The HOWTOs of SEO has encountered many changes over the years. User experience and usability in mobile have become more crucial elements in recent years by a large extent. Earlier, they weren’t an essential part of the ranking algorithm at Google or any other search engines. But there’re some people in the SEO and Web development industry that treat these metrics as if rankings are solely depended on them.
Everything aside, content any day remains the king and an insider fact: it always will. Even search engine giant Google has claimed that a website having pathetic design and user experience but superior content will always rank high, as compared to sites having inferior content but great design.
Related – Learn more about SEO and it’s best practices here.
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Perfect SEO recipe
To make a good dish, you require its perfect recipe. In the same way, for ranking high on google, you need a perfect SEO strategy. The strategy includes 30 – 40 per cent creation of original, well-researched, high-quality and in-depth articles, in which there should be 30 – 40 per cent organic link-building and the rest 20 -30 per cent is UX, bounce rate, Core Web Vitals, duration of sessions and all other remaining trends.
Related- Learn how SEO and UX complement each other and push websites on top of SERPs.
One thing to note is that just because UX, bounce rate etc. contribute only 20 – 30 per cent of the ranking factors doesn’t mean you should pay no heed to them. When you compete for highly competitive search terms, these small factors make the difference that holds the ability to put you on page one. This becomes extremely important when your competitors have already come at par with your content quality and links.
Insider fact – When it comes to SEO, don’t be number one. Just be in front of everyone, but on the first page of course.
Black Hat SEO Practices
Many players in the web development space default to Black hat SEO practices for two primary reasons: less cost and quick results. Black hat SEO techniques on the surface look appealing and easy because they can provide quick boosts than White Hat SEO tactics. But it’s said, the quicker you rise, the quicker you fall. Google now being much sophisticated, de-indexes your website and heavily penalizes you for these activities.
To mention a few black hat tactics, people, as well as businesses use, they are-
- Comment spam
- Excessive Keyword Stuffing
- Content Automation
- Hidden Text/Links
- Doorway Pages
- Falsely reporting competitor for Negative SEO
Steps for proper SEO
Proper or White Hat SEO can seem expensive at first, but it typically yields a much lower cost per acquisition than pay-per-click, print, TV, etc. A host of viable SEO strategies are available to employ in 2021. Here are six steps for proper SEO that are both highly effective and are personal favourites of mine.
Analyse your competitors
Your position on Search engine’s result pages keep fluctuating, it is not absolute. Before perfecting your SEO inputs you simply must perform a competitive analysis. See from where your competitors are getting links? What kinds of sites? etc. You must keep a track of all their tactics, and try to implement in your webpage as well.
See what constitutes their content? How in-depth is their study on various subjects, and how big is their semantic net? To outrun your competitors in terms of content, your site’s vocabulary on those subjects need to be a little broader.
Begin with small
Pitch in for less competitive key phrases, then gradually go for highly competitive ones. There are many tools out there that can help you with normal, long-tail and well as LSI keyword research. As a start in SEO, it’s better to compete for less competitive search terms usually, they are longer multiword phrases prior to trying for the more competitive ones.
Being Creative
If in case you have developers, try making badges that link back to your website and also vendors, customers, and affiliates can put on their websites. This is an amazing, legal link-building tactic that can give you exponential growth in the right situations.
Using structured data
Recently Google added a special markup, in Schema.org format and it is called structured data. This is how sites like cooking, e-commerce show their snippets on top of search results. The markup helps Google to properly know the relevancy of their site.
But this was not the case always, earlier Google was just a list of texts and links, fast forward to today we can now see carousels, accordions (expandable elements) and snippets. Now it’s essential to explain everything on your website be it products, services, reviews etc. — using JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). This is how you can get more reach when Google figures out the searcher’s intent.
Blog, Blog, Blog
Its always better to let your creativity flow for good. Try writing blogs which have 2,000-plus words for better SEO. Make sure you write well-researched blogs and provide some value to your readers. Don’t use content spinning — using software to rephrase your article to fool Google into thinking it’s a separate article. These tricks can fool google but not real users and therefore are inappropriate for SEO in the long run.
Having a guest post for you
By guest posting on other blogs, you gain new visitors. Through this, you can post content that links back to your website/blog. The content you write should be rich, original and legitimate and that the site where you post is popular. Keep in mind these things while you are creating the content.
Provide such information that real humans find very useful or add value to their reading experience.
Be original, your content shouldn’t be found on another blog
Make sure to track your SEO metrics regularly and in relation to your competitors. Tracking is essential. Remember that.
Summing it up
By employing the aforementioned techniques, many players have enjoyed years of consistent SEO growth without getting penalized or deindexed. We at Sampark Infoways provide businesses with all-round IT Solutions of which an integral part is SEO. Visit us more for more details.
Following the stats, writing well-researched, in-depth and expert-level articles yields significant returns. The formula may change from time to time, but the road to successful SEO is still largely dependent on solid content.
