If you’re losing website traffic, not receiving the expected amount of calls, or not enjoying good sales, chances are your website may not be ranking high enough on search engine result pages (SERPs).
If you’re wondering whether this is the main issue, consider this statistic. On average, more than 53% of all website traffic is organic, which means the traffic stems from search results.
To get this traffic, your website should be ranked within the first few search results. In fact, the top three results in SERPs get more than 70% of the clicks.
Although you could argue that you can run ads to get to the top of the SERP, this is not entirely effective on its own as 65% of website users click on organic results—therefore, you need to find a way to rank high on search results organically.
So what can you do to improve your site’s SERP ranking?
Enhance your page experience
Improving the experience of a website visitor is not just about giving them the information they need—it encompasses a lot of different things.
A visitor’s experience will be shaped from the time they click on the link to visit your site. This will include load times, the content, the structure of the page, and even the call to action on the page.
The first thing you need to optimise to give your visitors a better experience is improving load times because as you may already know—speed matters. According to a recent study, you have a higher chance of converting website visitors if your load times are below 5 seconds.
The conversion rate drops by almost 5% for each additional second it takes for your pages to load.
In addition to speed, you should also consider the browsing experience and how well the page is laid out.
Think of a webpage like a funnel; not all users who look at the top of the page will reach the end. Your goal should be to optimise your page layout in a way that keeps the visitor wanting more and scrolling down—essentially broadening the base of the funnel.
You should also look into optimising your pages for mobile, especially since most of the traffic comes from mobile devices. So keep your pages simple and clutter-free. This would improve the browsing experience while also improving load times.
Optimise for the Google algorithm
You might think this is very obvious advice since Google hogs almost 91% of the search market. But you would be surprised to learn that almost 90% of websites don’t get any traffic from Google at all.
Now, there are many ways in which you can optimise your web pages for Google. But the most important and effective way in our opinion is to optimise your pages for search intent. What this means is that you should match your page’s content and information with the search queries.
The search giant also recently rolled out the ‘Helpful Content’ algorithm update to favour sites that it deems are helpful for the end-user. So the content on your website needs to be aligned with what the algorithm and the user want.
For example, let’s assume that you’re running a bicycle business and your audience is searching for ‘what to look for when buying a bicycle.’ If you’re using this keyword on a sales or product page, Google is not going to rank you higher in the SERP.
You would have a better chance of ranking high if you published a blog post about factors to consider when buying a bicycle. This matches the intent of the search query so Google will think your content is helpful for the reader, helping you rank higher.
Publish high-quality content
This is very important when it comes to improving site rankings. No web user will want to visit a site that doesn’t offer any value to them. They want relevant information at the snap of a finger.
So by publishing high-quality content—which is not only limited to blog posts but could also include videos, assets, infographics, and more—you can establish yourself as an authority figure in the industry, which means people will keep coming back to your website.
Other websites may even link back to your site if your content is of high quality and Google will rank you higher if your content is linked by other websites.
Improving website ranking is an art that should be mastered with patience
While all the strategies discussed above can help you rank higher, they are not the only ways you can improve your website ranking.
But regardless of which options you choose, it’s important to be patient, as improving organic ranking is not a feat that can be achieved overnight.