According to backlinko, the #1 result in Google’s organic SERPs is ten times more likely to receive a click compared to a page in the 10th spot.

Google is the most credible search engine these days and ranking your website on its first page is the first thing you strive for once it becomes operational. SERP is the term you would have come across several times when talking about increasing your website visibility and reach.

So, what is SERP?

SERP is an acronym for the Search Engine Results Page. It is the result page you see whenever you enter your search query in the Google search bar. The Google search response is influenced by many factors. The Google search algorithm variables depend upon not only the organic traffic demand but also the PPC (paid per click) ads ratio. Therefore, to make your website more visible and improve SERP ranking, you must beat the competition. Here is where the role of SEO comes in. The best way to improve search engine ranking is by implementing SEO-based strategies.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a digital marketing practice to make your web content optimized according to the Google search engine algorithm. Once you tailor your content smartly to fit in the SERP box, you are good to go and your website discovery chances increase exponentially. This article will explore ways to improve SERP ranking and decode the Google search algorithm.

Best Ways to Improve SERP Ranking

As the success of any cyber business depends upon visibility and online traffic, ranking your website on the top becomes all the more crucial. For every SEO strategy to give fruitful results, patience and perseverance are the keys. You have to plan, implement, wait, revise, reimplement, and then the process goes on until you achieve something noticeable. However, once you start cracking the search algorithm you start boning up on the SEO skills. And the main goal of your SEO-based strategic plan is to improve SERP ranking.

The following steps will help you achieve a good SERP ranking if you stick to them throughout your digital marketing journey.

1. Relevance

Gone are the days when SEO meant, monotonous, spun content with keywords stuffed in every other sentence. Nowadays, search engines have become far more intelligent to recognize quality content and an authoritative copy published by any authentic business online. Good content means relevant content. The more your content sticks to the topic and provides value to the customer, the more reliable your brand seems to be.

Some businesses focus on stuffing their websites with long but meaningless posts and ad copy with many errors and roundabout phrases just to fill up space. This impacts badly on their brand image and their business claims are seen as empty bragging and fake self-appreciation.

Similarly, if your intended audience is not satisfied with your content topics, you must tailor it according to their demographics. The type of target audience you want to drive to your website must be kept in mind before you create content. As Google prefers relevance when it comes to content, covering trending topics and writing to-the-point content will improve SERP ranking automatically.

Niche sites often rank higher due to their value addition to cyberspace and also due to their relevant, in-depth content. For a website to become more visible and relevant, you should publish detailed articles having authority over a particular niche subject. Superficial overviews and brief, abrupt blog posts with general topics often get lost amid several other similar web articles.

Another content optimization technique to improve SERP ranking is AI optimization. It is an AI-powered SEO technique used to discover hidden, potential ranking opportunities in the online realm. Finding relevant main keywords, LSI phrases, target content topics, etc., and then creating topic clusters manually consumes a lot of time and creative energy. However, there are several AI-based SEO tools and software available to make your task easier such as BridgeEdge.

Missing out on web search traffic automatically means a loss of potential revenue for your business. Therefore, improving SERP ranking is important and for this exact reason, marketers are turning toward artificial intelligence day by day.

As AI technology aims to mimic human cognitive ability yet perform similar tasks way faster, it has taken the world by storm. Google’s search algorithm such as Rankbrain has incorporated AI SEO as its strategic component. AI-based SEO helps in effective and fast data analysis to look up trends and topics with high ranking potential. Incorporating AI in your SEO plan can be the best way to improve SERP ranking as it will make it more convenient for you to search for relevant keywords and content topics.

User search history is another ranking factor that often gets dismissed by SEO marketing strategists. User history helps derive personalized SERPs based on the previous user activity. Google follows all users to track their data and usage record and shows results accordingly.

To summarize the crux of the details mentioned above following pointers would be helpful:

• Relevance increases reliability.
• Value addition is important while creating relevant content.
• AI optimized content may help increase keyword relevancy.
• User history and web surfing patterns along with audience information help in relevant content creation.

2. Keyword Research

Researching target keywords and creating content according to market trends comes first in the list of strategies to improve SERP ranking. According to Yoast, keyword research helps create findable content and tops the list of factors affecting SERPs ranking.

There are several tools to conduct your keyword research and explore the best keywords that may help rank your website. These tools include but are not limited to Moz Keyword Explorer, Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool, etc.

Similarly, to research viral trends, top marketing insights, relevant questions related to your focused keywords, and other long-tail keyword suggestions, tools such as Google Trends, Answer the public, Keyword Sheeter, etc. are used. Google trends let you research keyword popularity and trending search queries. Moreover, it helps you plan your content strategy by facilitating content calendar curation for timely updates.

If you are a blogger or consumer website owner, surely, you would have experienced traffic ups and downs. It’s a common occupational hazard for all online traders. Web traffic makes or breaks a website. To attract significant traffic you have to make sure you are touching the right chords.

Even if you are publishing great content, your website page may not perform well and traffic growth may dive. These dips in the traffic growth graph impact badly on any business and you have to improve the SERP ranking of your website. For this reason, a website diagnosis is necessary. Organic traffic potential depends on many factors including trending posts, technical simplicity of a page, timely updates, localized language, and user-friendly interface.

Choosing the latest topics and localized content headers grab the immediate attention of the target audience. Keyword selection also plays a part. Good content offers food for thought. Providing consumers with thought-provoking, succinct copy that calls for action is key to successful sales and sales means traffic growth.

Many of the past consumers become positive advocates for your business and act as prosumers attracting more people to your website. By sharing your product, and posting reviews about it, these consumers help grow your business and become a healthy part of it.

One of the best ways to improve SERP ranking is to correctly understand how search engines answer semantic search queries. This will help you in tracking the latest trends and the user intent behind those queries.

Since the release of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm focusing on contextual search queries, semantic search has become the norm. Precision and speed have been the latest driving instinct for conversational search these days and this algorithm update brought an instant innovation to the overall SERPs processing.

Matt Cutts, a former software expert from Google, quotes Hummingbird as a rewrite of Google’s core search algorithm.

Machine learning and natural language processing have brought up the latest revolution in the workings of SEO. Now, understanding the situational context and consumer behavior is as important as the actual search keyword.

While showing results search engines not only focus on related search pages but also the user intent, content authority, traffic volume, and relationship between searched keywords. Often the long tail keyword is a long-phrase more extended than the seed keyword. It should make sense to the search engine to display the most accurate results.

To understand how keyword research impacts SERP ranking, the following pointers should be remembered:

• Marketing trends and insights should be explored.
• Traffic growth and volume are important.
• Topics should be chosen according to your research
• Relevant keywords should be selected after thorough research.
• A quality web copy with a subtle call-to-action is also important.
• Remember, consumers can eventually become prosumers. Make this one of your marketing targets.
• Related searches or semantic searches are the new SEO now.
• Relevance, content volume and authority, traffic growth, and user intent are essential factors that play a significant role in impacting keyword research.

3. Keyword Placement

The natural placement of keywords within a content piece makes it look more effortless and provides a subtle call to action. Keyword stuffing is a big red flag for search engines these days. Now, search algorithms have incorporated artificial intelligence to make sense of keywords semantically. Therefore, the keyword placement should not look forced in any way, or else your web page may be overlooked altogether. To improve SERP ranking, keywords should be added not only to the main content body but also to the header tags and meta description.

The following pointers should be remembered when preparing your content and focusing on keyword placement:

• Effortless, natural keyword placement is important to have a good chance at SERP ranking.
• Keyword saturation and frequency should be calculated before placement.
• Primary, secondary, and tertiary keyword/anchor text should be chosen wisely. Help can be taken from available keyword calculating tools and resources.

4. Content Creation

If the content is king then the readability score is the crown that makes it credible. Creating content is not a big deal at all. However, maintaining readability and tone consistency while creating it counts as a big deal when talking about SEO.

Optimizing content according to user preference and making it easy on the eyes require keen effort and thorough editing. The more readable you make your content to be, the more likely it is that you get a good response on your website. For example, you are creating an email newsletter that you have added as a subscription button on your web page. You want your audience to respond to it and follow your call to action. If your email copy is understandable by your target audience and is according to their mental level, you are likely to get an increased positive response.

Similarly, there are many web-building platforms offering content editing plugins to check grammar and provide readability score analysis before you click the publish button. These embedded plugins such as Grammarly and Yoast, help edit and proofread content so that you can achieve a good readability score before publishing your post.

Local SEO

Another way to improve SERP ranking through content creation is by localizing it. Localization means personalization that is applied by Google for local SEO-based search entries.

Local SEO helps narrow down the search to target the local geographic market and audience of a particular local community.

The word difficulty level of the published content should also match the audience’s caliber and comprehension level. If the mental level of the site visitor is that of a teenager, then the reading level should not be suitable for an adult audience. Instead, it should cater to the target audience’s mental capacity. Google not only estimates the reading standards of a webpage but also shows the stats of a website content page after its reading level analysis. To play safe, consider the rule of thumb as using basic level content language to suit all ages.

Content quality and uniqueness should also be maintained throughout the blog creation so that there is no chance of plagiarism or copyright claims. Search engines consider plagiarized, spun copy as a major red flag when it comes to website authority and ranking. Coming up with unique topics to write about making it a trend on common social media handles, and ensuring the quality of your content are key to stepping up your SEO strategy.

Search engines feed on content and love to analyze words. The more food for thought we provide, the more chances of gaining organic traffic and appearing high on semantic searches. Long-form blogs and content posts are more likely to get visibility and occupy cyberspace.

Content length matters when it comes to SERP ranking. There is a whole new science related to long-form articles and user search queries doing better for your SEO game. Users want engaging content and you want to engage them more. So, it’s a win-win situation. You may have heard people say that “Marketing copy must be brief yet engaging”. The attention span of people nowadays is short and they get easily distracted while surfing the virtual realm. However, the opposite is proving to be true lately. That is, people thrive on knowledge and authentic content instead of filler and fluff.

Analytics show how lengthy, quality content posts help engage the audience and take up more space on the first page of SERPs. Content length dominates the ranking results and Google gives priority to sites having content-rich pages.

Even though it sounds simple to you, it becomes a little tricky when you delve deeper. Mere content length and word count won’t let your page rank higher. However, long-form content will let you incorporate the best SEO practices that ensure a good ranking. Whereas in brief posts you won’t get sufficient room to embed proper keywords and tags naturally so that it doesn’t look forced or desperate. There! Get it now? No rocket science you see. It’s pretty simple.

Link Building

Link building is something marketers often overlook in their haste to publish content on time. Creating internal and external links is important to give your blog maximum exposure and increase your website visibility.

Creating backlinks or inbound links will offer more learning opportunities for your visitors and will provide quick solutions to their questions if any. Similarly, creating internal links will help them navigate through your website smoothly and will help uncover your web content easily. Using appropriate tags for images and implementing the best image SEO strategies can make the content more interesting. It can also increase the page uploading speed.

In a nutshell, the following conclusive points will help determine better content creation:

• Readability is an essential content creation ingredient.
• Localization helps narrow down the audience and increases the target focus.
• SEO-based content helps rank up your SERPs results.
• Quality and uniqueness are important for plagiarism-free search reports.
• Proper content length helps ensure the implementation of best SEO practices.
• Reviewing your link-building game will allow better reach.
• SEO-based image optimization is as important as content optimization, etc.

5. Content Revision and Update

First impressions don’t last forever these days. The equation has changed for the better now. For something to be impactful, it has to be dynamic, flexible, and current. The content you publish on your site also needs to be refreshed every so often.

With regular updates and revisions your site will remain high on the ranking front or else it will gradually become obsolete. Here Neil Patel explains how updating old content can help improve SERPs ranking. As content slowly becomes stale, the need to refresh it becomes stronger after a while. For this reason, content update is one of the most deciding factors for the quality judgment of your site by Google.

Credit: Neil Patel.com

Google’s first page results often show the most currently published content pages. The current updates help gain traffic spikes. Also, most of the information on the internet is time-sensitive and requires an upgrade. People like to read things published only recently. Your click-through rate will improve further by updating old content regularly and uploading new content punctually.

For both of these tasks, the key is perseverance. Perseverance helps achieve long-term goals with fruitful outcomes. When the click-through rate or CTR increases, search engines tend to rank the page higher. For click-worthy content, you have to grab the readers’ attention with interesting headers and infographics.

According to Convince and Convert it’s all about grabbing attention and making the content on your website valuable. Infographics help maintain reader interest throughout the blog post and make the click worth it:

Google’s search algorithm judges the content page as a good resource and worth ranking due to the number of times people have visited it. Returning traffic calls for regular updates and content revisions. These three pointers must be remembered to get continued web exposure:

• Update and revise old content regularly.
• Upload new content punctually according to a planned content calendar.
• SEO success is incremental forward growth and requires constant perseverance.

6. Referral System and Affiliate Marketing

Adding affiliate backlinks to your content increases the chances of directing traffic to your website as discussed earlier. However, another useful twist to link building technique is creating referral systems. Referral building is a subtle yet important SEO move to improve SERP ranking. The referral system is a win-win situation for any online business. It helps generate passive income and improve the visibility of your online brand or business.

Online authority strengthens by adding referring sites to your page. People like to find content endorsed by more than a single source. When all say it’s recommended, it seems a good choice to buy so let’s make a purchase. Also, referring sites facilitate unique traffic sources and additional conversions that are crucial for higher rankings.

On the other hand, running a website online requires giving and taking. If you want to promote a product you would need people to advertise it for you. You would also need more online space to market it and maximize your reach. In this case, if another marketer collaborates with you and both of you build a referral partnership or form an affiliation, it will help flourish your business more.

The client base will increase and Passive income streams help generate gradual yet consistent revenue that benefits you in the long run. Similarly, for driving referral traffic to your content blog, you can opt for guest blogging. Pitching an authority blog to which popular bloggers have made contributions previously is a successful strategy to follow. As Neil Patel mentions:

7. Metadata

As we enter the middle of 2022, the question arises whether on-site SEO still works today? The answer is given by the authority itself. Google’s report about “How Search Works” states:

According to backlinko, cramming content with keywords is not the only SEO strategy for ranking success. Factors such as dwell time and bounce rate also determine good ranking. Dwell time defines the duration for which a visitor has explored or dwelled on your website after his search query. Bounce rate defines the percentage of reverting visitors without taking significant action. As soon as you manage to decrease your bounce rate, your conversion rate increases.

Dwell Time

Dwell time is directly affected by the content quality and knowledge value that your web page provides for a visitor. If your content fails to engage the audience, the bounce rate increases automatically. For this reason, creating engaging content is important.

Meta Data 

Metadata helps make your content more interesting and SEO-friendly. For search engines, user satisfaction is very important. Satisfying a user search query in the best possible way is vital for a search engine’s performance standard. Metadata helps search engines in understanding the details of web content and locating the most relevant content matching the search query.

Metadata includes different types of meta tags and meta descriptions. Such as title tags, alt tags, canonical tags, author tags, robot tags, etc. As search engines don’t see your webpage but they can read it, the tags play an important role in introducing a website content topic.

The web crawlers such as Googlebot bring information about the indexed sites to the servers so that they can discover available web pages for the public. While the crawling process continues, newly developed sites, dead web pages, malicious content, and other similar issues are recognized and filtered out quite often. When fetching sites as SERPs, metadata makes a web page stand out. Appropriate title tags are one of the main signals for SEO ranking.

Meta tags are HTML elements that are embedded into the source code running at the back end. However, user-friendly content management systems or CMS such as WordPress has made the task far easier. Now, you can add tags directly in the web builder’s meta tags section or meta manager before publishing your content.

When the audience requires information related to a particular search query, they look it up and find their desired content. In the same way, when search engines require information and details about a website, they focus on the metadata of that website. Metadata is information about information.

The six most important meta tags are stated below:

• Title Tag: It should be clear, describing anchor text, and should not be more than 55 characters. Just like a topic glimpse of the entire blog. Most web builder plugins will let you see the preview of the title tag in SERPs as it is likely to appear.
• Meta Description: As important as the title tag, the meta description appears as a content snippet or brief introductory paragraph to describe the blog topic. It becomes a decisive factor in engaging people to click on your website link. Therefore, it should paint a clear, precise picture of your web page.

• Robots Meta Tag: As web crawlers choose web pages to be indexed for search engines, robot meta tags help determine which ones to index and which ones to leave. If you want a particular page of your website to not appear in SERPs due to a lack of content-richness or any other reason, you can add this tag.
• Alt Tag: It is an alternative tag describing image attributes and should be added to let search engines locate an image. It involves image optimization techniques and more details about this tag will be explored below.
• Canonical Tag: Canonical tags are used to synchronize and identify syndicated or duplicate content along with identical content pages with republished content. If your website has identical pages or you have republished your content elsewhere on the internet, use canonical tags. This tag will let search engines prioritize pages and you won’t get a plagiarism penalty or low SERPs ranking.
• Header Tag: Structuring your article content header-wise makes it easy for search engines to determine its value. Readers also find content with headers navigable and easy on the eyes, maintaining their interest. Headers let search engines know what your content topic is all about.

The rule of thumb is to remember these pointers while creating header tags:

• Don’t overuse them.
• Use one h1, one or more h2, and h3.
• Break up your content into easy-to-read, understandable sections.
• Focus on keywords while creating headers balancing SEO and user understandability.

Following are the main points in a checklist for your meta tags optimization:

• Ensure that your pages have all the main meta tags included.
• Create a catchy title.
• Add a clear content snippet as a meta description.
• Add robot tags, alt text, headers, etc. wherever necessary.

8. Alt Tags

Despite being a part of a website’s metadata, here we are describing Alt tags separately in detail. Interestingly, the text is what search engines can interpret easily. Images often make the process complicated. Hence, Alt tags.

Alt tags or Alt attributes are used to enhance a search engine’s ability to locate and recognize an image by a brief textual phrase. As the name depicts, Alt tags or alternative tags are alternatively embedded within the image tags and help search engines in understanding the images used on a web page. They describe how an image appears and its function. They add value to your website and improve on-page SEO. On the other hand, they come in quite handy for the user as well when a web page fails to upload an image.

For instance, you have incorporated an image of a tree depicting an autumn season in your blog post or article. An Alt tag for this image should be something along the lines of, “Autumn tree”. Similarly, if you add a picture of Doritos tortilla chips, you should add an attribute as “Doritos Tortilla Chips “.

The shorter tags perform better in the ranking of a web page. Moreover, they are mostly suitable for image-heavy sites instead of text-oriented ones. For better results, avoid adding duplicate tags. As a rule of thumb, the following pointers should be considered:

• Search engines cannot interpret images conveniently without textual alternatives.
• Alt tags should properly yet briefly describe the appearance and purpose of the image being used on the web page.
• While using tags value addition to the content should be kept in mind.
• Avoiding duplicate tags helps maintain clarity and uniqueness.

9. UX Improvement and Management

Today, UX doesn’t limit itself to just web design it has forayed into every digital interface requiring user interaction. Everything from email newsletters to social media marketing and from mobile applications to Google listings requires efficient UX strategies to attract more traffic.

According to Adweek’s survey report, 81% of internet traffic converts after searching online before making a purchase. Therefore, you have to improve your SERP ranking to list your website on the first page for optimum exposure. Google likes to list sites having recurring visitors and this only happens if your user interface engages the visiting traffic until they convert. This area of SEO management and the SERP ranking process constantly requires improvement and review by marketers and web designers.

Some of the most important UX factors affecting SERP ranking include:

Value at the Start

Before you engage your user with your product portfolio or brand story, you have to make them visit your business page or website. The visit will only happen when the user is sufficiently convinced to click on your link on the listings page. Therefore, provide value immediately.

Don’t linger on, don’t save the most important information for later. Place your most catchy incentive at the beginning or front page. Rather in the content snippet and page title to attract immediate attention. Almost 75% of the users click a title if it’s compelling enough, taking the website link at face value. Here Copyblogger shows how to write magnetic headlines.

Trust Building Through URLs

Quality user experience calls for proper trust-building to ensure continued traffic conversion. If a user doesn’t trust your website, your brand is bound to fail despite every SEO management effort you have put to improve SERP ranking.

To enhance the credibility of your business, not only do you have to focus well on how you portray your brand on the official website, but you must also make your URL sound more authoritative.

Users often become skeptical if the logo design or brand copy is not professional enough or the URL seems like a non-serious one. You have to choose simple yet effective words for your URL and permalinks to make them more search-friendly and to build strong authority over each of the landing pages linked to your site.

If the user sees just a set of numbers and symbolic structures in the permalinks instead of a related word structure when they search for a particular query such as: “Digital Marketing Blog“, they would not be able to trust the URL link easily. In contrast, if a URL link denotes what the page is about using a proper verbal slug matching the user search query, the user will automatically be at ease about the site’s credibility. For e.g,. https://www.krcmic.com/digital-marketing-blogs/

Lead with Authority Using Google My Business (GMB) Tool

Online businesses become successful with extensive exposure and search visibility. The more traffic a website gets with a low bounce rate, the higher the chances of conversion. Google has facilitated chances of maximum brand exposure for both aspiring and established businesses across the globe.

Brands thrive on positive reviews and testimonials. Complimentary reviews are positive social proof of successful business growth. Good word of mouth about a brand acts as breathing air for the survival and growth of any business. By building up a proper, detailed business profile on Google My Business, now entrepreneurs and company owners alike can introduce their businesses to the world.

Although the GMB app is going away as announced by the company, business profiles are still up and can be synchronized with Google maps. You can interact with people through your products, services, and brand story. The GMB profiles help you publicize your business on a wider scale and let you collaborate with prospects.

By synchronizing your profile with other Google apps such as Google shopping, Google maps, Google search, etc. business details can be updated easily. App users are being notified of the replacement and are urged to use Google Maps and Google Search for finding business profiles online.

Upon searching for a particular niched business, potential customers can find profiles they can trust and reach out to, and thus a business gains more credibility through this feature. Verifying your business and editing your details make it easier to maintain your strong online presence and manage your business virtually.

Practice Diversity and Inclusive Approach

In 2019, Google announced that it will start diversifying the site results. This means that a particular site domain having subdomains will not appear multiple times for the same search query in the SERPs. This way more diverse results can be seen and different varieties of web domains will be able to appear as a result of a particular search query. However, Google had not stated that they will eliminate domains belonging to different geographic locations.

Google judges whether a site was helpful to the user or not while ranking it in SERPs. The best way to improve SERPs is by adopting an inclusive approach when it comes to general web topics. Also, make sure to include an FAQs page on your website to answer common search topics and queries about your line of business and to improve UX.

This will help make your web pages appear on “People Also Ask” in the SERPs. Moreover, by doing so, you will be able to attract people from all around the world and your website will be a universal go-to place for all.

Try Localization Techniques to Narrow Down Target Audience

However, contrastingly, if you are targeting people of a particular ethnicity or locality, you should focus more on localization to narrow down your audience. Niched websites are mostly localized to suit a particular public community. For eg., Arabic cuisine may be enjoyed in other parts of the world but it has its roots mainly in the Gulf countries.

So if your website content focuses on middle eastern dishes recipes you should localize your content language accordingly. Images, terms, examples, etc. everything should be according to an audience of that particular region.

People love web places where they feel connected and can easily relate to. So where diversity would let you include a wider group of the public, localization will help narrow down your target audience.

Google is now listing websites according to zip codes, geographic locations, and mobile devices so that the search queries are answered in a more optimized manner. Also, if a particular business has an operational local outlet physically then it has a higher chance of being ranked better in local SERPs. This is what we call localized SEO.

Improving UX Interface (Page Speed, Mobile Version Updates, Broken Links Fixture, etc.)

Gamification features are a new rage these days. To help increase engagement and user collaboration. Rewards symbols, incentives, bonuses, loyalty programs, etc. all of these add a sense of active participation by the end-user through a structured motivational approach. However, this will succeed when the embedded elements in the website’s development interface are well-programmed providing smooth UX.

Moreover, users need a navigation system that helps them transition from page to page easily and without unnecessary delay. This calls for improved page speed and an image loading mechanism that won’t let them get distracted. The attention span of a wandering internet visitor is quite short. To trust a website he will need to ensure that it is regularly updated and not abandoned. Therefore, to make him convert, you have to pay attention to fixing the broken links and improving backend bugs and domain errors.

Even though it is quite underrated and often overlooked, Google Analytics can be used to test the page loading speed of a website. It is also beneficial for testing snippets, titles, images, and other UX features to analyze your website potential and user facility.

Running beta tests and split page analysis often provides quick insight into your development results and helps improve your site according to the ever-changing algorithms of search engines. Also, backing up important data helps provide sudden missing information whenever the need arises.

Mobile version updates facilitate a user-friendly interface on the latest handsets that are more frequently used these days. Handheld devices such as smartphones are a necessity now.

Websites having a flexible enough interface to adapt to the mobile version without compromising on usability or feature facility are preferable to the users today.

Voice Search Optimization

Voice search is the new search norm these days. Using speech recognition mechanisms powered by artificial intelligence is the future of SEO if taken proper advantage of.

Since the evolution of AI-based assistants such as Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant by Google, and Amazon’s Alexa, voice search is not unheard of. While the holographic assistants are still a yet-to-be-released feature, commercial voice-based home or office management assistants are commonly available these days.

Powered by AI programming, these voice search-based gadgets listen to the voice commands and adapt to the recurring verbal instructions quite well. Inspired by this mechanism, marketers and search engines are embedding voice search features in their interfaces too.

Voice search enables quick results without having to type the whole keyword. Similarly, websites also save voice search queries for later so that a regular customer has immediate results with ease and efficiency.

The more simple, conversational, and common keywords you select as your voice search optimized phrases, the more frequently search engines will redirect traffic to your site. As your chosen keywords match easily with the verbal searches conducted by online traffic, your site will automatically start ranking higher in the SERPs.

Adding Schema Markup 

Also called structured data, schema markup is used to facilitate enhanced search functionality. Ryan MacKeller, precisely defines Schema Markup in his 2018’s Six Resolution infographic:

A study by Bing and Catalyst explained only less than 20% of the business marketers use schema markup on their SEO content snippet and metadata strategy. Being a semantic vocabulary containing understandable tags or micro data, Schema markup helps categorize your data in structures by using the Schema.org project to improve search engine efficiency.

There are numerous item types and data markups available to choose from. You can add tags of particular itemscope and itemtype to markup your data in the HTML code of your page. This will specify the search engine about the type of website you have and the scope of your web data. By using Structured Data Markup Helper by Google up you can select and add your schema markup easily.

To summarize, according to Digital Strike, the following UX factors may affect website SEO along with some essential pointers mentioned below:

• Understanding Core Web Vitals(a standardized collection of website user experience metrics by Google) is an effective way to ace your UX game.
• Improving page speed is crucial.
• Mobile-friendly versions make websites more flexible and adaptable for users.
• Snippets and images help provide immediate value.
• Fixing broken links facilitates smooth website exploration and navigation.
• Voice search optimization is another important factor to consider for added search friendliness.
• Content diversity and localization help target the right audience.
• Using the Google My Business tool makes your brand profile more authoritative.
• Adding schema markup enables better search results and additional information about the website.

10. Domain Authority Improvement

Site optimization requires well-structured web design and strategic creativity. Domains having deep architecture often get hierarchical site maps with sub-pages buried deep inside the website. This often leads to low visibility in the SERPs.

Having a simple yet easily-navigable site structure leads to pages being linked closer to the homepage and the URL path becomes uncomplicated to follow. These nuances help improve SERPs automatically.

Also, filing pages categorically increases the chances of higher visibility due to the relevancy boost. A domain strengthens its authority by following all the SEO ranking signals wisely.  DA score developed by Moz is an SEO strategic signal for higher ranking gauged by website performance statistics.

Although based on machine learning calculated stats, it is not directly affecting Google’s ranking factor, it surely helps improve performance and as result increases the chances for higher ranking.

Avoiding duplicate domains, old domain age without constant updates, and other hosting errors enhance your domain credibility and a professional-looking domain extension matching the website type makes it more trustable.

Though, if all the factors are present, old domain age does not matter. But if the site is older it is easier to rank for a particular keyword on an older domain name. This mostly happens if the newer sites do not follow proper SEO techniques giving way to older ones.

User experience is an indispensable part of good domain performance. Providing troubleshooting support and a chatbot with 24-hours customer service is a good option for engaging regular customers and new visitors alike.

A real-time helpline facility conducting remote technical management also helps improve the user experience further resulting in increased user trust.

Keep the following tips in mind for making the most out of your website domain during your quest for higher SERPs ranking.

• Optimize site performance using domain authority tools.
• Troubleshooting is important for better UX.
• Credible domain selection helps attract serious traffic.

11. Continued Research and Upgradation

Keeping an eye out for the dynamic changes in the world of SEO is fundamental for always remaining a step ahead of your competitors. Continuity of development breeds progress and the cycle of learning never ends. Smart marketers always keep up with the latest trends in the SERPS ranking dynamics to ensure maximum site visibility.

One example of these latest technological trends is AI-based MUM (Multitask Unified Model), which Google will use for handling complicated multi-mode search processes including audible, visual, and textual searches. It will provide multilingual support catering to 70+ languages. It has begun gathering insights from different national and international sites to give results in the language of your preference.

Another example of keeping up with trending innovation in the SEO-based ranking arena is the use of NFTs for content distribution. Brands can use Non-Fungible tokens as loyalty vouchers, gift cards, or bonus goodies for special discount galas and business marketing events. Content creation alone will not suffice unless proper content distribution strategies are planned as a part of your marketing campaign.

Image Courtesy: Ahrefs

Jason Roy from SeoSiteCheckup says: “Fresh content = frequent indexing”.

Content upgrades are often required to provide your website with a breath of fresh air and to dust off stale, lingering remnants of old content. Similarly, publishing regular posts and brand updates helps engage customers for long-term revenue generation.

When a website has long been updated, topics become irrelevant to the current affairs and often require thorough revisions, rewrites, or a total content replacement.

Sometimes, a website also requires a complete domain transfer due to many reasons. If for any reason, your domain is hacked due to malware or suspicious adlinks, etc., you may lose important data and will require a new domain host. Domain migration is easier if you back up your data regularly.

Content calendars help keep track of time-sensitive blog posts and current news updates. This all happens when a systematic website content schedule is prepared and an organized marketing strategy is developed.

As Google ranking metrics are changing every so often, keeping up with algorithmic alterations requires further skill training and professional development. The future is near and all the learning tools are here, just making an effort on your part and going the extra mile will help you achieve your ranking targets better.

These tips as a summarized overview will help remember the crux of this discussion:

• Practice a futuristic approach when it comes to website development and SERPs ranking.
• Continued content planning and development help achieve regular traffic targets in the long run.
• Staying up to date with SEO best practices helps facilitate professional growth and improved site performance.
• Google algorithm and search metrics update, etc. should be followed closely to adapt your SEO strategy accordingly.

Conclusion

Understanding the best way to improve SERPs ranking is possible only by implementing the proven SEO practices with a trial and error approach. Never count yourself as a know-it-all and remember learning is never fully completed. The more skills you learn and cover, the more you will find newer techniques being continuously introduced each passing day.

Keeping your mind open is important to keep your spirits high and practice perseverance which will act as a catalyst to help you eventually improve SERPs ranking.