SEO Tips – 2021
Making SEO Better in 2021
You need all the tips and tricks for making better SEO in 2021. Your competition doesn’t sleep, don’t let your competitor have the upper hand. Research and keep modifying your SEO tactics until you find the optimal method to getting results. We have compiled these articles intending to help you achieve better SEO results in 2021.
[1]Most of you will have heard the term SEO thrown around with digital marketing, online businesses, or internet circles in general. Regardless, you’d be surprised how many people remember those three letters but never really understand what they mean.
If that’s you, we’ve got you covered, and if this is your first time coming across the phrase, then you’re in luck. In this post, you’re going to learn everything you need to know to carry out an effective SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. We’re going to cover:
- What SEO is and why it’s more important than ever.
- The basics of an SEO strategy (keywords, metadata, and link-building, technical components).
- Eight specific tactics that will set you up for SEO success based on 2021 SEO trends.
The importance of SEO in 2021
According to Safari Digital, approximately 61% of marketers believe that SEO is the key to online success, which is why modern businesses allocate an average of 41% of their marketing budget to it. In short, taking the time to outline a proper SEO strategy can revolutionize not just your online traffic but your business as a whole.
Given the way the world is right now, internet use is as high as it’s ever been. COVID-19 has us doing more online shopping, streaming even more movies and television than usual, and attending enough Zoom meetings for a lifetime. As a result, SEO has been crucial for so many organizations throughout 2020, and we expect 2021 to be much of the same. So, as we approach the New Year, how can you create an SEO strategy that moves with the times? Well, let’s start with the basics.
The basics of an effective SEO strategy
SEO is essentially the practice of using certain qualitative content principles and technical improvements to improve your online traffic and rankings on SERPs (search engine results pages).
Quantity plays a big part too. Writing more content, using more links and using a wider variety of keywords is a great way to rank higher over time—this is called ‘scaling,’ and it’s pretty much what it sounds like.
So, there are a few things we’ve chucked in there. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s rattle off the main tools you’ll be using to start building your 2021 SEO strategy:
1. Keywords
Keywords are phrases commonly searched for on Google, Bing, etc., and they are a crucial part of determining your website’s rankings. Use the right amount of keywords in the right places, and in time you’ll see your pages climb up the leaderboards.
Keyword strategy has changed a lot over the years. It used to be stuff as many in there as possible, but lots of content then became spammy, and sites were ultimately penalized by Google’s algorithms. These days, you need to do your research, use a wider variety of keywords, and fit them in naturally. Google gets smarter by the day, so they’ll make you work for it.
2. Metadata
Building on the foundation laid through keyword research, metadata is not only just as important. Still, it is arguably the most direct way to coax someone onto your website, as it is one of the first things both Google and potential visitors will see. Google uses what is known as ‘crawlers’ (imagine tiny robot spiders) to scan through websites and collect information that matches search queries, hence rankings: most relevant at the top.
After first indexing the URL, metadata is one of the next things on their checklist when crawling sites. This includes meta titles and meta descriptions – i.e. the page title and short preview line you see when you search for something on Google—and alt-tags for things like images (almost like a secondary name should Google have trouble reading the first one). So you can think of metadata almost as your shop window.
3. Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I’m Cyrus Shepard. Today, so glad that you can join us. We are talking about 21 smart Google SEO tips for 2021. We’re getting ready for a new year, a new year of SEO strategies. These are 21 practical tips that you can implement that should, hopefully, move the needle on your organic traffic.
These are some of the best tips that I’ve collected over the past year. Many of them that I’m going to use myself in my own SEO strategies.
Now we have four categories: increasing clicks, content/on-page SEO tips, technical SEO, and a little bit of link building. There are 21 of these. These are going to go fast. We’re trying to do 10 to 12 minutes, so we don’t get to spend a lot of time on each one. But don’t fret. We’re going to link to appropriate resources in the transcript below so that we can keep along and explore a little bit more. All right. Ready to dive in?
4. Increasing clicks
Let’s start with clicks, specifically earning more clicks from Google without actually ranking higher because that’s one of the great things about SEO. You don’t actually have to rank higher to get more traffic if you get more clicks from the rankings you already have. So let’s talk about some specific strategies for getting more clicks without increasing rankings.
5. [2]Favicon optimization
First, favicon optimization.
Now I’m surprised more people didn’t talk about this in 2020. Google displays favicons in mobile search results, and they can influence your click-through rate if they’re high contrast, if they’re visible or not visible. Having a good favicon can make a few percentage points difference, very minor, but it does make a difference if you can get it right. Aaron Wall, SEO Book, wrote one of the very few posts about that.
6. Breadcrumb optimization
While we’re optimizing our favicons, let’s take a look at breadcrumb optimization. Google displays breadcrumbs in both desktop and mobile search results. They can be keyword-rich breadcrumbs, which can influence your click-through rate. Now Google gets their breadcrumbs from a lot of places. That can be your URL, your schema markup, your actual breadcrumbs on the page.
You want to make sure Google is displaying the breadcrumbs that you want them to display, using those keywords that you choose. The best way to do that is to make sure that you have breadcrumbs on your page with links and that you’re using schema markup. Ideally, it would match your URL structure, but that isn’t always necessary. So a great breadcrumb optimization audit.
7. [3]Mobile Optimization
A good user experience on your website confirms that your audience can find it with ease. Therefore, marketers need to know how important it is to make your site mobile-friendly. In addition, a mobile-friendly website surely helps with ranking.
SEMRush confirms that by “2025, approximately 73% of internet users will access the internet through mobile devices”.
Mobile-friendly updates by Google resulted in a significant change in website rankings.
Have a look at how effective your mobile website is by using Google’s free mobile-friendly test. Also, take a peek at the “mobile usability” report in the Google Search Console.
8. Google’s EAT Principles
Google has confirmed, “content quality is an essential factor for ranking on search engine result pages.”
But what does “quality” mean to Google?
In simple terms, content that fulfills the Google EAT principle will rank higher, whereas EAT stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. These elements help determine if a web page has high-quality content.
Google uses its algorithms to deliver the best results to the users.
For example, Google Panda is one of the famous algorithms which ranks a website based on content quality. It eliminates web pages from the index that have low-quality and duplicate content.
Another example is the RankBrain algorithm. RankBrain uses AI to interpret search queries that the audience search on Google.
For example, when you search for chocolate cake recipes, you will also get results for chocolate truffle cake recipes on the search engine results page.
Google panda and RankBrain send spiders to crawl websites, and, as a result, they show the most relevant and high-quality search results content on the top of the result page of search engines.
9. [4]Focus on User Experience
Our first expert is Brian Dean of Backlinko.
Brian talks about the importance of user experience signals in search engine ranking. We’ve already heard from Google that RankBrain is their third most important ranking factor, and that trend is not only likely to continue but to become even more important in 2020.
If you’re not clear what RankBrain is, you’re not alone; it sounds like something straight out of science fiction. And, it is a machine learning system that helps Google decide where pages should rank in search results. So, maybe it’s a little sci-fi.
To put it more simply, RankBrain watches how users interact with search results and rank the results based on that. If users click on a result and immediately bounce from the site, the site will start to lose ranking. But, if users click on a result and spend time on the site, the site will start to gain ranking (or stay at a higher ranking).
All based on the user experience with the site.
Brian recommends optimizing around medium-tail keywords to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to search engine optimization and RankBrain. He says, “when you optimize your page around a medium tail keyword (and make that page awesome), RankBrain will automatically rank you for that term… and thousands of similar keywords.”
Conclusion:
So many tips, so little time. Pick the best and simplest method/approach that will bring faster results.
Article compiled by hughesagency.ca
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