Google constantly changes search ranking algorithms so it is really important to always stay up to date with the latest changes and make sure the website has a good SEO as possible.
This article will talk about the most important things about how to dominate Google in 2021 and how to make an SEO-friendly web page.
Let’s take a look now.
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”. To make it simple, it is the process of optimizing a website to get a better ranking, and it is the practice of increasing the quality and quantity of traffic from search engine organic results.
How Does SEO Work?
When you try to search for a website in the browser, you are most likely to use one of the biggest search engines like Google. You type what you want to look for, press enter, and there will be a lot of links pop up instantly and possibly answer your questions. Magic!
When you scroll through the list of results in order to search for the right information that you are really looking for, you may notice something that the more further down you get, the less relevant the information is.
Search engines like Google always try to give the best and the most relevant content so you do not have to spend too much time scrolling through the list of the results.
For example, when you search for “apple”, there is a possibility that you might get links about “how to make apple pie” or “apple computer and iPhone”.
It is obvious that search engines want to show the most accurate and relevant results to the users. In order to do this, search engines will crawl through the web and scan every single website they come across.
Each site will then be analyzed, categorized, and ranked by advanced and complicated algorithms to ensure that the most relevant and the best content will be delivered to the users.
Thus, in order to serve users the best content, Google has high demands on how the website is structured. Security, speed, and content represent what the user is searching for.
Therefore, Google has its own ranking system that ranks all websites, the higher ranking means the higher chances that the page will show up on the top of search engine’s list, and this is where SEO comes into action.
Why Is SEO Important?
In short, if you want users to find your website without spending a lot of money on advertisements, having a good SEO is the key point. Improve the quality of the website and the overall experience for the visitors will increase as well.
There is no doubt that Google is the most popular search engine in the world and it receives around 7 billion searches a day. Let’s take a look at the live page on Google Search Statistics.
So this incredibly powerful oracle of information is definitely something that you want to befriend with, and the best way to make Google like you is to have a good SEO.
How To Dominate Google in 2021
As we all know, it is a very competitive world out there, and how to stand out in the crowd has become an important topic. Here come the most crucial things to keep in mind to make the website more SEO-friendly and gain more attraction on Google.
Let’s take a look at these simple steps below that will help a lot to know more about how to optimize Google ranking in 2021.
1. Security
This is more of a technical thing. Make sure the website has a proper SSL certificate and is running under https://. Basically, it means that the connection between you and the website is encrypted. It may not decrease the ranking but if the site is not running under https://, a warning text will pop up when a user is trying to connect to the page.
It would not be a good first impression for the users in other words.
2. Loading Speed
The time it takes to load the page is a very important factor when it comes to SEO. Studies have shown that if a website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, you will lose around 50% of the users.
There are many things you can do to improve the loading time. Google actually provides a great analytic tool where you can test your page speed.
2.1 Images
An important aspect is the type of image. A jpg is preferred since it is more lightweight than any other type. It holds less information, and it is often used for banners or photographs. For images that need to be transparent or need to keep a very high quality then .png is better, but it has more information and therefore takes longer to load. And Png is often used for icons.
2.2 Mobile-friendliness
Nowadays people are browsing websites from smartphones, tablets, laptops, and stationary computers with all the different screen sizes. A large picture may be perfect for someone with a big screen, but for a smaller screen, the picture is unnecessarily large.
Therefore, it is better to have different pictures in different sizes that fit the screen (even though the picture itself looks the same). Basically don’t use unnecessary large pictures that are bigger than the actual screen. Bigger pictures mean more data to load.
2.3 JavaScript and CSS
To describe it as simply as possible, let’s see the website as a house where the HTML is the structure of the house, CSS is the color of the house and JavaScript is the functionality. For example, if I press the doorbell and it will ring.
All these things need to be loaded when a visitor is entering the page and it will affect the page speed. That is why it is important to make these files as small and optimum as possible. Make sure the JavaScript and CSS files are as small as possible and remove unnecessary code.
A good way to make the files smaller and faster to load is to minify them. Minify basically means removing unnecessary characters like blank spaces, a minified file is harder for us to read but for a computer, it does not matter.
3. Quality Content
The things above are more on the technical side. Let’s dig deeper into the content part.
Keywords are basically what people are typing when they are searching. Also, keywords are something that will identify the topic of your page. Google relies heavily on this. It is like Google is a bridge connecting the audience to the website, helping the audience to find the right website.
It is important to use keywords that really represent your content. There will probably be thousands or even millions of pages with similar contents to yours. That is why it is important to be unique, try to use keywords that no one else is using to stand out from the crowd.
It is also worth mentioning that Google does not like duplicated or content that is too similar, which will really decrease the SEO ranking. In terms of SEO and keywords, a lot has changed over the past 10 years. Before, it was more important to use a keyword as much as possible in the content, and the quality itself wasn’t that important.
However, Google has tweaked algorithms a lot since then, nowadays you will get a lower ranking for using this approach above. Today the quality is what matters and the content is relevant to what people are looking for. Keywords no longer need to be exactly the same as what people are searching for, as related phrases do the same thing today.
Google’s advanced search algorithm is also smart enough to give relevant content suggestions. Let’s take a look at this example. If I searched for “how to make apple juice”, and there are suggestions below.
3.1 Keywords
Let’s dig deeper into keywords to get a better understanding of how to use them. Keywords are often categorized into short, medium, or long.
- Short keywords are usually one to two words and therefore have a higher search volume.
- Medium keywords are between two to three words. This gives a better search volume that is not too high and not too low.
- Long keywords have four or more words, which gives a lower amount of results
The point is that the longer the phrase is the more specific it is, and fewer results will show up.
For example, when I searched for “how to make apple juice”, I got 450 000 000 results, but when I searched for “how to make apple juice with a blender”, I got 9 400 000 results.
Thus, I got almost 48 times fewer results using the longer sentence. Therefore, longer and specific search terms will most likely lead to better results for users.
Another important aspect of keywords is to understand the intent of the searcher.
- Are they just looking for a particular website? A navigational search.
- Are they looking to buy something? A transactional search.
- Are they looking for some information on a topic? An informational search.
- Are they seeking answers to a question? An investigational search
Maybe the searcher wants to find the website of a specific store like “H&M”. That would be a navigational search, so a good keyword to include would be “H&M”. If the searcher is looking to buy something (a transactional search) then it would be good to use keywords like “buy or purchase”.
But let’s say the user wants to know more about the product or see what kind of other options there are. Then they will probably search for more information, that’s an informational search. Once they get the information they want, they may want to compare the product to similar products and start to search for comparison sites. This would be an investigational search.
It is important to acknowledge this to ensure that your keywords meet the users’ needs, and make your page more relevant and easier to find for them.
3.2 Keep It Natural And Simple
The things that we mention so far regarding content have been quite technical and robotic. Don’t get too stuck up with finding the perfect keywords and making the content of your page perfect in the eyes of Google.
After all, it’s people who will read the content and the risk is that if you put too much effort into creating the perfect SEO and it affects the overall quality from humans’ eyes eventually.
Try to nail down your keywords and come up with a good structure before you start writing your content so the content will be more natural. As we mentioned before, Google does not like duplicated content. So while keeping it natural and letting the words come from you will more likely ensure the page stays unique.
4. Attraction
This goes basically “hand in hand” with everything we mention on this page.
Not only does Google rate a site after how optimized and how good the content your site is in SEO terms, but also the ranking will be affected by how many unique users you have, how much time they are spending, and how frequently they are visiting the site.
Of course, you won’t have tons of users from the very beginning, but having good content and fulfilling the needs of the visitors will definitely increase the chance that the users will stay longer and come back again in the future. This will build attraction, and the more attractive your website is, the better ranking it will get.
Conclusion
Now you know some basic knowledge of SEO, and it is undoubted that SEO plays an important role in our digital world nowadays. It is really crucial to make sure the content of the websites uses the most relevant and targeted keywords.
We are not sure how algorithms really work, but we do know that Google constantly renews and changes the way it ranks, that is why it is important to remember that a website could have great SEO five years ago, but it can be obsolete due to the evolvement of the internet that requires Google to change how the algorithms work.
Although we all know that SEO is not an easy task and it is not built in one day, there are still some methods and tools to improve. If you want to know more about how to choose SEO tools, you can find some more articles below.
Comments are closed.