Your website may already be gold in its impure form, but it is still gold and has the potential to yield you a fortune when you refine it. In this article, whether you are an expert in managing websites or just another person who is beginning to understand SEO, I am going to disclose simple tricks and methods you can use to turn your website or blog into the pure, refined gold that it has the potential of becoming. I am going to show you the best SEO optimization ideas for 2023.
These ideas, when applied correctly, will make your website or blog rank top on search engines, drawing traffic from across the web to your posts and pages.
Traffic is what makes blogging gold, you know? The more visits you get, the larger your chances of earning your blog. Attention is currency. When you become really popular and visible across the web, bigger companies and businesses begin to seek you out. You begin to get offers to run adverts. Your earnings grow.
Okay, enough with just thinking and talking about the possibilities. Let’s get to work. We will begin with the basics by defining certain terms and exploring how search engines work.
Let us start with the term ‘SEO’. What do these three gigantic letters mean? Still thinking? Let me help. They mean Search engine optimization.
S – Search
E – Engine
O – Optimization
A search engine is a kind of software that is able to process web searches. There are many different search engines, but let us use Google as an example here in explaining how search engines work. We have all, at some point, used google to make a search on the internet.
Remember the last time you used Google to do a search? You open your web browser and type a number of words, phrases, or whole sentences. Let us imagine that you typed the words: “How to eat bread like a pro.” (People search for a lot of weird things when they are bored.)
The words you type into the search engine are called Search Query.
The search engine scans this search query and looks for it across millions of web pages. Soon, it creates a page of websites containing items and posts related to your search. This page is called the search engine results page.
Typically, the search engine results page is a page containing many URLs. The URLs are colored blue and are just links to a particular website. The URLs at the top of the search engine results page can be said to be properly optimized.
This is what search engine optimization is really about: using certain tricks and skills to make your site rank top on search engines—sites that rank top seems to get more clicks and seem to get more visitors.
These are the best SEO optimization ideas and methods you need to optimize your site in 2023:
1. Speed Up Your Site
Imagine that your friend who has just moved into your town asks you to recommend a cab driver for him to take him around. You know, just two cab drivers: one is an older man who drives slowly—a stereotype, I know. When I say slowly, I mean very slowly. The kind of slow that makes you sit in the back seat and roll your eyes, that makes you late for all your appointments.
The other driver is a younger guy. This one drives a lot faster and is less grumpy. You enter his car, and he greets you with a smile. You tell him you have five minutes left until your appointment. He smiles and begins to drive. Four minutes after, he is at your location.
Of the two drivers, which one are you likely to recommend to your friend? I am guessing the faster one.
Just like you, Google and other search engines are not going to recommend slow and hard-to-navigate websites to their users. They may have been doing so in the past. But this is 2023, and SEO ideas are changing.
If you want to rank, then you have got to make your site a lot faster.
There are many ways to make your site faster, but the basic and most important way is to host your site on a fast server. A slow server will slow down your site. Some fast hosts include WordPress, Siteground, etc. Get a Siteground Hosting here.
Another way is to make sure you do not load your site with laggy content. If you run with a 30kg bag strapped to your back, you will run much slower than you would have done if nothing was strapped to your back.
Same thing with your website. A slow website will not only reduce the ranking of your site but will also discourage your visitors. So, even if your site manages to rank, visitors who click on it will not stay on it for long, and your conversion rates will be low.
Google also has incorporated site speed as a vitally important ranking factor in web search ranking.
To speed up your site, do not upload excessively large videos and pictures. Optimize your media before uploading it to your site.
2. Try to Have Other Sites Link with Yours
In real life, we often recommend our friends when job opportunities pop up. We tell a friend about a friend and since friend A trusts us, he is most likely going to employ friend B.
SEO works in a similar way.
When top blogs link posts to your website, be sure that you will have visits from these blogs and may even rank as high as them.
Since Google trusts these sites and their credibility, Google will trust you too.
You can make top sites to begin linking you by:
- Linking them first: when you include links to top sites, you get noticed by them. As a plus, you even optimize your own website on search engines. When they notice you, they will likely want to go through your own stuff.
- Writing Unique Content: When you write unique content, other bloggers will make reference to you when they include some of your ideas in their own posts. Remember that you must have already gotten their attention by first linking them. Makes everything easy for you.
- Writing and submitting guest posts: you can write and submit guest posts to bigger websites, blogs, and online magazines. In these posts, you can include links to your website.
You can also take to using social media influencers to circulate links to your posts on social media.
3. Use Readable URLs
Using readable URLs is also one of the best SEO optimization ideas you should keep in mind. It’s of paramount importance for your long-term success.
Your URL is also included in one of the many things search engines scan for.
If your URLs are ambiguous and not readable and understandable, search engines will most likely have a problem reading them.
A readable URL is one that can be understood at a glance. Many times, it has one or more keywords included in it.
Use URLs with words rather than URLs with numbers. Numbers do not tell search engines much; they also do not tell readers much.
Try not to use ‘stop words’ in your URLs.
4. Social Media
I mentioned social media earlier. This is because social media is a big part of SEO, and when you know how to use it, you will begin to rank top.
Social signals can improve search engine rankings! So make sure you include social media as part of your SEO optimization ideas for 2023.
Just a tweet from an account with large followership has been seen to have a big effect on search engine ranking.
You can use social media to improve your SEO in a couple of ways, some of which include:
- Growing your social media pages yourself: social media pages are your business’ identity on social media. Grow your pages. There are a number of ways to do this. On Facebook, you can do so by gathering organic traffic; by making engaging and relatable posts. You can also opt for paid ads. Whatever method you choose, you will get more views—post links to your website across your social media platforms.
- Use Social Media Influencers: social media influencers can help improve the visibility of your pages and, by extension, your website. Have them mention your pages in their posts, and have them include your page links, too.
5. Do Not Make a Habit of Changing Your Domain Name
Imagine walking into a friend’s office and asking for this friend. You haven’t seen him in two years; please note.
“Hi, I am looking for Max,” you say, unknown to you that your friend had changed his name long ago.
What do you think is going to happen? Well, confusion. Everyone turns around, wondering who Max is.
Something similar happens when you make it a habit of changing your domain names.
If you must change your domain names, do not do so too regularly. Just once, twice, or maybe even thrice.
6. Videos
It is the internet. Many people, and for a good reason, prefer watching videos to reading long articles. This is one of the things you can take advantage of when planning your site.
You can always make related videos to your blog posts.
There’s research that supports the idea that bloggers who use videos in their posts are going to get more traffic from search engines compared to their counterparts who only use written content.
When using videos to optimize your site, you can include video links from other prominent sites, such as YouTube. You can do some kind of YouTube SEO for your videos.
7. Content Gap Analysis
One of the best SEO optimization ideas that most people fail to utilize is Content Gap Analysis. Content Gap analysis is a trick that helps you know the keywords your competitors use to improve their ranks. Keywords you do not rank for.
It works in many ways, one of which is making you rank up there, too, the other being that it gives you ideas of your own. Ideas for blog posts mean more blog posts—more content, which is great for SEO.
It is not difficult to do a content gap analysis. All you need is the URL of your top competitors. A keyword tool, when given the prompt, is going to search your competitor’s site and will fish out the keywords that could work for your site.
It will give details about how this keyword works for your competitor.
Use this knowledge to optimize your own website.
8. No Unnecessary Links
Even though linking has been proven to be a great SEO tool, it can become a problem when used too much.
First, it may not look really good; imagine reading an article littered with blue words. One word is blue, and two words after, there is another blue one. With time, it becomes tiring since the work looks pretty untidy.
Second, it may become confusing to search engines. Remember, we are talking about unnecessary links here. That is to say, links that are not necessarily related to the post in any way.
Also, links to spammy and untrustworthy sites.
Stick to links related to your articles and blog posts, and make sure that they are from credible sites
9. No Duplicate Content
Search engines do not fancy duplicate content; in the same way, you are unlikely to purchase the same shirt twice.
Avoid making posts that are too alike to other posts on the web. The web here includes even your own site. If, for any reason, you have to write the same post more than once on your website, make the two posts completely different. You can opt to use internal links. They are also great for SEO.
Do not plagiarize content from other sites. This will not only reduce the rank of your site but will also hand you papers for breaching copyright laws.
10. Track Your Progress
Finally, last but not least of our best SEO optimization ideas that you will find very helpful is to track your progress. No matter what year you are in, you will always need to track your progress.
Now you have done the tricks, you should check to see if it is working.
Watch the number of visits you are getting and from where the visits are coming from. Do the math and make improvements.
The above SEO optimization ideas should help you master the act of ranking higher. Now that you know what you must do to double your traffic, it is now time to take your best foot forward and implement the ideas.
