There’s no secret that Google keeps on updating its SEO algorithms. In fact, over the year, they tend to make more than 500 changes, only to meet the visitor’s expectations and rank the potential website at the top. No matter how engaging or comprehensive content you create, if you miss anything with SEO, you will be invisible for Google or not rank on the top of SERPs. But at the same time, if you get it right, you can acquire benefits like customer engagement, increased traffic, increased conversion, and more.
And, of course, every business wants more leads, traffic, and sales. Right?
SEO techniques have changed and those that worked for the last few years won’t cut down the needs for today. However, a majority of SEO tactics will continue to benefit the site owners in 2021.
Let us get down to the local SEO solutions and tips that will continue to grow the business with a bang in 2021 and won’t look back.
1. Rank For Featured Snippets
It has been analyzed that more than 11% of search results consist of featured snippets. These are the results shown very after the ads but before the ranked results. Featured snippets benefit the site by making them stand out in the results and positioning them in a better place to steal the clicks and leads from the highest-ranked results. Moreover, showcasing the content in the paragraph format to rank the question keywords such as “how can I grow my local business?” is essential as the way you display your content will make your site rank at the tops of SERPs with featured snippets.
Some of the ways you can use to keep your content optimized for featured snippets are:
- Be Clear and Concise With Content
- Cross-Device Usability
- Prolong Social Engagement
- Make Use of Strong Resources
2. Create Comprehensive and Evergreen Content
According to Google, creating long, in-depth content is the best possible result for visitors or searchers and positions the site at the top of search results. Social media sharing benefited most businesses in the past few years, but now it is not the same. Social media sharing has decreased, and people are leveraging minimum benefits from their social profiles. This is all because of content saturation. Even statistics show that every day, around 3 million blog posts are being published. But still, most of the sites are doing great with social sharing as they are built with original content and possess a strong reputation. Where most links get rejected, the authoritative and relevant content continues to acquire the links.
Implementing these two ways boost your sales, shows your content is relevant, and make your website rank high on Google search results:
- Stick with long-form content and keywords
- Use LSI keywords relevant to your topics
3. Improve Your Site Speed
There’s one SEO trick everybody knows about but never takes a chance with it. Yes, it’s improving the website’s load time. It looks like a major hassle but worth the energy and time. Working on your site speed will improve its search visibility and refine the user experience and reduce the bounce rates.
According to Statistics, 3 to 5 seconds is considered a good load time. 3 seconds is just excellent, but all the websites cannot reach this level of site optimization. One can still think to achieve the aim time of site speed by making these relevant improvements:
i) Use of Less and Optimized Images
ii) Maximize Browser Caching
4. Mobile-First Indexing
Do you know what mobile-first indexing means? It means Google now considers only the mobile version of your website as the primary source for user experience.
If you have a desktop site but no mobile site, it will still be in use. But if your website is not mobile-friendly, then it will surely not rank on the hunt results. After all, you must know that user experience is vital.
However, you can opt for Google’s advanced framework, AMP, which enables fast and consistent web experiences.
5. Build Quality Links
What about Off-Page SEO? Are you aware of the importance that backlinks possess in SEO?
While there are many factors in Google’s search updates, backlinks are still consistent and the most important.
But those days are gone where the quantity worked over the quality. Now you need to focus on building quality links than quantity. So, try not to buy cheap links as these will hurt the rankings and ruin the image of your website in front of Google.
Not Good?
You can earn quality links in many other ways like partnering with other businesses, investing in quality content marketing, and more. These are the simple formulas that will work for your business website.
6. Optimize for Voice Search
One of the prominent SEO factors that emerged in 2018 is Voice search. This technology improves the ranking on search results and will continue to grow in the coming years. For every small business, using geo-targeted keywords make sense. This means optimizing a website for local searches can make a way towards ranking as most voice searches are local.
Moreover, there’s the difference between voice searchers and text searchers so focus on creating voice search optimized and high-quality FAQs that can go long to rank your content on the top.
7. Focus On User Experience
User experience plays a vital role in search engine ranking. As announced by Google, Rankbrain is its third most important ranking factor, which will become more crucial in 2021.
Don’t know what Rankbrain is?
It is a machine learning practice that assists Google in deciding which page must be ranked at which place. Rankbrain also keeps an eye on users click and the bounce rate according to which it ranks the website. This shows that everything from ranking to business ROI all depends on the user experience.
So, always perform well in these conditions as Rankbrain continuously keep the eyes on it:
Dwell time: it means how long a visitor stays on your site
CTR: percentage of visitors who clicks on your search results
You’ll find dozen of SEO tips and solutions, and these are beneficial if you have time and energy to invest in your website’s SEO. Of course, these aforementioned tips are also not that easy to employ but will surely pay you dividends in the long run. So, stay focused on quality and relevance. Good Luck with Your 2021!