This year we are going to talk about new trends and techniques on search engine optimization. Digital Marketing is becoming more vast and competitive. With the increased number of users and competition, it becomes necessary to bring more techniques so as to reach a relevant position.

Since SEO has become more dynamic, it is the time to change the techniques too. We are coming up with few metrics and KPI which are popular this year.

Below are the top 10 SEO techniques that sites should follow this year to rise in the ranks of Google searches. We will be breaking down each of these metrics in detail below:

1. Keyword Performance:

It is essential to know how a webpage ranks in search engines like Google for a particular search keyword. Before going ahead with any activity, we need to identify a potential keyword that could be searched by the customer related to the web page or landing page. A keyword could be a word or group of words also called as a long tail keyword as it includes more than a single word. A one-word keyword has been very particular and very competitive. However, now it has become important to also focus on long tail keywords. A long tail keyword is basically more descriptive which makes it more precise and useful. Also if a long tail keyword is triggered, a short keyword automatically is also triggered by it. As a digital marketing expert, we need to know which keyword would require more time and attention and which of them is driving good traffic to your website. This whole process of defining a keyword, choosing its length and making it more efficient helps you streamline your SEO strategies.

2. Organic Traffic:

Putting all your efforts in an SEO activity is a great thing to do, but you also need to understand the results of implementing the activities? To achieve Organic Traffic, which is our main intent. Getting your website to rank in the first few pages of Google or Bing search, drives more and more traffic and that’s exactly what we have been looking for. We understand that SEO is a non-paid activity, which means we are not paying Google for ranking our website in its search. So, it is coming basically from keyword search, which we covered above. These keywords are basically common descriptive words irrespective of any particular brand, which a person might use in a normal search. You need to also understand how to track the volume of visitors you are getting every month by using Google Analytic, which helps you determine the traffic you received on the basis of your keywords.

Read More: – Ultimate Guide for Off-Page SEO Trends in 2018

3. Quality of Traffic:

Let’s consider this scenario, you have an e-commerce website that sells only clothes, but you getting traffic from somebody searching for shoes. How? Well, here’s how. You have probably used the keyword “shopping”, to define what you have on your website. This results in you getting traffic from all kinds of shopping – shoes, clothes, groceries, etc. Getting traffic is not the only thing we need to consider when thinking about SEO, we also need to make sure we are getting the right traffic to our website. The right audience is what is necessary for our business which means the better the quality of traffic we have on our website, the better the conversion ratio. For this we need to keep few things in mind:

a) the page views should be increasing
b) the bounce rate should always be low
c) the visitor’s duration should increase

The more the visitor stays, the more is the chances of conversion.

4. Conversions:

The primary motive of SEO is “conversion or a lead “. A conversion is when you close a lead or you end up making a sale. With all the effective organic traffic we have been working on, the main object is to turn this traffic into a conversion. Our campaign is only effective when we convert our organic traffic into a lead. That is what we called the ROI of our business. We have to keep track on our potential customers and also returning customers. The Higher is the conversion, higher the website ranking on the search engine.

Read More: – SEO & Content Marketing Form a Perfect Symbiotic Relationship

5. Content:

Content adds its own meaning to the website. It isn’t just the words on your web page, but a group of keywords, both short tail and long tail keywords which that brings users to your website. Apart from all the aspects of SEO mentioned above, content has become an important part. It covers things such as articles, blogs, videos, guides, and everything which defines your product. Q and A is another form of content which you could find on many websites. You have to ensure that your content has some values and is unique providing descriptive knowledge and making it unique from others. It should be more relevant and descriptive to the customers. You can also add some image, videos, and screenshots describing what you wanted to write. If you are not confident on your own writing or don’t have any writers on hand to write meaningful content for you, you can use freelance writers or even buy academic essays directly for your website.

6. Quality Backlinks:

SERP, search engine results page, like a Google or a Bing page. This is your platform where you want to see your page in the top listings. Backlinks are required to get the higher rankings on SERP. It is basically links of your website on other sites. Proper and correct backlinks can help push your SERPs. There are many ways to create backlinks, but all are not going to be useful. You have to be precise and understanding while choosing the backlinks platform for you as all are not useful and would just waste your time. The higher the quality of your backlinks, the higher your web page ranking would be.

Read More: – Is SEO A Necessity For Small Businesses

7. Crawling and Listing:

Getting crawled and listed is very important for your business. First, you need to get listed on the Google Business Page which would give you a presence on Google. Second, you need to make sure that you remain constantly in front of Google. Every time you are crawled by Google, it increases the chances of your website to move higher on the search engine. This could be done by posting a blog or submitting your link alternatively on the Google Search Engine and other search engines too. The number of pages being crawled should be higher. You can also study thereport on Google Webmaster tools for additional ideas. It shows you the crawling activity of your web page. If it is less, add more blogs and content to your webpage and get crawled again. Don’t just submit, take advantage of all the activities which help you bring your webpage higher on the search engine.

8. Page Authority:

PA, known as page authority helps you determine how competitive your website is by calculating your web page on all the metrics. It is one of the weightage factors for a website to rank on Google. The Page Authority is calculated on the basis of overall SEO scores. If the page authority seems to be low, that means something is wrong with all other strategies including keyword, content, social media activities, and so on. In order to increase the page authority, you need to make sure all the other SEO activities are on track as PA has become one of the important factors for SEO in 2018.

Read More: – Avoid These 10 SEO Mistakes If You Want to Rank Better In Search

9. Domain Authority:

This is another factor that helps you get a higher rank on the search engines. The domain authority is preferred to be above 35 which helps in getting a higher rank through the search engines. This basically means that the backlinks we use on our website should increase our traffic and ranking and it should have a higher DA. The higher the DA of your backlinks, more weightage your website will get and you’ll receive quality traffic. This is like building trust between two which gives a positive image.

10. Loading speed of a page:

This is one of the important factors which is getting consideration in 2018 and been into effect from the last few years. Common reason for this is, if it takes more time to load your webpage, the visitor won’t stay, and if the visitor leaves the page, it increases the bounce rate, and if the bounce rate increases, it would effect the traffic and its quality, which would bring down the ranking of your page. So, if in the webmaster tool, you see a high bounce rate, this could be one of the factors contributing to it. Ideally, a load time for a webpage should be 2-3 secs. But the faster it loads, the better it is for your webpage ranking. Google Page Speed is a great tool to check the speed of your webpage and it also shows the reasons for slow loading page. It would display the overall speed page on the top of the screen. You can conduct the speed test for every page and for a full website.

So, this year if you want to boost your website rankings, all you need to do is keep a regular track on the above activities of search engine optimization to improve your web page ranking on search engines.