SEO is an ever present effort. It has been around for years now and likely will be for a long time to come. As time has gone on SEO has evolved, and because of this evolution our methods evolve with it.

1. Unique and Targeted Content

Unique and quality content that is targeted towards your audience should be one of your main focuses.  If you provide content that is engaging and not just a rehash of something people have heard a million times, that is going to lead to more clicks, longer time spent on page, and better rankings.

2. LSI Keywords

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. These are basically keywords that help identify your content/topic as they are linked to your main keywords via a series of algorithmic techniques.

3. Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are usually 3-5 words and more specific than general keywords. A great way to find long tail keywords is using the searches related to section in Google or by using a keyword planner tool such as Ahrefs and checking the questions related to a keyword you are considering. Long tail keywords are usually less difficult to rank for than a shorter keywords.

4. Title Tag

Your title is the first thing users will see in search results. It should include your target keyword and address the likely concerns of the user using that search term. The title lets your users and search engines know exactly what your page is for.

5. Meta Description

A meta description is a short summary of what your page is about. It is what search engines display just below the title. You want them to be engaging and concise. Something that will draw the user in to land on your page and spend more time on your site.

6. Head Tags

Head tags are a way to signal to search engines the focus of the page and the importance a certain keywords. H1 signals the highest importance and H2 slightly less important but still a focus with the trend continuing with H3 and on. Ensuring your target keywords are included in the Head Tags is a vital step in optimizing your page.

7. Internal Linking

Linking to other content on your website is called internal linking, and it is a great way to show search engines that you are an authority on the subject you are writing about and that your website is full of related content. Search engine bots will also rank pages higher if they are linked to some of your better performing pages.

8. Alt Text for Images

Machines aren’t very good at understanding images, which is why optimizing your alt text is an important step in on page SEO. You will want ensure your images are relevant and tailor your alt text to your target keyword(s).

9. Mobile Optimization

With around 54% of web traffic being mobile you will want to optimize your website with that in mind. The biggest cause to someone bouncing off your site is page speed, and with mobile this is more true than ever. A great way to check on this is using Google’s free tool Page Speed Insights. You can enter your website url into the tool and receive a score on the performance, as well as recommendations on improvements you can make

10. Optimized URL

As with Titles and Meta Descriptions, your URLs should reflect the keyword and subject of your page. You will want to have an easy to understand structure with concise URLs.

Here are some more tips to increase your Google ranking in 2021.