Search Engine Optimization, abbreviated as SEO, is a word that is trending in the business sphere for long. In today’s exciting world which is filled with energy, all companies are competing against each other and trying to outperform not only their competition but also themselves. Everything around has become advanced and is speeding towards greater technology. While that may be helpful in most cases, sometimes it is the basics that need to be re-employed to gain success. While your competition is busy using the same SEO practices as others, it’s time you use the golden rules to knock them off.

Search engine optimization is mostly simple, however, a few technical concepts may prove to be difficult to understand. These technical concepts are just as crucial as building links or developing content. If you don’t take proper measures for these, they might pose a bigger problem which can be difficult to handle. Instead, why not work towards optimizing the technicalities of your website and seeing the results yourself?

Also Read: How To Be SEO Friendly 

Here are a few ways that will help you boost your Search Engine Result Page (SERP) rankings:

1. Dealing With Broken Links In An Easy Manner

Websites don’t last forever. They either shut-down completely, change owners, are used for the purpose of Black-Hat search engine optimization techniques or are sold to someone else. On other occasions, the company may get rebranded or undergo acquisition and this is when websites are redirected. Whatever the case may be, the prior owners do not bother to inform everyone knows about all changes which have taken place. This points toward the fact that all the webpages that had relevant information will now show an error or some irrelevant content.

Website owners do not want this because you might be associated with something completely inappropriate for your business. When this condition gets out of hand, there will definitely be a negative impact on your website’s SERP ranking. Not only that, this might also create trouble on the user front and will lead to a bad user experience. A good ranking can be achieved if an outbound link leads to important information without having to perform a series of actions.

All you need to do to get on top of your game is scan your website for outbound links using something like the Visual SEO Studio. This will help you’re ensure your links lead you to the right place.

2. Update Meta Descriptions Often

When you talk about SEO practices, you often end up with one term called “meta-descriptions”. This is a very important concept when it comes to improving your SERP rankings. The reason behind this is very simple: a meta-description that is composed craftily can have an overall positive impact on your CTR (click-through rate). The trick is to remember to update the meta-description over time and not completely forget it. It doesn’t sound difficult, does it? Yet most people put their website rankings at risk due to this one mistake.

Websites which are actively being edited and updated need to have their meta description changed according to the updates. The meta-description has to be in perfect sync with your content. Google provides snippets for users to know whether the link provided as a search result is suitable for their needs. The snippet includes information from both, the main content and the meta-description. So anyone who avoids updating meta-descriptions loses the opportunity of doing better at optimizing their performance.

Even when there are no updates in your content, other reasons like a change in the search engine might require you to update your description.

Your task is to write a creative meta-description within 320 characters which must contain a couple of keywords positioned such that they look natural. However, do not forget to update your content.

Recommended By Editor: How To Catch Up With The Evolving Search Engine Optimisation

3. Experiment With The New Responsive Design Feature

There is a difference in the ranking signals of mobile and desktop search. The signals that matter on mobile might not matter while you use your personal computer. One such signal is a responsive design which only improves your ranking for searches that take place on mobile. Responsive search plays a huge role in the experience of users and helps you convert visitors to customers or leads. Thus, this ranking signal is not restricted to SEO.

But what exactly do we mean by responsive design? It is a web design which helps websites adapt different designs based on the kind of device you are using. This may soon become an important factor for desktop users as well and even though Google has adopted mobile index quite recently, the company may resume using the single index.

The mobile index is helpful to understand user behavior on mobiles. As soon as Google deciphers user requirements on mobile and convinces maximum websites to adopt those, it may return to single index as it is much more efficient. The Google Analytics tool is capable of understanding user trends to a great extent.

Ensure you evaluate the responsiveness of all important web pages using different tools available on the internet. You can also do so by manual examination on various mobile devices.

4. Ensure Internal Linking Is Done Effectively

When your web pages are updated, that is, information is added, updated or deleted, internal links present can lead you to absent pages or those which have the unrelated matter in a way similar to outbound links.

This problem isn’t as serious as that of outbound links but can significantly mess up the user experience and create problems for search engines. Depending on how big your website is, quick solutions can be found. The bigger your website is, the more complex the solution. All you have to do is update your inbound links so that they provide relevant matter. Instead of scanning to search external links, you must scan for internal links and ensure they all have a proper destination to lead to.

5. Invest In Increasing Your Page Speed

Some pages load really slow on mobile phones and this is a big problem. But why is it an issue? The reasons are listed below:

Effective from July 2018, page speed is going to be counted as a ranking signal for mobile search. Also in addition to the above, the speed of a page is an important factor for better user experience.

Many people believe in saving money by not employing web designers to properly work on the functioning of the website. They prefer using an existing theme which installs too many plugins to accomplish their goal. This leads to an increase in HTTP requests and this slows your web page.

Related Post: Optimizing Page Speed and Why It’s So Important For Your Site

It’s important to start from the scratch and invest in a proper web designer/programmer. You must take proper care to avoid additional HTTP calls, try merging CSS, utilize the caching feature and try optimizing media files. Keep experimenting until you hit the right spot.

Conclusion:

It is important to remember that users are our potential customers and we need to provide them with a good user experience along with other ranking signals. One must update their knowledge of SEO practices to improve their rankings and must also learn to employ the fundamentals of SEO.

Also checkout my Web Security Guide for SEO