What is SEO: Website Optimization Tips 2020

Before I share website optimization tips, let me what Search Engine optimization (SEO) means.

Most website owners know the importance of effective SEO inorder to get blog traffic. To appear on the first search engine resultwould mean tons of website traffic and increase in website performance.

However, for some, SEO is still such an intimidating and confusing marketing term. It may be because they don’t know the proper steps to get started, and how to sustain this effort.

What is SEO

Before we proceed, let’s define first what is SEO. According to Wordstream.com:

Search Engine optimization is the process of optimizing web pages and their content tobe easily discoverable by users searching for terms relevant to your website.  The term SEO also describes the process of making web pages easier for search engine indexing software, known as “crawlers,” to find, scan, and index your site.

 Businesses and bloggers use SEO to get traffic from the free, organic, and natural results on searchengines.

Website Optimization and Why You Need It

We already know that SEO will certainly improve a website’s ranking and visibility, but what real value does it offer? Why is it soimportant?

As listed by Reliablesoft.net, Search Engine optimization is important because of the following:

• The majority of search engines users are more likely to click on one of the top 5 suggestions in the results pages (SERPS). 
• Good SEO practices improve the user experience and usability of a website.
• SEOcan put you ahead of the competition. If two websites are selling the samething, the one who does website optimization is more likely to have morecustomers and make more sales.

How one can actually leverage SEO to help drive relevant traffic, sales, and leads to his business is probably the most importantfeature of search engine optimization.

Do you want to create website optimization through SEO friendly articles?  Learning what is SEO and all the basics are absolutely crucial for businessowners and serious bloggers.

In this post, I’ll share 5 tips on how to optimize your website with SEO.

Wait.  Don’t have a website yet?  Click here to read one of our related posts and get started.

1. Provide insanely useful content.

They say that content is king. It’s true. And in the digital world, it has become more relevant than before.

If you’re a business owner and want to attract, inspire,convert, and engage your prospective consumers, then you must level up your marketing game.

But content means more than just a blog. It deals with videos, webinars, live chat, how-to guides, and more.  These different content types should be included on your site and across other channels where your prospects usually go to (like Youtube and LinkedIn).

One can never challenge the power of words. Hence, content is and will always remain the heart of marketing. It is indeed the best and most efficient way to engage your audience, create brand awareness, build trust, and establish brand authority.

So how do you know if your content is actually being consumed by people who visit your site?

The amount of time in whichvisitors remain in your website before they leave is called “dwell time”. It represents the usefulness as well as visitors’ interest in your site.

Visitorswill stay longer if your site has attractive and useful content. A research made by Quicksproutreveals that an article usually ranks higher on the results list if the contentlength is around 2000 words or more.

Businesses that frequently update their websites with fresh and quality content attract Google’s attention more. So make sure that you are consistent in writing content.

Aim for one to two blog posts a week, or if that seems like too much start, at least one blog post every two weeks.

Accepting guest posts is also another strategy you can take advantage of. Having other people create content for you can streamline your process so you can focus on more productive activities.

2. Consider using AI-Powered SEO Tools

Artificial Intelligence has been around for some time. And it is already intertwined withour daily activities without us even being aware of it.

Have you ever watched films on Netflix?

Yes?

Did you notice how the movie suggestions or recommendations are based on your interests?

Thisis also the same with Amazon. You try to search for a specific product, and later on, you’ll see the same products from different brands popping up.

How about talking to Google and asking for help? That’s Google Assistant. It helpsyou find things you need to know, only you don’t have to type. Instead, you turn on the Google assistant feature and say, “Okay Google”, then ask away.

Pretty neat right?

So, how do you get started?

Tips on SEO Automation Using AI:

• Check your process and look for tasks that can be broken down into sub-tasks, then with a rate of 1-10, score their potential for automation. If the process isrepetitive and procedural, then it has the potential to be automated.
• Considerusing rule-based automation in handling simple but time-intensive jobs.
• Findthe right mix between human labor and automation.
• Providemachine learning algorithms the right quality and quantity of data.
• Engagementrates will only increase in importance. So focus on user experience, speedmonitoring, and alerts.

Artificial Intelligence has some huge practical applications for search, and many arealready in play. Businesses who incorporate AI-fueled keyword research intotheir SEO marketing strategy will see an increase in results in the comingyear.

HQ Digital has provided some examples of AI-fueled SEO tools already available to marketers:

• HubSpot: Content Strategy is Hubspot’s AI tool which uses machine learning to understand the themes that search engines associate your content with. It has the technologythat provides useful topic suggestions and detailed metrics like keywordcompetitiveness and sub-topic relevancy that help you refine your SEO strategy.
• Market Brew: It is an AI-based SEO tool that helps you understand why your website ranks above or below other sites on Search Engine Results Pages and helps forecast your average position by modeling how search engine algorithms work.
• Market Muse: It is an AI-powered research assistant that advances content creation andoptimization to help brands succeed at organic search. 

Nomatter which AI tool you use, be sure to follow best practices when it comes to selecting the best keywords for your brand and managing your keywordresearch. Again, going back to the basic of what is SEO, helps.

Before making your selections, consider factors like search volume, relevance, and competitiveness. Your primary criterion should always be relevance and include a healthy mix of of difficulty scores and search volumes to round up your strategy.

To set yourself up for a very successful year, you have to mix smart strategy with technologicallyadvanced AI-fueled tools.

3. Add internal links to articles.

Internal links are links that go from one blog post to another on the same website and arecommonly used in the main navigation.

Below are some advantages of using internal links to your website:

• It helps readers jump around from page to page on your site (reducing bounce rates).
• Spreads some link authority throughout your site.
• Helps search engines in indexin your blog posts.

Why is this important?

Your content can’t rank without links!

You can show which content is related and which of your articles are most informative and valuable with an effective internal linking strategy. With this, your users will understand your site better, and increase your chance of ranking.

But don’t overload your pages with internal links. Just select a few keywords or phrases that can be linked to another helpful article or resource for your readers.

In order to execute internal linking, you should make sure that two things are in place. According to Neil Patel:

1. You have already written content on the site. Even if there’s only a single article, that’s okay. That’s your starting place.
2. You are continually writing new content for thesite. Getting into a regular publishing schedule is important, in order for internal linking to work effectively.

Incorporating a handful of value-packed internal links (2-4) per blog post will help readers want to stay on your site longer and increase their trust in your site.

Take time to add internal links to your site so that the value of each piece of content increases to your reader. And they can easily find additional resources thatyou’ve created elsewhere on your site.

Suggested Reading: How to Start A Blog for Your Business

4.  Use voice search.

Voice search is apromising technology that allows searchers to access internet search results using their device and voice. It’s time to leverage on this if you’re lookingfor a new way to boost traffic on your site.

In fact, it is already common and its user base is growing.

According to Comscore, 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. And that 40% ofadults currently use voice search at least once a day.

And if businesses don’t adopt the technology early, they may see their share of organic reach drop due to search engines increasingly returning voice-optimized results.

Here, we have three tips from Campaign live UK on how you can jumpstart to voice search revolution:

• Write content in a natural, conversational voice that answers the questions your consumers are asking: Website content in the era of voice search isn’t about keywords, it’s about semantic search and building the context related to answering a question.
• Build out your view of user intent based on the types of question-based queries: It’s essential to understand the intent behind a query and how both you and the search engine can deliver more accurate results based on the anticipated context. Develop content as well as expand your paid search keyword lists to include longer tail keyword phrases to reach users at each stage of intent based on the types of questions they are asking.
• Make sure structured data is integrated into the backendof your website (schema markup): Structured data within your website becomesmore important because it is one of the signals used to power the searchresults and the “cards” — or direct answers. Using structured dataand schema markup can help the search engines understand and crawl your datamore efficiently and become part of the available knowledge graphs.

Voice search users find it more convenient to converse rather than type in their queries. And since they get the answers they need faster, this, in turn, reduces negative signals like high bounce rates.

So start your website optimization with voice search now. Otherwise, you will miss out on a lot of traffic in the long term.

5. Go mobile friendly.

These days, more and more people are turning to their mobile phones instead of a desktop when it comes to indulging on their digital needs.

Facebook? Instagram? Checks phone.

Where’s the best restaurant? Checks Google, on phone.

I want to buy a new gadget. Checks Amazon, on phone.

So, if you’re a business person, you would want to take advantage of website optimization by going mobile friendly.

 Just this year, Google rolled out the Mobile First Indexing.

What does this mean?

It means that Google will prioritize websites that have a mobile version for indexing and ranking. In the past, the desktop version used to be the primary reference for indexing. But due to the rise of users accessing Google through a mobiledevice, the index will primarily use the mobile version of a page’s contentgoing forward.

There are ways to check if your site is mobile friendly. Below are some of the tools you can use:

1. Mobile-Friendly Test

2. Test My Site

3. Browser Stack

Mobile first indexing will have little consequence to your ranking if your website has a responsive design.

On the other hand, don’t panic if you’re site is not yet mobile friendly. You still have time to prepare your site to have a mobile version as Google mentioned that,

“We continue to be cautious withrolling out mobile-first indexing. We believe taking this slowly will help webmasters get their sites ready for mobile users, and because of that, we currently don’t have a timeline for when it’s going to be completed.”

Conclusion

Before implementing any of the tips mentioned above, you may want to run an SEO audit first to check how your site fares in terms of its ability to appear in search engine results page.

Also ensure that the person managing your site or writing postsfor you knows what is SEO and how to apply it.

If you want to learn more about what is SEO and how to optimize your website, check out our free course .

References

Prepare formobile-first indexing. (n.d.). Retrieved fromhttps://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing

5 Search Engine Optimization Tips & SEO Trends for 2019. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.pixelproductionsinc.com/5-search-engine-optimization-tips-seo-trends-for-2019/

7 Reasons why content marketing is still king in 2018. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://rapidboostmarketing.com/7-reasons-why-content-marketing-is-still-king-in-2018/

A 10-Step SEO Plan for Higher Search Rankings in 2019. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.streamcreative.com/blog/seo-plan-for-higher-search-rankings

Getting your site ready for mobile-first indexing. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2017/12/getting-your-site-ready-for-mobile.html

How Content Length Affects Rankings and Conversions. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.quicksprout.com/2012/12/20/the-science-behind-long-copy-how-more-content-increases-rankings-and-conversions/

How to Optimize Blog Posts for SEO in 2019 (5 Best Practices). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.persuasion-nation.com/blog/optimize-blog-posts-seo-best-practices

Internal Links. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link

Just say it: The future of search is voice and personal digital assistants. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/just-say-it-future-search-voice-personal-digital-assistants/1392459

Neil Patel’s Guide to Internal Linking. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://neilpatel.com/blog/the-complete-guide-to-internal-linking/

SEO Best Practices for 2019. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.hq-digital.com/blog/seo-best-practices-for-2019

SEO Optimization – Learn to Optimize for SEO. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.wordstream.com/seo

Supercharging your SEO with AI: Insights, automation and personalization. (n.d.). Retrieved fromhttps://searchengineland.com/supercharging-your-seo-with-ai-insights-automation-and-personalization-299900

What Is Search Engine Optimization And Why Is It Important. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.reliablesoft.net/what-is-search-engine-optimization-and-why-is-it-important/

What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo