Five Ways to Improve your Website’s Search Engine Ranking (SEO)

To improve your search engine optimization (SEO), follow these suggestions and watch your website rise to the top of search engine results to boost website’s search engine ranking.

1. Publish Relevant, Authoritative Content

Quality authoritative content is the number one driver of search engine rankings, and there is no substitute for quality content-this is especially true when it comes to SEO marketing. Creating quality content specifically suited to your intended audience increases your website’s traffic, which enhances the authority and relevance of your site. Become an authority on the topic you are writing about by fine-tuning your web writing skills.

Keywords

Every authoritative content page on your website should be targeted with a specific keyword phrase. 

Multiple Keyword Phrases

Search engine rankings for multiple keyword phrases are very difficult to achieve unless those phrases are very similar. The same page may rank for both “digital marketing jobs” and “digital marketing careers”. With a single page, it would be unlikely to rank for “student affairs” and “dean of students” or “gender discrimination” and “violence reporting procedures”.

For your website to rank for multiple keyword phrases, you will need to create a separate webpage for each keyword phrase.

Placing Keywords

Following the selection of your keyword phrase for a given page, you should consider the following questions:

1.    If I use keywords in folders, can I include part or all the keyword phrase in the URL of the page?

2.    Do I have the option of using all or part of the keyword phrase in the title of the page?

3.    Is it possible to use part or all the keyword phrase in the page headings and subheadings?

You can improve your search engine ranking by answering yes to these questions. However, it should be natural and user-friendly. 

Content

Search engine rankings are influenced primarily by the content of a page, rather than its URL, title, and headings. Make sure your keyword phrase appears at least twice throughout the page, once or twice in the opening and closing paragraphs, and two to four more times throughout the remainder of the content. Ensure your authority. Create strategic links to relevant sources and additional information, both within your organization’s website and to other relevant websites.

To emphasize these keyword phrases, use bold text, italics, heading tags (especially an H1), and other emphasis tags. It is still important that your writing style and language are natural. To optimize a website for search engines, good writing should never be sacrificed. The content of a page should be written with the user in mind, not with the search engine in mind. 

2. Update Your Content Regularly

We are passionate about content, as you may have noticed. The search engines do as well. Content that is regularly updated is viewed as one of the best indicators of a site’s relevancy, so be sure to keep it updated. Make regular updates to your content (for example, semesterly).

Blogging

You can also improve your search engine rankings by writing additional content, rich in keyword phrases, on your departmental news blog. A blog post can even be a short update regarding the specific topic you are targeting. If you can, interlink your related CMS webpages and blog posts to give the reader a more comprehensive picture and additional information about the topic.

3. Metadata

During the design of your website, each page contains a space for you to insert metadata, which describes the contents of your page. You should, however, review and update metadata as your site changes over time.

Title Metadata

Title metadata is responsible for displaying the page title at the top of a browser window and for serving as the headline within search engine results. Your page’s metadata is of paramount importance.

We have developed an automated system to create the meta title for each webpage based on the title of your website if you have a content management system (CMS). The importance of using well-written, keyword-rich page titles is further enhanced by this fact.

Description Metadata

The description metadata is the textual description that a browser may include in a search result for a particular page. This should be viewed as your website’s window display: a concise and attractive description of what is contained within, designed to entice visitors to enter.

Typically, a meta description should contain two full sentences. You should provide search engines with the option of using your meta description, even if they do not always use it.

Keyword Metadata

Search engine rankings are rarely calculated using keyword metadata. It does not hurt to include your keyword phrases in your keyword metadata, however, as you should already know them. It is important to include a variety of phrases. The general rule is to keep the number of phrases to 3-7, with each phrase consisting of 1-4 words. An excellent example would be a degree in computer science.

4. Have a link-worthy site

It is most likely that a webpage that contains rich content, is authoritative, unbiased, and assists visitors in learning more about what they are interested in is most likely to attract links from other websites, improving your search engine ranking.

Add relevant links within the text to increase your authority and credibility.

Make sure that descriptive links are used by linking keywords – this not only improves search engine optimization, but also adds value to your readers, including those with disabilities or who use screen readers.

5. Use alt tags

Your images and videos should be described using alt tags. It is essential that search engines can locate your website, especially for users of text-only browsers or screen readers.