (SERPs).
Here are three techniques you should definitely have in mind if you’re in the process of building strategies for organic traffic growth.
1. Do not neglect to optimize your site for Google Rankbrain
Google RankBrain is Google’s first attempt to implement a machine learning mechanism with the main objective to determine the users’ true search intent.
In 2015, Google announced that an AI-based system is introduced into its algorithm to understand how a site’s pages interact with the results of the first page and to what extent the users’ search result expectations are satisfied.
In order to optimise your site’s Rankbrain you should look at two things:
1. Improve your click-through-rate (CTR):
If Google sees that users are inclined to click on your site’s pages every time they see them in the search results, rest assured these pages will rank high.
If your pages are visible in search results, but people do not tend to click through them, Google will think these pages are not worth being on the search results’ first pages.
CTR is the rate at which users click on your site’s pages every time they show in search results. A fairly easy concept to understand and great things to be good at.
There are several ways to achieve high CTR, but the main one is to find your way through understanding what drives users to click on a search result.
Put effort into crafting compelling meta descriptions that will make users believe these are the answers they’re after and make sure the first words of your page titles have already answered people’s questions.
Use numbers to your title and description tag. Studies show that people are more likely to click on content that contains a number. If there are existing search results with numbers for keywords you want to go for, make sure your number is higher than any of the first page results.
2. Increase your Dwell Time and Contain the Bounce Rates
Dwell time is when users stay on your site, and bounce rate counts the number of users who visited your page and left without taking any actions.
Both these metrics are intrinsically related to RankBrain. If users don’t spend enough time or leave your page seconds after they landed on it, that means they are clearly not happy.
Make your content easily skimmable, digestible, and straightforward. When the user lands on your page, they should know what its content is about within a matter of seconds.
Break up your content into bite-sized chunks. Use 2-3 lines in each paragraph.
Make your content mobile-friendly as more searches on Google coming from phone.
1. Scale your Content with Shareability
- Use short URL: short URLs tend to attract more clicks. In many cases, twice as much. More clicks lead to higher rankings and ultimately to overall RankBrain.
- Use colorful image: Studies show that colorful imagery can make 80% more prone to read an article.
- Put social share buttons on the page: Include social media clickable icons in a prominent position around your article. Social icons can increase likes and shares on social platforms, leading to more people linking to your content, which equals better rankings.
2. Optimize your content for Semantic SEO
In 2013, Google rolled out an algorithm update called Hummingbird.
What was new about this update was that Google started analyzing natural language considering context around queries and not only keywords as previously.
To put it differently, the Google search engine can understand topics and rank search results accordingly.
A simple and effective way is to optimize your page around your main keyword. Create context by covering various subtopics related to your main keyword. This way, you optimize for semantic search.
Google will understand fully your page’s topic that page can rank higher and for more keywords.
You can use tools such as LSIGraph that show you subtopics and terms related to the keyword you are targeting. By covering these subtopics in your content, it’ll be optimized for Semantic Search.
There are more techniques to deploy if you want to boost traffic to your site in 2021. Choosing the right methods from the right sources can give you a competitive advantage.
