Five easy ways to improve your SEO rankings in 2020

Anyone who has spent a bit of time in the digital game will know the importance of SEO. It stands for search engine optimisation and it depends on a number of factors, including the way the website is built, structured and populated.

Make no mistake: With approximately 200 different factors that sites like Google and others look at in terms of what they are prepared to recommend and what they won’t, the task is not so straightforward as you may think. Yet things are incredibly dynamic and these 200 items are always changing, along with the algorithms that power the search. But don’t sweat, you don’t need to be on top of all these elements if you focus on a few of them you can still make big inroads.

Find the right partner

Because you cannot expect to know all about SEO it is a good idea to partner with the a good SEO or digital marketing agency wherever you are. Regardless of whether you’re in the US, Australia or Europe – find a local one who can get you relevant media mentions right in your backyard because local SEO matters a lot. For example, if you run a business in Melbourne, be sure to source the best SEO agency Melbourne has – or at least a partner with some powerful media connections in the area.

It is pretty easy to find out who is tops in the category, as you can simply do a Google search and see which agency comes out tops. The company that tops the list is the one that has beaten its rivals to the top of the rankings, so imagine what it could do for your site in what is almost certainly a less competitive space.

Buy some traffic

Any strategy that is built around improving SEO will be enhanced by buying in some traffic. In short, the more visits you have to the site the better it will appear to Google. So even though bought traffic is not directly going to drive organic results it is still going to contribute to the ecosystem. If you are not sure what to do, then look to find an agent who will take care of your Google ads management for you.

Keep the content fresh

A website should never just be a static brochure page, it needs to update on a regular basis. A website that fails to update appears dead or dormant and Google does not like that. One of the easiest ways to keep things active on your site is to add some blog pages. That way you can position yourself as a thought leader and update content regularly – even as the brochure elements stay static.

Link strategically

Google loves it when sites link to yours. The higher the domain authority of the site linking to you the better it reflects. In short, if a site like The Guardian or The BBC links to yours that is far more beneficial than if a small-time blog that has been going for a fortnight decides to mention you on their site.

Technical back-end

The way your site is set-up technically is very important in terms of how Google views it. Does it render properly on mobile, how is the meta-data structured, what are the URL structures and how good is the page load speed? These are all questions that Google seeks to answer and assess before it makes its recommendations. So, the better the site is built the better you will rank. Make sure that whoever builds the site knows what they are doing from an SEO perspective.

Hold on tight – more change is coming:

You only have to look at the changes we’ve seen recently, with some websites making major advances in rankings, while some market leaders dropped to the bottom in the YMYL categories – then you’ll understand that change is the only constant with SEO and digital marketing!

Ah… final scoop: DO watch this video from John Mueller at Google