Whatever your field, it’s important that your website ranks high in search engine results. If you’ve had your website for a long time, then you probably know that organic rankings (natural traffic you get through search engines or unpaid links) are far more valuable than paid advertisements, especially when you’re playing the long game. Here’s what’s most important for improving your organic rankings.
Be an authority on your topic
Ultimately, your organic ranking depends a lot on whether or not Google perceives your site as an authority in the field. To get there, you have to choose your niche and stick with it, providing regular updates of quality content that show just how much you know about your topic.
Those topics have to relate to what you’re offering on your site. If you go too far afield, even if you have a really helpful and well-written post with excellent links and perfect keyword usage, it won’t do much to help your rankings.
Use keywords correctly
The subject of keywords is always a hot topic among SEO experts. It’s been a long time since websites could improve their rankings simply by stuffing keywords into posts as densely as possible, but keywords are still important.
Today, Google is looking not just for the appearance of keywords, but for posts that actually match the intent behind the keyword. So, for example, if you’re writing a post on ketogenic recipes, you don’t just want to stick the phrase “ketogenic recipes” into the post four times.
It would be better to include the phrase just once or twice and follow it up with quality information about what ketogenesis is and recipes that people want to use. If visitors turn up to your site and stay a while to read, Google sees this as evidence that you are worth awarding a bump in the rankings.
Build effective link structures
There are few things as important as link building when it comes to your organic rankings. If you don’t understand the value of links, think of it this way: if you desperately needed a mechanic, would you flip open the phone book and hire the first one listed there?
Never, because you’d be afraid of getting ripped off. You would call people with experience and ask them for a recommendation. You would only choose a mechanic on the basis of trust. Link building is all about building trust. When another site links to you, they are signaling their trust in you. Google sees this and awards you better rankings for it, but the process has to be done carefully. If your links appear unnatural or spammy, it will hurt rather than help.
Keep your domain secure
With hackers working harder and the stakes higher than ever, everyone is worried about security. Good security is something Google looks for, and if your site isn’t already using HTTPS then you’re not going to rank well.
HTTP, or HyperText Transfer Protocol, was the old standard. HTTPS is the same internet protocol but with a secure indexing system, guaranteed by an SSL certificate. Get that certificate and keep it up to date if you want to keep your rankings high.
Stay fast
Your website needs to load nearly instantly. Your users expect this, and research shows that visitors will leave if they have to wait too long for a page to load. Even worse, Google lowers your spot in the rankings if it takes your page more than two or three seconds to load up.
To improve your loading speed, make sure you compress all your images, don’t overdo it on the amount of media you have on one page, and use the right font size for optimal loading.