9 Ways to Improve Your SEO Ranking

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a marketing strategy that should not be ignored. But it’s not easy. It takes a lot of time and research to get your SEO to where you truly want it to be. Even when you improve your SEO, you won’t see the rankings change overnight. So be patient and keep working at it. Here are 9 ways to improve your SEO ranking.

1. Make Your Website Faster

Google takes into account how fast your website loads. If it has slow loading speeds, not only will you be penalized by Google, but users will get impatient and move on, giving you a poor bounce rate. Your website should load in about 2 seconds to keep users there. Research has shown that 40% of users will abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

2. Create Quality Content

It’s not enough to just have a lot of content on your website and have new content every week. It needs to be quality content. It needs to answer your users’ questions. For example, if you own an auto shop and publish a blog post about how to change your oil but you don’t actually tell users how to change the oil and instead make it a sales pitch to come get their oil changed by you, then that’s not quality content. If someone is searching for how to change the oil in their car, they want to find the content that will actually tell them how to do it.

Google knows. Google knows everything. Having quality content on your website usually means that users stay on your website for longer. Google tracks that too. Create content that will actually help your website users, even if it means you don’t get a sale out of it right away. If you aren't a great writer, you can use tools like AI to help you, but you still have to meet the criteria for great content.

3. Optimize Your Website Images

Pictures on your website help break up text and just make it pretty (as long as you use pretty images). But they need to be optimized. Your file size should be as small as possible without losing quality. If you resize your images in Photoshop, then you can click “File > Save as > WebP”. WebP images are currently the fastest image format available for online images.

4. Use Headings in Your Content

No one wants to read a big blob of text. It’s overwhelming. So break up your content with headings. That way, users can find the heading they want to read and read it. Having heading tags helps your SEO as well. You should use your keywords in your H2 tags, and your title should be an H1 tag (only use one per page). Use an H3 or H4 tag for your subheadings to organize your content even further.

5. Link to Trusted Sources

Linking to trusted sources helps increase your website’s credibility. It may seem counterintuitive to link to your competition but Google likes it and will up your ranking position because of it.

6. Add Some Video

Why read about something when you can watch it? That’s what 68% of consumers say. So consider adding a video explanation of something to draw in those users and improve your SEO.

7. Fix Broken Links

If you have any broken links (or images) then they should be fixed right away. Google hates broken links and will penalize your website’s rankings if you have any. You can check to see if you have any broken links with the free Dead Link Checker tool.

8. Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

Mobile internet usage is surpassing usage on desktops and laptops. Over 60% of Google searches come from mobile usage. Your website should be optimized for mobile usage to increase your ranking.

9. Avoid Negative SEO

Unfortunately, you can't hack your way to the top of search engine results (or we'd all be doing that). You want to avoid using negative SEO at all costs because trying to get to the top of the search engine non-organically can seriously damage your SEO ranking. It can also get you banned from search engines like Google.

Need More Help?

These are just some of the ways to improve your ranking in search engines. To become an SEO Master, check out our Ultimate Guide to SEO! Or, if you'd rather have someone else do your SEO for you, get in contact with us to learn about our SEO services.