There are more than a billion websites with 3.5 billion Google searches every single day. Search engines are also continuously developing and improving how they rank sites on their results pages and consumers’ behavior is likewise constantly changing. How will you keep up?

Dig into the SEO best practices that will help you dominate the search engine results pages and boost your ranking. These modifications to SEO strategies can help boost traffic, conversions, and ranking.

•  Track Metrics With Google Analytics

One of the best SEO practices that will keep your efforts on track of continuous progression is by using a program that integrates with Google Analytics to track your metrics. This is a useful and effective tool for understanding how your website is performing. The metrics that you will be able to understand are:

• Browsers that your site visitors are using so that you can tailor your site to what your customers need to increase users experience
• Popular devices used by your visitors to visit your site so that you can create content available across commonly used devices.
• Where your website viewers are coming from.
• Competitor traffic so that you will know how to improve your content and outrank them

•  Refresh Low-Performing Pages With New Content

Always updating your content is one way of maintaining current SEO best practices. This will increase engagement as long as you offer engaging content topics to your readers that will resonate with them. Target new keywords that are often used by users to search your pages.

• Create Your Content Around Relevant Primary and Secondary Keywords

Include the use of relevant keywords in your SEO best practices checklist as you create content for your site. Research the keywords that your users are often using in their search queries and use them naturally throughout your content.

You can use the Keyword Magic Tool to identify related keywords that you can use so that you will avoid using the same keywords that will make your content look spammy.

• Generate Quality Backlinks From High-Authority Sites

When you diversify your backlink portfolio, Google will accept that your site is an authoritative source. Hence, it will rank you higher on SERPs. Utilize the Backlinks Analytics Tool to help you identify referring domains and total backlinks.

You can grow your backlink portfolio by:

• Looking for and reaching out to sites in your niche.
• Ensuring that your content is shareable on multiple platforms.
• Creating newsworthy content that publishers will want to feature.

•  Logically-Organized Content With Effective Header Tags

Structure your content by putting the most important information at the top of the page followed by information with effective header tags. This will improve the user experience by making your content skimmable and engaging and will help search engines understand your content better.

• Image Optimization

Boost your ranking by optimizing the images on your site.  This is a common SEO best practice that is sometimes ignored. Remember that visual content can impact your SEO rankings, so remember these rules:

• Always describe an image in as much detail as you can.
• Use the alt text to describe the contents of the image and how it relates to the content.
• Use the alt text sparingly. Use it only in explaining the image and its relation to the content

• Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

More than 60% of searches in Google happen on mobile devices so make sure that your site is optimized to be functional across all devices. You can use an SEO tool to get insights about mobile analytics to help you know points to improve on like keywords to include in your content for mobile users.

• Target Clean URLs and Meta Descriptions

Help Google understand what your content is all about by including a concise and clear URL and Meta description that has your target keywords in them.

• Increase Load Time

Google said, “Speed equals revenue.” A slow load time will have a negative impact on your ranking. Use an auditing tool that will update you on the loading time of the pages on your site.  Fix whatever is slowing down your website.

•  Consistent Tracking and Learning From Your Analytics

An SEO best practice you should not ignore is to always be on your toes when tracking your website’s performance through your analytics. This way, you can always adjust your goals and SEO practices and strategies to meet the needs of your audience.

When to Ask for Professional Help With SEO

Get better SEO results with these SEO best practices so that you can boost your ranking, increase traffic, and enjoy more conversions from your site. SEO is a lifetime effort and you can get help from SEO professionals to help you make these gradual improvements so that you can start your climb to the top of the search engine results pages.