SEO is essential for anyone who owns a website. But SEO best practices are always changing. As 2021 approaches, here are some areas of SEO you should consider keeping on your to-do list.
Search engine optimization. Since the dawn of Google, the spotlight on SEO has been growing brighter and brighter. Businesses that recognize the importance of implementing an SEO strategy and have had success ranking their website on page 1, have seen great rewards.
In fact, if you run a company or own a blog, there’s no way around SEO. It’s the key to boosting the traffic to your site, garnering new leads, selling more product, and increasing your bottom line.
Some organic SEO ranking factors have stayed similar or only slightly evolved over the last couple of years:
- Content
- Quality
- Keywords
- Freshness
- Multimedia
- Answers
- Depth
- Architecture
- Crawl
- Mobile
- Duplicate
- Speed
- HTTPS
- URLS
- HTML
- Titles
- Descriptions
- Structure
- Headings
- Trust
- Authority
- Engagement
- Reputation
- Links
- Value
- Anchors
- Backlinks
- User
- User
- Locality
- User experience
- History
- Intent
So, as it evolves, where is a good place to start for search engine optimization in 2021?
Below, we’re going to cross our T’s and dot our I’s as head into 2021. Make sure your website is fully mobile, crafting long-form content, upping the ante on video content, and implementing site audit tools.
The reality of SEO is, you need to take a holistic approach and consistently be improving every ranking factor to dominate the 1st page. That being said, focusing on some of the areas that will give you the most return the quickest, will provide you the opportunity to see a return on your work while continuing to improve your placement.
Make Sure Your Website is Mobile Friendly
By now, you probably know that Google will knock you down a few pegs if your website isn’t optimized for mobile. It will surely hurt your SEO standing.
For a time 1 website for mobile and 1 for desktop was a widely used solution. However, Google will no longer be ranking desktop and mobile websites differently. They want to see mobile responsive sites. That means, if your desktop version isn’t optimized for mobile, now’s absolutely the time. With the ability to affordably build a fully responsive (adapts to the viewports of desktop, tablets, and mobile ) website, this is something worth seriously considering in 2021.
For those interested in gauging their mobile readiness and compliance here are a few free services:
Mobi website performance on mobile devices
Craft Some Long-Form Content
As a rule, when it comes to marketing copy and even blog posts, people generally believe, for the benefit of the reader, to keep your writing short and concise (less is more). If you believe this to be true, it seems counterintuitive to write long-form content in your blog and on your web pages.
Something to consider as you start considering long-form content is, that if information or explanation is missing from your page or blog post a user leaves unsatisfied with the article. Now consider, if you provide information in an organized and intuitive fashion and the user can scan the article, identify the information they need, and read just that portion, they ultimately leave with the information they are seeking and are satisfied.
The purpose of long-form content is to provide value to the readers, and because many different readers are looking for different particulars related to the information, the more detail the wider the reader satisfaction will be overall. Knowing this, if you decide to write long-form pages, or blog posts, make sure those articles are organized, add space between sections for easy scanning, utilize a structure that is easy to scan, and most importantly, make sure the information is useful to your audience.
Google loves to crawl sites and see long-form informative content. It demonstrates a presence of in-depth information and signals that the content (should be) helpful to the reader. Things like “time on website”, and inbound links further signal google that the information is valuable.
Throughout 2020, we noticed that our clients’ 2,000-word blog posts ranked better in search and overall outperformed posts that were 1,000 or 500 words regularly.
Plan to carve out some time to add optimized 2,000-word articles to your company blog, as it holds the promise of a higher ranking. Select topics that provide value to the reader and write to them. The days of weighted keywords and keyword stuffing are gone, you should be writing to your audience.
Create a FAQs Page
As Siri and Alexa continue to take center stage, it’s important to use voice search to help people find your website. This means going above and beyond a focus on keywords.
When people type queries into Google, they might type short phrases like, “best essential oils for stress relief.”
However, when they’re talking to their friend Siri, they’re more likely to ask full questions like, “What are the best essential oils for stress relief?”
On your website, if you include FAQs that answer common questions and phrase them naturally, you just might rank higher.
Update Your Google My Business
If you run a brick-and-mortar enterprise, it’s important to make sure your Google My Business information is up to date. When Google notices engagement and activity on a Google My Business Listing, it sends a strong signal to the gods at Google.
If your information is complete and up to date, you may be rewarded for your diligence. Best of all, it’s free to sign up. Once you log in, you’ll want to make sure the following information is up to date:
- Business hours
- Address
- Phone number
- Website
- Photos
- Reviews and ratings
You can even add weekly photos. The more information people can scan quickly and efficiently, the better chance you have of scoring a new customer or client.
Know That It’s All About Video
Do you remember the days when it was important to add quality photos to your website and company blog?
Well, photos (with alt-tags) will always be beneficial. However, video is really stealing the show these days.
Consider the hours people lose on TikTok and the entire evenings that get engulfed by YouTube. Also, you’ve probably noticed that videos rank highly in Google’s search results.
The best way to tackle this project is to revisit your content and select the top ten or twenty blogs that generated the most traffic.
Take each topic and repurpose it into a short, professional video that can stand alone on your website, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
People want to watch short videos on their commutes or while hanging out at home. You can also consider conducting short interviews with staff members, customers, or thought leaders in your industry.
Invest in SEO Tools
Start with a free SEO audit, then “invest,” but many of the useful SEO tools out there today are free. What you’re looking for in quality SEO tools are technical errors such as broken links, server issues, missing images, slow pages, and other issues that will damage your search engine rankings.
Along these lines, it’s also wise to measure your social metrics. See how and where your content is shared. Also, see how and where your competitors’ content is shared.
This will help you take note of industry trends so you can meet the demand and monitor your reputation and the competition.
SEO Best Practices for 2021
And there you have it! With these SEO best practices, you can leave a major mark in 2021. With a focus on user-friendly search terms, long-form content, and the implementation of video, we believe you can be a major success.
Give us a call today at (719) 577-4404 to see what we can help with. In no time at all, we’ll be strategizing, implementing, and bringing you to the top of Google. We can’t wait to speak with you.
Allan Todd is CEO of Pagecafe Digital Marketing. In 2022, Allan teamed up with Infront Webworks to provide digital marketing, website design, content marketing, SEO and strategy and solutions to local businesses. Allan lives in Colorado Springs.