SEO is a long and laborious process that requires a lot of knowledge. With so many factors involved, knowing what to change, how to change it, and when you’re making an impact can be challenging. In this article, we’ll go over some of the most important aspects of SEO that you should consider as an eCommerce business owner or marketer and give you some tips for increasing the performance of your website.
Advanced SEO Tips for Organic Growth
Site Architecture
Site architecture is the structure of a website. It defines how content and pages are organized on your site, and it’s an essential factor in search engine optimization (SEO). It means that making changes to your site architecture can improve how well Google and other search engines understand what’s on your site, which can lead to increased organic traffic.
When optimizing for SEO purposes, it’s essential to think about how people find you and how Google understands what’s on your site. When building out new pages or redesigning existing ones, ensure that they have a clear hierarchy from top-level categories down through subcategories without any unnecessary links getting in the way.
Local SEO
Local SEO is critical for local businesses. As a business owner, you already know that people are more likely to buy from a local company than one that’s hundreds or thousands of miles away. But did you know that Google takes this into account as well? If your website isn’t optimized for local SEO, it could cost you customers and revenue in the long run.
Local SEO is also important because it can help attract new customers and not just by showing up on the first page of Google search results. Companies that rank higher in organic searches are more likely to get foot traffic from those who searched for their product or service online.
For example, Estonia, the smallest of three baltic states in Europe, has emerged as one of the top tourist destinations in Europe. Now, if you run a travel business in Estonia, you would need to cash in on the increased tourist footfall. Only optimizing your website for local SEO in Estonia will help your business appear in the search results of tourists looking for businesses similar to yours in the locality.
Content Naming
Naming your content is one of the first things you should consider when developing any new piece of content. It’s essential to use a naming convention that makes sense for your site and helps users navigate to relevant pieces of content.
You can start by looking at existing content on your site and seeing how other people have referenced it in search results. It will give you an idea of what works well and what doesn’t work so well.
Using descriptive titles helps Google understand what each piece of content is about so that they can rank each article appropriately within their index. The title also serves as an essential heading in social media posts or within email newsletters. So when writing out headlines, remember that they should be descriptive yet concise enough so people will want to click through.
When creating keywords in titles or URLs, try not to stuff them too much because this may cause penalties from search engines like Google over time if you’re doing so unnecessarily just for SEO purposes (i.e., keyword stuffing). So instead, make sure there are some keywords involved.
URL Structure
When it comes to SEO, the URL structure of your website is fundamental. It’s what viewers see in search results and directly affects how many clicks your site gets. Here are some tips for creating an excellent URL structure:
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- Use hyphens instead of underscores in URLs. Please don’t use special characters such as % or & because they can confuse search engines (Google even filters out some).
- Keep URLs short, but not too short (don’t use spaces if possible). There’s no exact length that works best for all sites. However, shorter URLs tend to perform better than longer ones in terms of clickthrough rate (CTR), which means more traffic coming straight from search engines like Google.
- Ensure keywords appear within each page’s URL at the front or back end. It depends on how “hard” those terms may be to rank organically on their own merits alone due to high competition levels already elsewhere online existent within hundreds/thousands of other websites worldwide.
Technical SEO
If you’re having trouble with search engine optimization (SEO), your site likely has a few technical issues holding it back. Of course, the first step to fixing any SEO problem is to identify the source of the issue, so let’s start there:
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- A sitemap is an XML file that helps search engines crawl and index your website more efficiently. If you haven’t already created one, consider adding one now.
- A robot.txt file tells bots which parts of your site they should crawl and which they should stay away from. It should be named “robots.txt” and placed in the root directory of your domain.
- Canonical tags tell Google what version of a URL should be indexed by each type of device, desktop vs. mobile vs. tablet vs. printer, etc., so users who visit via desktop get sent the same content as those coming from mobile devices or tablets or printers. Of course, it works well with Hreflang tags too.
- Hreflang allows websites to show their visitors localized versions based on their location using language codes like “en” for English speakers in London, “fr” for French speakers in France, “es” for Spanish speakers in Spain, etc.
Keyword Optimization
One of the first things to consider is that keywords are the most important thing for SEO. You are using them in your page title, subheaders and headers, and at least the first 100 words of your content. In addition, it’s best to target longtail keywords as reports suggest longtail keywords have 3-5% greater CTR than common keywords.
In addition, it’s essential to use them in your meta description and URL if possible. For example, if you have multiple pages on your site with similar content (such as a blog), you can use this strategy to optimize those pages at once by adding keywords to the URLs for each post.
Link Building
Link building is the most effective way to get your site ranking. However, increasing your site’s authority and trust is also great. You can build links through guest posts, social media, content marketing, etc. According to Forbes, authority building with backlinks will continue dominating the SEO landscape in 2022.
When it comes to link building, there are two types – natural links and unnatural links. Natural links are obtained by creating good quality content that people want to share with others. Unnatural links come from unethical sources, such as paying for backlinks or thieving someone else’s hard work. Make sure any link you build is relevant and valuable for the reader.
Conclusion
In this post, we’ve covered some of the most effective ways that you can increase your organic search traffic. By implementing these tips, you can optimize your site for search engines and get more exposure.
That being said, don’t expect an overnight miracle or even an overnight success. Building a solid foundation for your website’s success in organic search results takes time and patience. But once you’ve got those basics, you’ll start seeing long-term results from all that hard work.
