5 easy things you can do today to boost your search ranking

It’s hardly a secret that SEO can make or break your website. But it’s one thing to know that you need it – it’s another thing entirely to know how to do it. And if that’s not enough, it feels like once you get things figured out, Google turns around and changes its algorithm. How are you supposed to keep up? No doubt about it – it’s daunting. Books can be (and have been) written about this subject. But if you don’t have time for a book, here’s a quick guide with 5 easy changes you can make to your website today to boost your search ranking.

Search Ranking Booster #1: Start a blog

No matter how much they change their algorithms, this is sure to stay the same: Google loves to see websites that have lots of useful content. The more pages and keywords you can rank for, the more eyes you’ll get on your site, and Google will reward you for it. Technically, this isn’t something that will pay off in a day. (Almost nothing in SEO provides instant changes.) But if you start a blog on your site today, you’ll have planted seeds that can pay off big time in the future. Read more about the benefits of content marketing here.

Search Ranking Booster #2: Optimize your title tags

Title tags are the clickable headlines you see in search results. They’re the first touchpoint you get with someone making a Google search, so think of them as your website’s first impression. So how do you make that first impression a good one? Be sure to include relevant keywords that people are searching for. Keep your titles short and sweet, but long enough to make sure they accurately reflect what your page is about. By doing this, you’ll increase your website’s visibility, attract more visitors, and climb higher in those search rankings.

Search Ranking Booster #3: Shrink your images

Every designer out there knows the heartbreak of making a beautiful design, only to be forced to sacrifice image quality to meet restrictions. It sucks. But if you commit to exporting your images at the highest size and quality possible, unfortunately you’re also committing to taking a hit in your search ranking. The bigger your images, the longer your site will take to load, and the bigger the ranking hit.

Take a look at your site and consider – do you really need your image to be 1200×600 if it’s going in a 600×300 spot? It’s understandable to want to get your images as big and high quality as possible, but you might be surprised how much you can shrink your images (in size or quality) before they start to look bad. Free tools such as TinyPNG can help you shrink your file sizes without sacrificing quality. Going through your site’s image library and replacing files might feel tedious, but it will pay dividends in the long run!

Search Ranking Booster #4: Focus on above-the-fold information

When someone visits your site and immediately leaves, that’s called bouncing. If people are bouncing from your site, trust that Google knows about it – and they don’t like it. A high bounce rate hurts your chances of ranking higher. Think about it: why do people bounce? People click through to your site for a specific reason. If they don’t find what they’re looking for pretty quickly, it’s unlikely they’ll want to waste their time digging for it. Hence, they bounce. And if they bounce, that tells Google that yours is not a high-quality site.

So, to ensure that you retain as many visitors as possible, take another look at the above-the-fold section of your site. Can people find what they’re looking for quickly? Is your site easy to navigate? If you’re running ads, does your website immediately deliver on the promise of the ad? What can you improve? Simply tweaking the above-the-fold section of your site can pay off big time when it comes to bounce rate, and consequently, your search ranking.

Search Ranking Booster #5: Add meta tags

If Google is a detective crawling your site for information, think of meta tags as tiny clues you leave for search engines to find your website. They tell the search engines what your page is about, so they can decide if it’s a good match for people searching for certain keywords. If you do a good job with your meta tags, it’s like giving your website a VIP pass to the front of the search engine line. Your page will be more likely to show up higher in search results, and people will be more likely to click on it because they’ll know it’s relevant to what they’re looking for.

Hopefully reading this article has shown that improving your search ranking doesn’t have to be overwhelming! If you take small concrete steps today, you can be well on your way to having a better search ranking tomorrow.