Secondly, 75% of internet users<\/a> never go beyond the first page of results.<\/p>\n Now consider that 34.36% of all clicks go to the number one search result, and it becomes clear why search engine optimization (SEO) is so important.<\/p>\n But, you already knew that \u2013 it\u2019s why you\u2019re reading this article, after all.<\/p>\n You probably also realize that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint.<\/p>\n In Google\u2019s unending quest to provide better results to searchers\u2019 queries, its algorithm is updated thousands of times every year<\/a>.<\/p>\n And while some of these are so minor most people will never notice them, Google occasionally rolls out an update that significantly impacts search engine results pages (SERPs).<\/p>\n What\u2019s an SEO professional to do? <\/strong><\/p>\n In the past, the answer was to jam keywords everywhere on your site, with the idea that more is better. Those days are gone.<\/p>\n Google\u2019s algorithm has increased in complexity, which means it is now better able to understand the intent behind queries.<\/p>\n And, this means it values sites that provide better answers to those searches over those that are just packed with relevant words and phrases.<\/p>\n To ensure your website ranks highly, you can\u2019t just focus on what search engines are looking for.<\/p>\n You also need to consider the experiences of visitors to your site. You need to take a holistic view of the value your website provides to users, then optimize your content so that it gets the results you need.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a closer look at various ranking factors and discuss how you can more effectively use keywords to drive search traffic.<\/p>\n The first (and probably the most obvious) place to start is measuring your rankings.<\/p>\n Without a solid understanding of your baseline keyword performance, you won\u2019t know how far you\u2019ve come and how much you\u2019ve improved.<\/p>\n I\u2019d highly suggest exporting all of this valuable keyword data and keeping it on file for future reference. If nothing else, it will show you how much better you\u2019ve gotten at SEO.<\/p>\n Some of us may have learned the hard way, but you never know when things will change with any given tool \u2013 whether it\u2019s how data is reported, what information we have access to, etc.<\/p>\n Export keyword data from Google Search Console<\/a> and landing page traffic (organic and total) from Google Analytics<\/a>.<\/p>\n Analyzing this data will give you a good idea of:<\/p>\n Focus on improving keywords that are ranking in positions five through 15 (where you\u2019re teetering at the bottom of Page 1 or top of Page 2 on Google).<\/p>\n It\u2019s easier to get these terms ranked at the top of the first page on Google, which will give you some quick wins to share with your client or boss.<\/p>\n To ensure your keyword targets are aligned with overarching business objectives and offer real value, it\u2019s important that you understand both the search intent<\/a> behind them and the difficulty of ranking.<\/p>\n While terms have a particular meaning to you, they could take on an entirely different meaning in Google and vice versa.<\/p>\n Knowing the intent, whether it\u2019s informational\/educational, transactional, or navigational, will help you understand which stage of the sales funnel users are at.<\/p>\n Doing a thorough SERP analysis<\/a> is essential. Look at what\u2019s currently ranking in the top search result for your core keyword targets including:<\/p>\n Knowing what is required to rank for a particular keyword will help you draw conclusions about what content development efforts will be required, as well as come up with a plan for creation.<\/p>\n Semrush\u2019s SEO Content Template<\/a> is really great for this type of analysis.<\/p>\n You simply enter a keyword, and the tool will analyze what\u2019s showing up in Google\u2019s top results to provide recommendations for SEO-friendly content.<\/p>\n Cross-referencing your organic keyword research with paid advertising data can also help uncover new opportunities and fill gaps.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t ignore long-tail queries. While they may have lower search volume, you could be missing out on extremely targeted audiences that are ready to buy.<\/p>\n The structure of your website plays a big role in SEO<\/a>. Set a solid foundation for yours by resolving any technical issues that may diminish your organic keyword visibility.<\/p>\n Site pages should be both easily found and navigated by search engines and users.<\/p>\n If your website is difficult for users to navigate and search engines to crawl<\/a>, your keyword rankings will likely be negatively impacted.<\/p>\n And, vice versa \u2013 if your website is intuitive for both users and Google, your rankings are bound to see positive increases.<\/p>\n Make sure that your site has a solid website structure, fix any broken links, and resolve any duplicate content issues.<\/p>\n Conducting a thorough technical SEO audit<\/a> is necessary to ensure all priority technical issues are addressed.<\/p>\n User experience and brand equity are important when it comes to driving organic search visibility.<\/p>\n While user experience may not be a direct responsibility of a search engine marketer, it\u2019s important that user experience and SEO<\/a> work together \u2013 especially considering that Google\u2019s algorithm has consistently taken UX into page rankings<\/p>\n To ensure web visitors are interacting with your website, you should use Google\u2019s Core Web Vitals<\/a> report.<\/p>\n This monitors the loading time of each page on your site and generates data to show you which pages are providing good experiences and which need work.<\/p>\n Another important UX area you need to consider is the responsiveness of your site.<\/p>\n Mobile web browsing first surpassed desktop in 2017 and now accounts for more than 54% of global traffic<\/a>.<\/p>\n If your website is not responsive, you will have a higher bounce rate, which in turn will negatively affect your ranking.<\/p>\n Here are some other elements that present an opportunity to improve UX and SEO:<\/p>\n Many of us get so fixated on optimizing content for Google that we forget what the end game is \u2013 to reach a highly targeted set of humans.<\/p>\n While search engines and humans have different ways of reading and digesting content, there are certain commonalities that will help ensure we are creating content with both in mind<\/a>.<\/p>\n Both robots and humans want us to be:<\/p>\n This is important to keep in mind from the start of your content creation process.<\/p>\n As we are thinking about ways to make our content easier to read for both users and search engines, header tags<\/a> are key.<\/p>\n Not only will proper header tags improve the overall readability of your content, but they will also ensure search engines can follow the hierarchy of what is most important on the page.<\/p>\n Images should also be a consideration, as providing more engaging imagery can make all the difference for users.<\/p>\n This also presents the opportunity to further optimize for search engines through ALT text and file naming.<\/p>\n Dare I say that title tags<\/a> are the most important SEO element of a webpage?<\/p>\n Not just because it\u2019s an SEO best practice, but also because it\u2019s the first thing users see in search results and on social media.<\/p>\n The title tag is your biggest opportunity to catch the eyes of a user and encourage them to click into the page.<\/p>\n Determine the page that you want to rank for each keyword target, and then figure out a way for your title to stand out from all the others.<\/p>\n Yes, the keyword target should be included towards the beginning of the title tag, but how else can you encourage users to click?<\/p>\n BuzzSumo analyzed<\/a> 100 million headlines and learned that:<\/p>\n While meta descriptions don\u2019t have a direct impact on rankings, they should work closely with your title tags. Incorporate the keyword if possible, as well as a clear call-to-action for users.<\/p>\n The goal of your title tag and meta description should be to explain the benefit to users, provoke emotion, and trigger engagement \u2013 all while applying SEO best practices.<\/p>\n Why should you care about Google\u2019s most recent algorithm updates<\/a>?<\/p>\n Because good SEO professionals stay on top of that stuff.<\/p>\n Among many other reasons, it helps ensure your keyword rankings are not only steady, but they\u2019re constantly improving.<\/p>\n Knowing when an algorithm update first hit and when it officially ended is useful for tracking purposes, and will allow you to trace keyword and traffic fluctuations back to the root cause.<\/p>\n This will help you uncover potential reasoning for how\/why a site was hit by an update, or certain keyword rankings and pieces of content that may have been impacted by it.<\/p>\n When multiple algorithm updates happen over a short stretch of time, figuring out why certain site changes have occurred and analyzing the impact of a specific update is extremely difficult.<\/p>\n Google seeks to provide users with the best answers to their queries.<\/p>\n Just look at all of the new and increased SERP features we have seen over the past few years:<\/p>\n Optimizing for featured snippet results<\/a> and rich snippets<\/a> around your priority keyword targets is now becoming an essential part of SEO strategy.<\/p>\n While there is certainly a great deal of debate over the direct value that ranking in \u201cposition zero\u201d of search results offers a business, ultimately, I pose this question:<\/p>\n Would you rather have your competitor rank in the Answer Box for that search query?<\/em><\/p>\n As far as we know, the featured snippet result isn\u2019t going away anytime soon, and not ranking in it could mean lost visibility to your competitor, or even your \u201cfrenemy\u201d Google.<\/p>\n Start by looking for opportunities on your website to cross-link to assets from keyword-rich anchor text. This will help drive users to relevant content and build keyword associations.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, crafting a strong internal link strategy is only half of the battle.<\/p>\n The other half is generating highly authoritative and valuable inbound links from third-party websites.<\/p>\n This can seem overwhelming, but there are some key tactics to hone in on:<\/p>\n These are just a few tactics to get you started. However, there are certainly more advanced link building tactics<\/a> to be successful in today\u2019s extremely competitive landscape.<\/p>\n I mention this briefly above, but it\u2019s also important to leverage non-SEO channels in an effort to drive visibility to your assets and support your link building efforts.<\/p>\n The more eyes that you get on your content, the more opportunity you have to:<\/p>\n While different promotional tactics may apply to different types of content, creating a checklist is always helpful.<\/p>\n This way, when it comes time to promote an asset, you have a list of all possible tactics.<\/p>\n This could include:<\/p>\n While there are numerous other factors that are important to SEO, content is still king.<\/p>\n Quality content counts more than anything else when Google is determining how well your site answers a query.<\/p>\n In fact, if you only take one thing away from this piece (and hopefully you\u2019ll take more than that), it should be the importance of high-quality content. Emphasis on \u201chigh quality.\u201d<\/p>\n Google\u2019s Search Quality Guidelines explicitly state the importance of E-A-T, that is expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness<\/a>.<\/p>\n Your content should assert to both search engines and visitors that you are a reliable expert on the topics related to your keywords.<\/p>\n But because search engine results are constantly changing, you need to make continuous optimizations and improvements to your content.<\/p>\n For example, just because you\u2019ve gained the Featured Snippet result for a particular keyword or phrase, does not mean that you will stay there.<\/p>\n Refreshing your content will ensure that you\u2019re offering users the best (and most up-to-date) information and driving increased keyword visibility.<\/p>\n If the content is out of date, you will likely see the associated keyword rankings decline.<\/p>\n On the other hand, if you\u2019re always looking for opportunities to refresh your content<\/a> and provide users with the best material, you will likely see keyword ranking increases.<\/p>\n Content optimization should never be one-and-done, especially if you aren\u2019t seeing the results that you want.<\/p>\n If an asset isn\u2019t ranking, re-optimize it for relevance, search intent, engagement, and readability<\/a>.<\/p>\n Your goal should be to offer users a piece of content that is better than everything else being displayed for the given query.<\/p>\n The concept, \u201cIf it\u2019s not broken, don\u2019t fix it.\u201d<\/em> certainly applies here.<\/p>\n For example, if you are ranking in the first position on Google for an extremely competitive and highly searched keyword, you don\u2019t want to risk losing that.<\/p>\n In that case, I would not recommend changing the title tag or anything that could have a negative impact.<\/p>\n However, there could be opportunities to make the asset that is ranking more conversion-friendly and encourage users to stay on your site.<\/p>\n1. Measure Your Rankings<\/h2>\n
![\"Measure](\"https:\/\/marketingnewsbox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/12-actions-that-help-improve-your-google-keyword-rankings-via-sejournal-kristen_vaughn.png\")
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2. Target The Right Keywords<\/h2>\n
![\"Target](\"https:\/\/marketingnewsbox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/12-actions-that-help-improve-your-google-keyword-rankings-via-sejournal-kristen_vaughn-1.png\")
Screenshot from search for [search intent], Google, May 2022<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n![\"Semrush](\"https:\/\/marketingnewsbox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/12-actions-that-help-improve-your-google-keyword-rankings-via-sejournal-kristen_vaughn-2.png\")
Screenshot from Semrush, May 2022<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n3. Clean Up Your Site Structure<\/h2>\n
4. Pay Attention To User Experience Signals<\/h2>\n
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5. Optimize For Users & Search Engines<\/h2>\n
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6. Create Eye-Catching & Engaging Titles<\/h2>\n
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7. Stay On Top Of Algorithm Updates<\/h2>\n
8. Provide Answers To The Questions People Are Asking<\/h2>\n
![\"Optimize](\"https:\/\/marketingnewsbox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/12-actions-that-help-improve-your-google-keyword-rankings-via-sejournal-kristen_vaughn-3.png\")
Screenshot from search for [digital transformation], Google, May 2022<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n9. Build Valuable Inbound Links<\/h2>\n
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10. Promote Your Content Strategically<\/h2>\n
![\"Promote](\"https:\/\/marketingnewsbox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/12-actions-that-help-improve-your-google-keyword-rankings-via-sejournal-kristen_vaughn-4.png\")
Screenshot by author, May 2022<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n\n
11. Continuously Optimize & Improve Content<\/h2>\n
12. Setup & Optimize Your Google Business Profile<\/h2>\n