Doing better than the competition for search engine optimisation is something that many small businesses want but struggle to do. Fortunately, not every idea for getting ahead revolves around putting large amounts of working capital to work to get results.
Here are 4 strategies for beating your online competition.
1. Focus on Core Web Vitals
The Core Web Vitals are something that is on the tip of the tongue of many site owners currently. With an upcoming May update from Google already announced, many owners are busily trying to get their website to load faster to get improved scores.
Usually, there are multiple overlapping reasons why a site is suffering slowdowns, poor loading speeds, and inferior performance. It could be due to slow hosting, but that’s surely not the only reason.
Figuring out what’s slowing your website down and fixing it is a time-consuming task. Only people with deep technical knowledge in website development and design, like the team at Lilo, can know what to look for and how to resolve the issue. Get help if you feel that you need it.
2. Optimise for Structured Data
Structured data is something that computers read and can be displayed within the search results.
When using WordPress as the content management system, it’s possible to use a plugin like Schema App Structured Data. It’s free and has been recommended by SEO commentator, Neil Patel, who some readers may be already familiar with.
The idea with such plugins is that they add useful information Google can pick up. What that is depends on how your site is created. However, many times it will providing headings and other information that can be highlighted in the Google search result. This can offer quick answers to searchers, but also encourage more clicks on the search result to learn more.
Driving a better click-through rate on the Google SERPs can lead to a higher ranking when the search engine picks up on the searchers’ increased response. That alone makes it worth adopting.
3. Get the Google Snippet More Frequently
The Google snippet is the quote at the top of many search results pages. It can provide an answer – or at least, the beginnings of one – to the searcher. They will frequently click on that top result and visit the website because they want to see the rest of the published information.
While getting the #1 ranking is great, grabbing the snippet is even more so. It drives extra traffic over and above that of the top-ranking site.
Look at what is currently being ranked as the snippet. If it’s an ordered list, then create a more detailed, better one. If it’s a word passage, then write a more informative version that answers the query in fewer words.
4. Quality over Quantity
As has been noted by the search advocate, John Mueller, the total number of backlinks isn’t that important to Google.
What matters is their relevance to the topic and the relative strength of the links. Therefore, a powerful link from a site that has authority in their industry or niche is likely to be valued far more highly than a bunch of easy-to-get blog comments.
Also, Google now regularly ignores low-value links, so often they won’t move the ranking needle at all.
By approaching SEO from the perspective of constant improvement, it’s possible to achieve better results and drive more traffic to your site.
