6 minute read
Learn the most effective SEO techniques and why each are so important to your next online marketing strategy. See some organic SEO statistics that will blow your mind and view helpful resources that will take your website to the next level, becoming a lead generating machine.
But before we dig in here, lets start with the basics. What is organic SEO?
What is Organic SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. Organic SEO refers to obtaining high placement (or ranking) within search engines, such as Google and Bing, when a user does an internet search for a specific term. The organic search results are placed under the paid (or sponsored) ads and are algorithm-driven meaning you can’t buy that spot.
Organic SEO can be achieved by with on-page SEO, quality content, link building, page indexing and more. No one component will get you a top ranking, it requires a combination or any components and constant maintenance. This brings us to step one and begs the question, what is on page SEO?
What is On Page SEO?
On-page SEO is the process of optimizing individual web pages with the goal of ranking high in search engines. When a user searches a phrase or keyword, the most relevant results are gathered and organized in list order by an algorithm. The relevancy is based on both the content and HTML code within that web page including page titles, paragraphs, subheads, meta tags, links, images alt tags, etc.
Of-page SEO refers to external sources that link inbound to your website. This includes social media sites, guess blogs, local directories, and other third party sites. Combining both on page and off page SEO is the key to success, but we will only be discussing organic on page SEO in this article.
The Main Components Of On-Page SEO
- Research – use keyword research for web pages & topic research for blogs.
- Meta Tags – Title Tag is most important meta tag, then Description Tag is next. Keyword Tags have depreciated, so they are not nearly as important as the first two. Also, the closer the keyword is towards the beginning of your meta tag the better.
- Add Modifiers – the year such as “2017”, or words like “best” or “top”, even location info such as a city or state like “Chicago” or “Illinois” all helps you rank for long tail versions of your targeted keyword.
- Page Title Tag – wrap your page title in a <h1></h1> tag. Note there can only be one per page.
- Use Visuals – multimedia such as images, videos, charts, etc increase time spent on your site and reduce bounce rates. Use alt tags to help Google know what this image is about, every image should have one. Also, the file name of these visuals help Google just like the page URL of a web page does.
- Page Subtitles – wrap your page subtitles in <h2></h2> tags. There can be multiple of these. Also H3, H4, H5 tags for sub headers under the H2 tag.
- First 100 Words – drop your keyword within the first sentence if possible, but if it doesn’t make sense don’t force it, within the first 100 word would be fine.
- Mobile Friendly – Google started penalizes websites that are not mobile friendly back in 2015. With mobile statistics growing, go mobile or get left behind period. Being mobile friendly is the minimum requirement, having a dedicated mobile site or responsive website is ideal and will increase your rankings.
- Outbound Links – link out to relevant pages on other people’s (3rd party) trusted websites. Pages with outbound links outrank pages without them. It also helps to build your authority and trust on a topic.
- Internal Linking – adding 2-3 internal links (within your own website) to each of your posts or pages helps people find more relevant information about what they’re looking for. The longer they are on your website, the higher the chances of them converting into a lead or sale. This also helps algorithms find and index your related pages.
- LSI Keywords – LSI stands for latent semantic indexing (I know, what the heck is that). Pretty much it means that you don’t always have to use the exact keyword over and over again, you can use synonyms, plurals, and related words also to help Google determine page relevancy to the initial search term.
- Social Sharing – posts & landing pages should always have share buttons on them to help spread the word about you. This is also referred to as social signals, one of Google’s ranking factors.
Learn more about on-page SEO here: https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo
What Are XML Sitemaps?
XML sitemaps allow webmasters to inform search engines about URLs on their website that are available for crawling. They also allow webmasters to include information about each individual page such as last modified,frequency of changes, and the importance of this page to your overall website. However, HTML sitemaps are used for viewers to find things easily and quickly within your site.
The Speed of XML Sitemaps
A study shows that when a sitemap was submitted to a search engine, the average time it took for the bot to visit the new post was 14 minutes for Google and about 4 hours for Yahoo. When no sitemap was submitted and the bot had to crawl to the post, it took almost 23 hours for Google and over 29.5 hours for Yahoo. This is a significant difference if your website needs to get content out quickly like a news site or daily blogger.
Learn more about XML sitemaps here: https://moz.com/blog/do-sitemaps-effect-crawlers
What Are 301 Redirects?
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of it’s link juice (ranking power) to the new redirected page. You will want to setup a permanent 301 redirect when you change the page’s URL, domain name, http to https, or just change the location of where a page is found within your site’s file structure.
Save That Link Juice With 301 Redirects
These redirects can be done in multiple ways such as within the HTML of the page, inside the htaccess file on the server, or directly in your web hosting dashboard.
Learn more about 301 redirects here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
What Is An Inbound Link?
An inbound link is a hyperlink back to your site from another website. This has always been a constant and reliable strategy in organic SEO. Trying to get as many quality and higher ranking websites to link to your site is one major factor Google relies on in for it’s ranking algorithm.
But don’t get caught up in link building schemes or try buying thousands of links, because if Google finds out you’re doing this they will penalize you and completely remove you from search results. It will takes months if not years to get your ranking backing. Plus lots of money spent towards SEO professionals.
Inbound Links Is The Name Of The Game
Did you know that lists posts on average receive 74% more links than any other content type. Infographics received 62% more backlinks than most other content types also.
Learn more about inbound links here: http://www.earnedlinks.com/link-building-statistics
Important Organic Search Stats
These important statistics show why effective SEO techniques are crucial to your business’s success, online and offline.
- 70% of the links users click on are organic.
- 70-80% of users ignore the paid ads and focus only on the organic results.
- The first organic search result will get nearly 33% of total clicks.
- 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.
- SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate.
- Inbound leads cost 61% less than outbound leads. An example of an inbound lead might be from search engine optimization and an example of an outbound lead might be from a cold call.
- 81% of businesses consider their blogs to be an important asset to their businesses.
Resource: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/24-eye-popping-seo-statistics/42665/
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