Trying to improve SEO rankings or simply maintain them can be quite a challenge. Also, it’s not like you can learn about SEO and you’re done. Search engine optimization constantly evolves, and it’s your responsibility to keep up with it. At all times, you are in a race with your competitors to gain SEO ranking. If you fall behind, others will run past you, leaving you in the dust.
What can you do this year to keep your site on top? The following are suggestions on how to improve SEO rankings (and maintain SEO rankings) both this year and many years into the future:
Concentrate More on Your Existing Content
Yes, you should continue to create new content on your website. However, there may be something far more important to do that you aren’t doing: refreshing your existing content.
Updating and improving existing content is a good way to improve SEO rankings. It gives you an opportunity to tweak weak sentences and remove long-standing typos or other grammatical errors if they exist.
Even if old content is excellent, it may need an update or a rethink about what keywords to rank for. Google likes to see updated content. It shows that you’re trying to improve it, not just upload it and forget it.
Place a Greater Emphasis on Your Video Content
As strange as it may seem, some websites still shy away from creating video content. That’s a mistake. Video content is another way to get your website to rank highly. In addition, video gives you an additional way to work with SEO. YouTube SEO is something you definitely want to leverage.
Video descriptions, which can be as simple as transcriptions of the audio portion, will likely contain useful keyword information valuable to ranking. Why would you let this additional opportunity for SEO go unused? To improve SEO rankings, a greater emphasis on your video content this year will be necessary.
Your Social Media and SEO Headlines Should Be Different
Your website content and your social media content isn’t likely to be identical or even terribly similar. Nor should it be.
The language of headlines deployed in social media tends to be shocking or provocative or titillating. That encourages social shares. However, using this kind of language in online content may not be wise. People are wary of clickbait. Therefore, attention-grabbing headlines so popular on social media may actually have the reverse effect online.
The relationship with your reader is more professional on your website than it is on social media (where the tone can be far more informal). Therefore, the need to offer sensational headlines becomes significantly less important. What’s more important is highly relevant headlines (and content). Inform and educate… that’s what your website headlines should do.
Think About Ways to Increase Engagement With Your Site
Want to know how your website is doing? Check the metrics on a regular basis. Examine bounce rates and the time people spend on your site. A very vivid picture will emerge that shows whether you’re winning over your viewers or losing them.
You want people to come to your website and spend some time there, not bounce off after a minute or so. The best way to do that is offer things that will engage viewers, such as video content or podcasts. While written content is the backbone of your website, it’s wise to also incorporate some of these additional components to further enhance viewer engagement. If you want to improve SEO rankings, give viewers a reason to remain on your website.
Think About Search Intent
With SEO, it can be easy to get lost in a constant struggle to rank for the keyword of the week. Remember that simply increasing website traffic should never be your main objective. After all, why drive a lot of people to your website who aren’t likely to buy products or services from you?
It’s qualified leads you should be after. To get them, you need to be smart about your keyword research. You’re not always looking for the hottest keyword but rather the most relevant for your audience.
Ready to Improve SEO Rankings?
How can you make this year the year that you achieve the kind of SEO rankings you’ve dreamed of? How can you maintain SEO rankings once you have them? You need the help of a professional digital marketing firm that truly understands search engine optimization and how to track SEO rankings.
As an SEO agency, Dreamscape Marketing has the knowledge and experience necessary to improve SEO rankings for your website. Call us today at 888.307.7304 to find out how.