10 SEO Best Practices to Help Your Business Thrive in 2021
SEO continues to evolve as technology, mobile usage, content, and trends change. As we head into 2021, businesses need to stay on top of their SEO game—particularly given the disruption of 2020. To help business owners stay ahead of the curve, here is our list of the ten best SEO practices to make sure 2021 is the year your business thrives.
1. Optimize for Mobile
As of May 2020, more than 58% of website visitors around the world were accessing websites through mobile devices. To stay up-to-date and reap the rewards of growing mobile traffic, businesses must prioritize their mobile SEO. Make sure your website is optimized for mobile by employing methods such as having a mobile-friendly design, mobile-friendly page titles and meta descriptions, proper redirects, and user-friendly URLs.
2. Monitor Your Pagespeed
A fast-loading website is essential in SEO. Site visitors expect pages to load quickly, and page speed is increasingly a Google ranking factor. To achieve a fast pagespeed, start by checking the settings and images of your pages, and then consider other measures such as browser caching, CDNs, and minifying CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.
3. Utilize Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords — extended phrases that are more specific and which have lower competition — are important to SEO success today. By utilizing long-tail keywords in content, businesses help ensure their page ranks highly for their most important search terms. These terms are not only more tailored for searches, they are also more likely to result in an increased conversion rate.
4. Produce Relevant & Timely Content
Google prioritizes pages with content that is relevant to its users. When creating content for your website, ensure that it meets the current needs and demands of your target audience. Additionally, produce content regularly. Google rewards fresh content, and updated content also helps to engage your visitors.
5. Focus on Internal Links
Adding internal links to your web pages is an effective way to boost your SEO. By including links to other pages on your site, you help search engine crawlers to understand the structure and relevance of your website. When linking to other pages, use descriptive anchor text to best explain the link’s topic.
6. Leverage Social Media
Using social media for SEO purposes is a great way to increase visibility and attract more visitors to your website. When sharing content on social media, ensure that it is properly optimized, using the right keywords and relevant hashtags. Also, link back to your website from social media to help drive more website traffic and potential conversions.
7. Improve Indexing with Schema Markup
Schema markup can help search engine crawlers better understand website content, increasing the chances of ranking higher in results. For instance, schema markup can be used to provide images and a description for the page, making it easier for search engines to better identify the page and to rank it higher.
8. Take Advantage of Structured Data
Structured data is a way of formatting code that allows search engines to better identify, classify, and display pages in the search engine results page (SERP). It is also used by Google’s ‘rich results’ to display your content with features such as images, ratings, and reviews. Prioritizing structured data will help to increase brand visibility and draw more organic website traffic.
9. Optimize for Local SEO
If your business has a physical location or serves clients in specific areas, local SEO should be one of your top priorities. To give your local SEO the best boost, make sure to include location keywords in your meta tags,claim your business listings, and use structured data to add information such as your business location and regular business hours.
10. Improve User Experience
Finally, always strive to provide users with the best website experience possible. Poor user experience results in higher bounce rates, making it more difficult to rank higher in organic search. To improve user experience, create a fast-loading website, use intuitive navigation, and include quality content on your page.
By following these SEO best practices, you can ensure your business is well-positioned for SEO success in 2021. Staying on top of SEO can be difficult, but it’s worth the effort. By optimizing for search engine crawlers and improving user experience, businesses position themselves to increase their digital visibility, draw more organic website traffic, and ultimately, thrive in 2021.
