What is SEO?

SEO or search engine optimization is the process of taking steps to help a website or piece of content to get a higher rank on Google. So, the primary goal of SEO is to improve the ranking of your content in search results and thereby increase the organic (non-paid) traffic to your website. 

Thus, SEO is an essential marketing strategy. 

Learn more about SEO and the basic SEO checklist from this blog article on our website. 

SEO Tips and Tricks 2021

SEO optimization tips are ever-changing. But there are some fundamental principles that are put forward in a basic SEO checklist that remain unchanged. 

In this article, we would like to point out the 11 most important SEO tips and tricks for 2021. 

The best time to incorporate these tips and tricks is when you are creating your article. 

But that doesn’t mean that you cannot use these SEO tips and tricks from 2021 to revamp your older posts and articles. 

By focusing on these SEO optimization tips you will be able to improve your ranking in search engines which in turn will increase your organic traffic. 

So, to learn about these SEO optimization tips, do read on. 

1. Research your keywords properly

SEO experts and content creators will apply the technique of keyword research instead of making guesses. This enables you, as a content creator, to discover topics that users are interested in based on the search engine data and plan your content strategy. 

Currently, there are several tools available that can help you to conduct proper keyword research. These include SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner, etc. 

Using such tools will allow you to get in-depth keyword data, competition analysis, keyword position tracking, and tons of other useful features.

2. Base your semantic keywords on the focus keyword.

Your focus keyword should be the one that has the highest search volume and lowest competition. From this, you subsequently need to establish your Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords. The easiest way to do this is to use Google Search. 

Suppose your focus keyword or keyphrase is ‘Upcoming Branding Agencies in India’. Enter your focus keyphrase in Google Search and scroll down to the bottom of the results. There you’ll find your LSI keywords or phrases listed as ‘related searches’.

So, you should try to incorporate as many of these phrases as possible in your content. And this brings us to our next point.

3. Make content for humans, not machines. 

Keywords were the main element in the old method of SEO. But you have to remember that it can never surpass the quality of engaging, valuable content. 

Older methods of SEO depended heavily on targeting keyword phrases in certain frequencies and densities. In other words, it tried to manipulate search engines. But search engines are good at detecting keyword stuffing. Along with modern algorithms, search engines are not easily manipulated. 

To create content for users, follow the tenets of SEO copywriting. 

Remember, your content should be comprehensive and your articles should score high on the readability factor.

Make your content comprehensive

Including LSI keywords will create a highly comprehensive article for you. Another way to create more complete content is by including those keywords in your headings and subheadings. You can also find the words and phrases relevant to your topic through Image Search. 

If you search for ‘Upcoming Branding Agencies in India’ in an Image Search, you will see topic bubbles with a variety of keywords. Subsequently, incorporate these judiciously in your content to make it comprehensive.

Make your content readable 

Remember most of your users are using either a mobile device or a computer to read your content. These are not optimal reading platforms. 

You need to make your content readable by using shorter sentences, smaller paragraphs, punctuation, headings, and bulleted lists.

So, use sites like Yoast, SEMRush, Grammarly to tweak your content for better. 

4. Your content should have a proper headline and meta description

Search queries do not show the whole content. It shows the headline and meta description of the relevant post or page in the search results. This makes headlines and meta descriptions important although they do not directly influence ranking signals in search engines. 

Hence, your content title matters. It should: 

• Include your focus keywords
• Be catchy and click-worthy

Also, learn about the EMV or emotional marketing value to create effective content titles. 

You can also use several tools to analyze the effectiveness of your content title. 

Headlines and meta descriptions influence click-through rate (CTR). So, if your CTR is not high, it indicates that people are not clicking on your link – which will decrease your ranking. 

In general, studies show that longer headlines containing around 90-99 characters which highlight the focus keyword have a higher CTR. 

The ideal headline is catchy and clickable, often including the keywords near the beginning. You need to create your headline in such a manner that it is not only optimized for SEO but people are also attracted to click on it.

5. Always use internal links 

At the beginning of this article, we linked one of our older posts related to a basic SEO checklist to make the reader aware of our older relevant articles- like Understanding SEO Marketing 101: Search Engine Optimization Made-Easy For Beginners and Understanding SEO Marketing 101: Search Engine Optimization, How to go about it?

So, you should make this process a habit for your own content. The benefits of this habit include – 

• It allows new readers with direct access to your older relevant posts.
• It builds a contextual relationship between your older posts and newer posts.

Pro tip – Do not create only a one-way link from your newer content to your older content. Update your older content to have links to your newer content.

6. Actively link to external trusted websites.

In this article, we have constantly linked outside articles that are relevant to our topic.

This has allowed us to help readers quickly find resources and definitions under consideration. If we had included them in the article, it would have become lengthy and created an unnecessary diversion. 

So, by linking other authoritative articles on certain topics and tools, you build more trust in your content. 

Pro tip – Link building is all about quality and not quantity. Use relevant authoritative links from trusted sources instead of random poor-quality links. 

7. Actively encourage external linking from trusted websites

Link building is a two-way street. When you consistently put out high-quality, engaging content, with proper links- search engines reward you with higher rankings. This encourages others to link your content to their own work and to share your content via social media. 

Learn all about inbound links here. 

8. Images and videos are important

As we have continuously emphasized, the quality of your content needs to be enriching if you aim to rank high in searches. One easy way to do this is to add relevant images and videos to your content. 

Search engines will always rank engaging content with images and videos with higher values than content with just plain text. Using proper images will allow your target audience to access your content more easily. Remember – 

• Use original images or create engaging graphics with graphic design platforms like Canva
• Use royalty-free images in your content unless you have permission to use a licensed image. This will help you avoid any legal trouble. 
• Always optimize your images for SEO. Read how to do this here.
• Your image should be captioned with the correct keywords. If it is an image of a sandwich, caption it accordingly. Do not write “buy a sandwich”.

Pro tip – Relevance is more important in captioning images than creativity or cleverness. 

9. Categorize and tag your content

In case you are creating content using WordPress, learn about categories and tags. 

In simple words, if your content (applicable only to articles) is a book, the categories are your table of contents. Tags are the index part of the book. 

Categories allow your readers to find relevant topics quickly while tags allow readers to access specific individual content. 

Utilize them wisely to make your content more accessible. 

For maximum SEO benefit, check out this article on categories and tags. 

10. Featured Snippets

Your aim as a content creator should be to appear in Google’s featured snippets. These are Google’s ways to answer search queries in a sophisticated manner. 

Google’s answer box is one such featured snippet. 

This is the highlighted search result that appears on the top when you search for something. Google generates a custom snippet from the article’s content highlighting the part that their algorithms believe to be the answer to the user’s query.

As per Advanced Web Ranking’s research, by getting featured in these snippets can get you almost 32.3% CTR. 

Google has not provided any clear set of instructions to achieve this. But they recommend improving your content and being user-friendly. 

10. Create new content and optimize old content

You need to be consistent when creating content. A bit of a tongue twister there!

Ultimately, your search rankings will be affected by the freshness factor of your content. You cannot expect high rankings by publishing content in one week and then subsequently following it up with content three weeks later. 

Your content publishing needs to be consistent and should have a high freshness factor as well.

Along with fresh content, continue optimizing your older content by sharing it on social media, adding internal links, and by tracking search rankings. 

11. Social Media

One of the integral parts of your SEO strategy is using social media to your advantage. Follow these simple tips to utilize social media for your benefit – 

• Create shareable content. 
• Always add visible share buttons to your posts.
• Encourage readers to share your content by putting in a reminder at the end of the content. 
• Keep up to date with social media trends and apply them where necessary. 

Bonus tip – Your website which is the actual holder of your content should not be slow. 

One of the easiest ways to lose users and rank is by having a slow website. Your page speed is critical for your SEO success. Researches have shown that any page that takes more than 3 seconds to load is considered untrustworthy by users who promptly abandon it. 

You can learn about increasing your page speed by using tools like these.

Hopefully, the above list of SEO tips and tricks 2021, will help you to create content with high rankings.

Enjoy creating!