SEO Best Practices 2020: The Complete Guide to SEO Marketing

Search engine optimization or SEO dictates how the website gets more traffic by ranking higher on search engines.

Table of Contents

SEO is vital because a lot of content on one particular topic is available online. So, how will your webpage stand out in the crowd of already existing webpages on the Web?

That’s why you need to adopt and implement SEO best practices in your next SEO marketing campaign.

The primary aim of search engines is to deliver the best experience to those searching for an answer.

SEO helps your page rank higher and reach the people who are looking for valuable information.

That’s why Google, Bing, etc. follows specific guidelines to rank the best web pages with the most relevant information.

With the evolution of the internet and the SEO, optimization revolves around the quality of the content and the web page’s ability to distribute that content evenly.

Thus, the two core concepts of SEO include:

Content
Technical

Let’s understand these concepts in detail.

CONTENT

Content is a crucial part of any webpage. However, it’s equally important to decide the type and topic of content and its context.

Search engines work on the keywords and help display the most relevant information to the users.

A keyword can be a combination of words or a single word. When more than four words are concatenated together, they become a long-tail keyword.

SEO Best Practices for Content Optimization

It’s essential to focus on one particular topic to be more precise in the writeups. It helps readers as well as search engines to understand what you are writing about quickly.

When it comes to the content, the first thing that comes into mind is the ‘keyword research’.

Keyword Research

Understanding your audience and their queries are essential for effective keyword research. It will help you find the right topic and focusing on the same.

Find questions related to your topic

Use social media sites such as Quora, Reddit, Facebook groups, etc. to understand what people are talking about and what’s trending on the Web.

Find Best Keywords using Free/ Paid Keyword Tools

You can use Google’s Keyword Planner to find the potential keyword(s) that will help you frame an engaging content. It will help you determine the search volume against your selected keywords.

Focus on Keywords You Can Easily Rank For

Absolutely right. Keywords with a large search volume are competitive and hard to rank for.

Long-tail Keywords are more searchable and more focused; so, it’s relatively easier to rank higher for these keywords.

To find out the search volume or the difficulty level for a particular keyword, you can use Ubersuggest.

While writing the content, ask if your writeup provides detailed information and adds value to the topic.

TECHNICAL SEO

Technical SEO is the most challenging part of website optimization; however, it’s easier to handle this section through a little research.

Few aspects make it simple for the search engine to understand your page and boost it higher.

Technical SEO Best Practices 2023

Design & Usability

It’s undoubtedly the first and foremost part that describes your website’s success to some extent.

Is your website mobile-friendly?
Is your website’s navigation smooth and land your readers to the right place?
Do your readers easily find the information they are looking for?

Mobile friendly, Responsive Design

With the introduction of mobile devices, over 50% of users are on smartphones, and this percentage will undoubtedly grow in the upcoming years.

Make sure that you have a multi-spectral, responsive website that can easily open on all screen sizes.

Site Security

With the consistent growth of the Web, security becomes a crucial concern. You might have noticed that more sites nowadays start with ‘https’ instead of ‘http’.

You must have heard of an SSL certificate that enhances your site’s security. It encrypts the customer’s information to the server and provides an additional security layer to customers’ data.

Site Hierarchy

Your site structure is vital for effective SEO as a better structure helps visitors explore your website more easily.

A good site hierarchy also creates a precise outline for search engines, making it easier to find and rank it higher.

A site hierarchy is the map of your website that let users know about the pages they have visited so far.

Your website can rank higher with a short URL or link, probably 96 characters or less. Using the keyword in the URL helps even more.

Page Hierarchy

Now, this is something that most of us are familiar with. Page hierarchy covers the header tag, headings, and sub-headings.

Using the keyword in the Header or Title tag can help you gain a higher rank in Google. Using H1, H2, H3, and so on, helps Google, as well as readers, understand your page structure.

Meta Description

Meta Description is an HTML component that is crucially important from an SEO perspective. It’s a summary of your website or webpage that explains what your webpage is all about.

Google displays meta-description for each page in the search results as it dramatically influences the click-through rates.

Meta descriptions have to be descriptive, but the optimal length lies between 150 and 160 characters.

Site Map

Site Map is an XML file that keeps a record of all your website’s URLs in one place. To find your site map, enter ‘yoursite.com/sitemap.xml’, or check it on Google Search Console.

For a smaller website, you can create a sitemap by using a free tool such as xml-sitemaps.com.

Domain Authority

Domain Authority, also termed as DA, is developed by Moz. It’s a search engine ranking score that explains how likely your site ranks on SERP (Search Engine Results Pages). DA score ranges between 1 and 100. The more, the better.

To check your Domain Authority, you may use the MozBar (Moz’s free SEO toolbar), Moz’s Link Explorer, or check it in the SERP Analysis section of Keyword Explorer.

Conclusion

SEO seems complicated, as it involves numerous practices and tools. The more the volume of people that understand your website, use your content, and share it across online platforms, the higher your site will rank on search engines. It is essential to execute SEO best practices effectively to achieve the best out of it.