Climbing the search rankings is like climbing a ladder. The more effort you give, the higher you will reach. Go against the best practices, and you’ll slip down. Luckily, there are ways to help you climb to the top faster. This is done by creating valuable, relevant content that your audience can find. The best part is, you can start working on these steps today without having to hire an SEO expert.
Below are three tips to help you climb the search rankings – straight from the experts!
1. Link to Credible Sources
Linking to sources within and outside your site is important. The idea behind linking is that your information is credible and backed by authoritative sources. Google has gotten a lot better at reading and indexing web pages, but it still can’t read them as a human can. That’s why ranking factors like links are a great way to show Google that you’ve done your homework and remain a trustworthy and reliable site.
Who you link to is just as important as linking. In fact, it’s more important because not linking to a website won’t hurt you, but linking to a low quality site will. When linking to outside sources, choose those that have good search credibility, are well-known by others and relatable to your site. Don’t forget to link internally as well. Internal links provide a boost to your website and keep people on your site longer.
2. Optimize Meta Tags
You probably know that writing meta tags is a helpful way to make your content visible. But how you use them is just as important. To be successful with meta tags, you must give attention to the following:
-
Title tags. This is what appears in the browser bar. Search engines view this as the title of your article and match it to the actual content title.
-
Meta description. This short description appears in the search listings. It describes what the content is about and encourages people to click on the article.
-
Meta robots. This tells crawlers to index the page or not. Some pages to noindex are thank you pages, login pages and author archives.
3. Create Videos to Entertain Your Audience
Videos do a great job of engaging viewers. People get tired of reading articles all the time, so a video is a refreshing way to show customers how to do something. When creating videos, make sure they are high in quality and interesting to watch. Avoid talking through the whole video. Find other ways to get your point across such as by fast forwarding through certain parts or adding music to the background.
When your video is complete, it’s time for some technical SEO. Include appropriate metadata and a compelling thumbnail photo. Create a full transcript and include it with the video itself. This gives users all the information they need to decide if the video is worth watching.
What do these three strategies have in common? They show customers that you are a credible source of information that can be trusted. As a result, your placement in the search rankings will increase.
