Optimizing your website to be more easily discoverable on Google is one of the most effective ways to expand your market share and increase conversions. But how can you improve your SEO performance?? The answer is simple: Search engine optimization (SEO)–or the art of refining a website to increase the number of people who see your website in their search engine results. 

While SEO takes time, know-how, and patience, you can begin to climb your way up Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) using a few techniques and the help of user-friendly software.

We’ve designed this article to help you pinpoint where to invest your time, energy, and other resources to improve your website’s performance in the SERPs and rank in 2022 and beyond. Whether you’re a site owner, content marketer, or SEO strategist, these tips will help your web pages get to the top of  Google’s SERPs.

Strategize and Prioritize Your SEO Needs

Before you dive into improving your search engine optimization performance, it’s important to figure out what aspects of your website require the most immediate attention. Otherwise, you could wind up focusing on minor issues while major problems continue to drag down your performance.

1. Use a Software That Simplifies Your SEO Strategy

If you want to improve your SEO ranking, you will need to understand your numbers (or metrics). Deciphering the meaning of these numbers requires analytic skills, but software can make quick work of turning numbers into a strategy you can implement.

A successful SEO campaign requires technical SEO, content SEO, and knowing what Googlebots measure and how they work. Luckily, SEO tools offer a simple solution to understanding search engine algorithms, your SERP positions, and your overall website performance.

SearchAtlas is one of the most helpful SEO software tools that anyone can access and use. Within one login, users have tangible access to Google Search Console data, keyword research, competitor research, SEO content creation assistance, SEO site auditing reports, and more.

2. Target SERP Page 2 KWs

If you have keywords that are ranking on the first page of Google’s results–Congrats! That’s great news! To boost your overall search engine visibility, you want to move more of your pages to the top results page.

Starting with the keywords where your web pages rank on the top of the second page is an easy way to push your overall site visibility higher. To identify the keywords where you’re ranking on page 2, use the GSC Insights’ Top Keywords report.

Identify any keywords that fall into positions 11 to 14. While most SEO software require users to manually assess the potential of a keyword, SearchAtlas’s GSC Insights tool provides an SEO potential score for each. After identifying the keywords with the most potential, begin optimizing your pages with more impressions first. Then move on to those with fewer impressions and less organic traffic.

3. Create A Contact Page

Contact pages are one of the under-utilized forms of web content when it comes to SEO. You don’t have to paste your phone number and email address on a barebones page to qualify. You can use a contact form and provide information regarding when someone should reach out.

Not only does your contact page give users the ability to reach out to you, but it also tells Google you’re a legitimate business–and it gives visitors an opportunity to interact with your page.

4. Perform Competitor Research

Compare your content to your competitors’ to get a sense of why they’re ranking. 

After you find what websites are ranking for keywords your company wants to target, you will want to examine their content to better understand why they’re ranking so well. Then adopt some of their techniques in addition to targeting keywords in your own existing quality content and new content.

Be sure to analyze your competitor’s:

• SERP performance
• Story patterns
• Word count and general page length
• Tone and style
• What they include in headings and subheadings
• How they use anchor text
• How often do they incorporate images and relevant keywords
• Title tags and other meta tags
• Audience
• Sales funnel flow
• Headers and sub-headers

How to Improve Your Website’s Content

5. Optimize for Long-Tail KWs

Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for because they’re often less competitive. A long-tail keyword is a keyword phrase that is more specific than a traditional keyword. They’re usually three or more words linked together to make the search results better tailored to what the searcher has in mind.

For example, “places to camp in Nevada with dogs” would be considered a long-tail keyword phrase. If you offer RV and tent campsites that are dog-friendly in Nevada, you’re more likely to capture more organic traffic by appealing to this phrase rather than more general search terms such as “Nevada camping.”

How Can You Identify Long-Tail Keywords for Your Website?

SearchAtlas’s Keyword Researcher will generate a list of related keyword suggestions along with a SERP overview report. This allows you to gauge the difficulty of ranking for specific keywords and what your competition is like. From there, you will want to select long-tail keywords that are relevant to your business.

6. Include LSI Keywords in Your Content

Like long-tail keywords, Latent Semantic Indexing keywords (or LSI keywords) allow you to increase your search engine visibility by selecting strategic keywords and keyword clusters for your web content.

LSI keywords are words that Google recognizes as being related to a primary keyword. When you include an array of LSI keywords in your content, you are creating more indicators or signals that Google will pick up on related to specific search terms.

Using a variety of LSI terms also helps prevent keyword-stuffing–a huge no-no that Google likes to demote web pages for.

7. Integrate Frequently Asked Question

A frequently asked questions page and highlighted questions on other content pages give you the opportunity to expand your topical depth, include more LSI keywords, and utilize common questions asked in Google searches.

They’re also a great resource for your visitors. Many people utilize FAQs as a way to learn more about what other people want to know regarding a topic. This can improve consumer confidence. For instance, “What size should I order?” is a great way to guide shoppers to the right product for their needs, decrease returns, and improve customer reviews.

8. Check headings, bullets, and lists

One of the easiest tasks you can check off your SEO list is to verify that you have the right keywords in your headings and your headings follow SEO best practices.

Headings serve three primary roles: 

1. They help with reader navigation, making the information they are looking for within the content easy. This increases the length of the user’s scroll and time-on-page.
2. They signal to Google’s web crawlers what your web page is about through javascript.
3. Headings also improve your website’s accessibility.

When formatting your landing pages, product pages, and blogs, only use one Heading 1. Then you will want to move down in a hierarchical structure with subheadings.

Bullet points have a similar effect to headings. They break up the text, so visitors scroll deeper into the page. Of course, they also display information in a way that gets attention. So, if you notice writing a list with 3 or more things, consider changing it to a bulleted list, instead. 

Keep in mind that you do not want to overburden your content with too many headings and too many numbered or bulleted lists. This is distracting and defeats the purpose.

9. Optimize your images

As time goes on, people become more and more visually literate. This adds extensive value to how users will interact with and enjoy using your website. Like headings and lists, images increase time-on-page and scroll distance for visitors. They can also significantly reduce your bounce rate.

Alternate text (or “alt text”) connected to images is one way SEO content creators use keywords in one more way for web crawlers to register. Alt Text is written into a webpage’s HTML and is prompted to appear should the image not be able to load or if the user is using a screen reader. Alt text provides a more accessible experience for all visitors. Many sources suggest that alt text is another form of javascript that Google’s algorithms pick up on. 

Images appear in Google Image searches. This gives you one more way to increase web traffic.

So, audit your website’s photos, graphics, and other rich media. Be sure to:

• Check your image sizes. If images take too long to load, users may exit your page and your page speed score can be negatively affected. Compress your images and be sure they fit into the frame of the web page.
• Fix image orientation. Landscape orientation is more aesthetically appealing and makes scrolling easier.
• Include accurate alt text for every image. When writing alt text, be descriptive and accurate. Adding details of gender and ethnicity can increase your brand’s inclusiveness to those that are visually impaired.
• Name your image files. Naming your images may seem like a small detail, but image file names can be read by web crawlers to help them be selected for image searches.

10. Adjust Your content’s reading level

Very few people want to slog through extremely dense, extremely elevated diction. So, make your homepage, landing pages, and blog posts

easy to read.

Keep in mind that most Americans prefer to read content at about the 8th-grade level. However, if your target audience or niche requires a more technical approach, go for it. Just be mindful of sentence length, section length, and other structural elements that can improve readability.

How can you figure out your company’s target audience’s reading level? One resource is Google Analytics. Google Analytics can give you a snapshot of your audience’s age and interest in existing posts. Looking at your social media followers can also provide insight. Want a more direct tactic? Survey your social media followers.

11. Update content for quality and depth

For pages that aren’t ranking well, re-optimize that content for different keyword targets. If the web page is not getting traffic or under-performing, consider making strategic revisions or deleting it.

You can use a tool like the LinkGraph SEO Content Assistant to improve the topical depth and relevance of your landing pages and web content. Our software scans the top-ranking search results for your target keyword and identifies the relevant keyword phrases and topics that you should include in your site content. Try to get your content score over 80 to get better rankings.

SearchAtlas also allows you to identify keyword cannibalization, so you can merge competing content for more in-depth blog content or landing pages.

12. Improve engagement to increase time on page

In the world of SEO, content quality is everything. Web searchers do not want to waste their time sifting through fluff to find valuable information. We can guarantee if your content doesn’t have value, users will notice and your bounce rate will soar. So, invest time in creating content that matters and provides value.

Writing web content for SEO takes time. However, there are some ways you can add value without excessively doubling or tripling your process time. One way you can expedite the process is to write about what you know. The second is to find gaps in your competitions’ website.

When writing blogs, be sure you provide at least 3 “ah-ha” pieces of information for the reader. And stay on topic throughout the page.

13. Don’t just focus on text-based content

As we have pointed out before, web users tend to favor visual information more and more. Additionally, people can retain visual information longer and more readily. This makes adding and creating visual content vital. Videos, infographics, bespoke graphics, and screenshots can have a powerful effect on your web traffic numbers.

Technical & Web Development SEO Improvements

14. Speed Things Up

Google’s Page Experience Update was no doubt  the biggest change for search in 2021. The page experience provided by a website became an official ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. Factors like page speed, Core Web Vitals, user experience (UX), and load times are now determining factors in whether search engines rank your website over your competitors in the search results.

The performance and usability of your website are key to whether users will find your content valuable. Nobody likes a slow website, and long page load times and slow site speed can leave users feeling frustrated, an experience you don’t want any potential customers to associate with your brand. Slow page loads undercut your SEO efforts, decreasing total sessions, raising bounce rate, and negatively impacting other engagement metrics.

15. Check the load time of your largest contentful paint

Staying current with Google’s algorithm update can be quite the feat. However, if you can update your web pages to reflect highly impactful metrics, then you can stay ahead of your competition. In this case, focusing on your largest contentful paint or LCP can boost your website’s performance.

Your LCP is the most data-dense visual element of a page above the fold (or what is visible to the user before you scroll down). And… it is now a metric Google looks at in regards to the page experience and your ranking. So, taking the time to identify your LCPs and compress them or move them below the fold can improve your site’s SERP position.

How to Find Your LCP:

1. Use Google’s Lighthouse tool in your page information menu to generate a report. Be sure to select mobile or Desktop, depending on what the majority of your traffic uses.
2. If your LCP is too slow, you will want to identify what your LCP is by scrolling down and selecting View Original Trace Map. This will allow you to identify and map the load of your LCP.
3. Once you’ve identified your LCP, you can compress it if needed, move it below the fold, or replace it with something smaller. 

16. Lower Your Cumulative Scroll Shift

Cumulative Scroll Shift is another signal that Google now looks closely at when evaluating your page’s performance, and another chance to upgrade your UX. While most other loading issues center on site speed, this one focuses on a major frustration factor: shifting page features.

Scroll shift occurs when objects on a page move and push other elements around during the loading process. This most often occurs when an ad, image, or video loads at a slower rate than text. This shift can make users lose their place in a blog article or misclick on a button.

To fix this issue, consider where your elements populate and if images are properly compressed. Placing slow-loading elements lower on a page can help.

(See LCP instructions above to measure your cumulative scroll shift).

17. Fix Broken Internal Links

When one of Google’s web crawlers comes across a broken internal link, they will follow the link. But if the link is broken, they register the ‘difficulty’ as an issue with the user experience of your page. Why? Broken links frustrate users. And more often than not, they will decide to go elsewhere for the information they were seeking.

To fix your broken internal links, you will want to audit your site using the Site Audit tool in your SearchAtlas dashboard. Here you will find a list of site issues, including broken links.

Once you’ve identified the broken links, you need to assess if the link is broken because the content has been removed or just moved. If it’s been removed, eliminate the link. If it has been moved, update the link to the new URL.

If you’re not yet incorporating internal linking in your SEO strategy, remember that linking to relevant content on your website can improve your indexing and your overall SEO. Here’s a tutorial on how to find ideal internal links using the SearchAtlas SEO Content Assistant.

18. Audit Your Outbound & Inbound Links

Links leading from your website to another, or outbound links, verify that you are using authoritative sources. However, if these links stop working, they can have a negative effect on your SEO. 

These are labeled as 404 errors. When Googlebots explore your site, they will note broken outbound links. The same is true for your inbound links (link from a 3rd party site to yours).

How to fix your outbound links:

1. Perform a site audit to identify broken links.
2. For outbound links that link to pages that no longer exist, consider removing the link. 
3. Otherwise, if you need to keep a link in that location, you can try to locate the new page for the same information and replace the link. Or you can find a more recent webpage to link to.

How to fix inbound links:

1. Often, the best practice for inbound links is to create 301 redirects when you change a URL path. This allows those inbound links to continue to guide the user to the right information. However, if you did not do so, you will want to begin the process now by performing a site audit.
2. Identify links that need redirects. Ask your web developers to update broken links to redirect users to the correct page.

19. Assess Your Backlinks

A URL’s backlink profile reveals a lot about the site owner’s off-site SEO strategy. A site owner who doesn’t monitor backlinks for linking site quality, anchor text diversity, and relevance will struggle to raise their overall site authority in the eyes of search engines. 

Google ranks websites that are well-trusted by other webmasters and users on the internet. One of the best ways to see quick SEO results is to focus on backlinks.

If you don’t monitor backlinks on a regular basis, it’s possible that your backlink profile has become populated with toxic or spammy links from low-quality sites. 

How to Assess Your Backlinks:

Use an SEO tool like our free backlink analyzer to identify those questionable new links and generate the text for a disavow file. There is no way to remove those hyperlinks to your site, but a Disavow file tells Google not to count them toward their ranking algorithm.

Not all backlinks have the same value. Those from sites with higher Domain Authority and strong SEO metrics themselves will have the biggest impact. Performing a backlink audit every quarter can help you stay on top of your new links and ensure that your links are always working for you, not against you.

How to Improve SEO Performance with Backlink Audits

1. Perform a backlink audit once a quarter to make sure your website isn’t keeping company with questionable web properties. 
2. Use a Backlink Analysis tool to identify toxic or spammy websites that are linking to yours.
3. Generate and submit a Disavow file in your Google Search Console account to reduce the impact of low-quality links

20. Update ineffective anchor text

Anchor text is the text that is associated with a link. For example, in the sentence: LinkGraph offers an industry-leading suite of SEO tools. “Suite of SEO tools” is the anchor text. Not only does this text indicate to your reader what the link will lead to, but it also tells Google’s algorithms what the linked site’s topic is. This helps it become more discoverable via search inquiries.

While it may seem inconsequential, the text that connects to a link matters for your SEO. So, to improve your anchor text, return to your internal links and revise any misleading or vague anchor text to provide more context. Try to include the keyword of the page you’re linking to in the anchor text if it’s syntactically appropriate.

21. Certificates and security credentials

Secure Sockets Layer certificates (or SSL certificates) are designed to keep users’ data secure through encryption. These safety measures are minute and live on your server, but they can have a profound impact on your SEO.

If you’ve ever come across a warning message from your browser that the site you’re going to enter is not secure or private, you experienced the effects of not having an SSL certificate. If you decided to “go back to safety,” you are similar to the majority of users–and you can imagine what effect this has on the traffic to your site.

Secure websites have the protocol HTTPS (not HTTP). With more and more awareness of cybersecurity, users want their information to be protected through encryption. Not having your SSL certificates can be a huge deterrent to web users. So, be sure to update your SLL certificates on your server ASAP.

22. Examine and update your meta tags

When you view Google results, you see a page title with a short description beneath. These are considered meta tags. This text tells searchers and search engines what information can be found on that webpage. They also create an easy tactic to boost your search traffic CTR.

To upgrade your meta tags, you want to follow a few simple steps:

1. Be sure your primary keyword is in the meta title and description.
2. Keep your title between 30 and 60 characters and your meta description under 160 characters. If your title is too short, Google may replace your title tag with a heading from the page.
3. Be clear, concise, and accurate in your meta description.
4. Use a call to action (CTA) in your meta description to encourage people to click on your page, increasing your CTR.

23. Employ Schema Markup

Schema markup is a type of microdata designed to tell search engine algorithms what kind of content users can find on your website or web pages. Schema applies to certain categories of data like restaurants, recipes, and local businesses. Many search engines, like Google, display the information highlighted by the schema as a preview or snippet. This increases your website’s search visibility.

24. Reduce unnecessary code

Your website is powered by coding languages like HTML and javascript. And after Google’s Core Web Vitals update, the complexity of this code gained greater SEO value. 

When your code isn’t clean or has issues, it can stymie the progress of Googlebots that crawl your website. To assess if your code needs work, run your website through PageSpeed Insights. 

If your website isn’t performing as well as it could, fix broken links, eliminate HTML comments, replace any missing graphics. You can also keep CSS code on an external .cs file and javascript in an external .js file. W3C Markup Validation Service can also help you identify HTML and CSS issues.

Engage in off-site SEO

An often-overlooked aspect of SEO is how you market your website and expertise outside of the site itself. By following some of these link building tips, you can draw more traffic to your site and increase your high-value backlinks.

25. Make a guest appearance on a podcast

If you excel in your niche, show off your knowledge on a podcast. Not only does this increase your brand’s reputation, but it can also drive traffic to your e-commerce site through backlinks.

You don’t have to wait for an invitation. Instead, do some research and reach out to a podcast producer in your industry.

26. Interviews and guest posts

Interviews are another great way to show off your expertise and increase brand mentions. Find industry-leading e-magazines and print magazines and offer to be interviewed or offer to submit a guest post. You may be surprised by how many publications will jump at the chance to receive high-quality content from an expert in the field.

27. Forums: Frequent, Engage, and Create

Engaging with people online is a wonderful way to build your brand online and get insight into information gaps in your industry. The biggest bang-for-your-buck when it comes to forums is creating a community forum on your website.

By providing users with a place to ask one another questions, you’re creating a self-service help desk. Which increases traffic…—Forums have even more SEO value such as:

• Forums become a hotbed for content, including hot topic keywords–this allows you to get a jump on the competition in regards to ranking for new search phrases.
• The software you use to set up your forum should create URLs that reflect topics AKA keywords.
• You receive content updates from users automatically, so your website stays fresh in Google’s eyes.

By interacting with people, you can create a positive reputation for your business and establish yourself as an authority on a topic.

28. Create Google Business Profile

Without a Google Business Profile, your website is at a search engine disadvantage. With a Google Business Profile, you can appear at the top of the SERPs for local searches or transaction intent searches. Verified and optimized Google Business Profiles can even get you into the local 3-pack of business that appears in Google’s top of the page snippets.

After creating your Google Business Profile, you can better manage your business reputation by replying to reviews and answering customer questions. Be sure to add photos, so you can appear in image search results.

29. Perform A/B Testing

To truly take your SEO strategy to the next level, you have to take a nuanced approach to the changes you make to your website and how you measure their impact. A/B Testing is a great way to make gradual optimizations to your site and measure whether they have a strong correlation with better impressions, search traffic, keyword rankings, or organic sessions.

There are so many website elements that can be A/B tested, like title tags, meta descriptions, internal links, site structure, CTAs, fonts, and even colors. To perform a successful A/B test, you need to have clearly defined variants and the proper staging environment to test out two separate pages. Make sure to use canonical tags when testing out pages so Google doesn’t see the pages as duplicate content and penalize your website as a result.

SEO A/B testing is a more advanced SEO strategy, so if you are new to SEO, work with skilled SEOs, marketers, or an SEO agency before diving in headfirst. If you use a tool like the LinkGraph GSC dashboard, you will get daily rankings updates to measure which variant of your A/B test produces better SEO results.

How to Improve SEO Performance with A/B Testing

Choose two clearly defined variants that you want to test (e.g. two meta descriptions, two-page titles, two heading tags, etc.)

Add rel=canonical link attributes to avoid a duplicate content penalty

Measure your A/B variants in GSC Insights

30. Track and Measure Your SEO KPIs

When it comes to your SEO performance, you will need to establish your primary key performance indicators (KPIs) to track and measure based on your website’s needs. However, organic traffic, SERP ranking, leads, conversions, bounce rate, session duration, load times, CCP traffic, and crawl errors are all excellent indicators of your SEO strategy’s success.

When selecting your KPIs, keep in mind that conversions are your ultimate goal, but conversions alone can be vague as to their source. Instead, track analytics such as keyword traffic, referral links, impression and CTRs, and traffic to specific pages.

To track your progress, you can log onto Google Search Console, Google Analytics, or an all-in-one platform like SearchAtlas. SearchAtlas makes finding all of the data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics easy to understand. SearchAtlas is the easiest way to see your website’s performance in one place.

With this software, you can easily see which pages receive the highest search traffic, your website’s overall site traffic, individual page SEO and SERPs positions, how much traffic your site and landing pages receive, what organic search terms you should target, top pages for your targeted focus terms, referral traffic, new content creation ideas, your site speed, mobile users data, local SEO tips and data, search traffic trends.

———-

While 30 ways to improve your SEO may seem like a lot to tackle, keep in mind tip #1–strategizing and prioritizing goes a long way. Create a list or schedule and work on what you can when you can. Group tasks that require additional help together, so you can maximize your budget and efforts of an outside party. And don’t forget to track your campaigns in SearchAtlas’s GSC tool.

As you work to improve your website’s SEO performance, keep in mind that your efforts will be rewarded in the long run. SEO often requires momentum to build over time. 

The post 30 Ways to Improve SEO Performance appeared first on LinkGraph.

And in the age of digital marketing, being discoverable on the world’s biggest search engines is not just helpful but necessary. So, how can your business go from invisible to visible? This guide will help you better understand what search visibility is and how it works, as well as provide you with some techniques to help your website gain greater search visibility.

What Is Search Visibility?

Search visibility or “site visibility” is a score shown as a percentage. This score represents how often your website will be seen and clicked on by people Googling any of the keywords you rank for. While just an estimate based on a formula, search visibility indicates how your website performs compared to other websites ranking for the same keywords.

Also referred to as search engine visibility and SEO visibility, this number offers a numeric way to measure your website’s search engine presence.

Your visibility number or visibility % is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that shows an estimate of how many people will view your website compared to your competition for the same keywords.

LinkGraph includes search visibility as a line graph and percentage in our GSC Insights overview page, so you can easily track your website’s organic search performance.

While the metric can be a bit more complicated than other SEO factors, the principle behind it is simple:

The higher your visibility score, the more people are likely to see your website in search engine results. If you have a 100% visibility score, it means that your website ranks as #1 in search results for every keyword your website appears for.

The lower your visibility score, the less frequently people see your website in search results. This is also to say that the lower your visibility %, the lower your pages appear in Google’s results on average.

Why Does Search Visibility Matter?

The word “visibility” can be a bit misleading when it comes to the value of this metric. While search visibility implies being seen by people using Google, it’s important to note that the number correlates with how many clicks you can expect your website to receive. And those clicks can equate to sales and greater momentum for climbing search engine results pages (SERPs) over time.

How Is Search Visibility Calculated?

So, how do SearchAtlas or other SEO platforms calculate search visibility? This metric is calculated based on your website’s keywords and where your pages rank among other keyword results. Unlike many other SEO metrics, this one allows you to see how your website is performing overall.

Here’s how it’s calculated:

1. First, we take all the keywords your website is tracking for. We apply a number to each that corresponds to how likely your page will be seen and clicked on among competing search results. 
2. Then, all of those search engine ranking click-through likelihood numbers are added up.
3. Once totaled, the number is then divided by the number of keywords your URL ranks for. This results in the average your site will be seen, or its search visibility. 

Corresponding Values by SERP Ranking

Where does the corresponding value in step one come from? We use Google’s prediction of the likelihood your site will be clicked on by searchers. This aspect of the metric is called the click-through rate (CTR). 

Google also takes into account how many people see your link in the search results and actually click on it. Google estimates that 31% of all people will click on the first result from an organic search. Therefore each of your URLs with a #1-position in Google search results will equate to 31%.

Position two has a CTR of 15.7% of people, and so on.

Calculating Search Visibility Example:

One of the easiest ways to illustrate how the search visibility formula works is to work through it once with simplified numbers. 

So, let’s calculate a search visibility percentage together.

• If a website has 10 keywords it ranks for in Google’s top 100 SERPs, and 5 of them are in position 1 and 5 of them are in position 3, we would multiply 5 by 28.5% and 5 by 11%. This would result in 142.5% and 55%.
• Next, we would add these together to get 197.5%.
• Because the website tracks for a total of 10 keywords, we would divide 197.5% by 10.
• The result is search visibility of 19.75%

Calculating Search Visibility Change

As we pointed out, search engine visibility is a great KPI for measuring the success of your SEO campaigns. If your visibility trends upward, your campaigns are successful. To illustrate, let’s take the above example, and recalculate it with a change in SERP rankings.

If the above website had one of their KW rankings drop to position 2, and the 5 that were in the 3rd position move to the 2nd position, the equation would change to this:

[4(28.5%) + 6(15.7%)] ÷ 10 = 20.82%

After calculating your new search visibility, you will subtract your new number from the previous number–the difference is a positive or negative change in your search visibility.

In our example (20.82% – 19.75%), the result is a search visibility increase of 1.07%–which means your SEO efforts are paying off!

What if I’m seeing an increase in my search visibility but not seeing an increase in conversions or traffic?

There are a few important things to keep in mind regarding search visibility:

1. Visibility is not the real number of people that click on your website.
2. SEO often has a slow-burn effect. So be patient.
3. If you see an increase in traffic but not conversions, you may want to improve your on-page content and design.

What Is Ranking Position?

A ranking position or SERP position is where your URL appears in the long list of results for Google searches. Search visibility only takes into account keywords where your site appears in the top 100  search results.

What is Organic Traffic?

Organic traffic is web traffic that arrives on your website from a search engine query. However, organic traffic does not include traffic from paid ads.

One of the greatest benefits of improving your ranking in organic search results is that SEO drives traffic to your site in an affordable way. (In fact, SearchAtlas gives you an estimate of the economic value of the amount of traffic that arrives on your page just from organic searches).

What Pages on My Website Count as Organic Traffic?

Any page that can be found through Google or another search engine counts as organic traffic. These pages are entry points to your website. Organic traffic can find your website through organic results of nearly any page on your website, including your:

• Homepage
• Blog post pages
• Resource or reference pages
• Landing pages
• Sales, services, or product pages
• About or contact

How to Check Your Search Visibility

Checking your website’s site visibility or search visibility is easy with SearchAtlas’s GSC Insights tool. All you have to do is

1. Login. Then select the GSC Insights tool Overview dashboard.
2. Scroll down to the Site Performance.
3. The Site Visibility graph shows your website’s search visibility percentage and historic site visibility performance.

Measuring Your SEO Efforts

Search visibility is one of the best factors for measuring the results or success of an SEO campaign or PPC campaign. With SearchAtlas, you’re able to track your results over the course of a campaign. With dates clearly visible across the y-axis, you can track your progress.

An upward trending line, despite day-to-day fluctuations, indicates that your site visibility is increasing.

A downward trending line indicates that your site is becoming less visible in Google results.

To find a specific date, hover your mouse over the graph. The date will appear. This can help you track your site visibility against changes in Google’s algorithms and other search engine ranking factors.

Keep in mind as you improve your content, you will boost your relevancy and the number of keywords you rank for. As you climb the SERPs, more people will visit your website and begin backlinking to your content. This will grow your website’s domain authority (or domain rating) and make huge differences in your SEO visibility.

Why Is My Search Visibility Zero?

If your website is not ranking for any keywords, your site visibility score will be 0.0%. This is likely because you have yet to target any keywords or implement a strategic SEO campaign.

Main Factors That Affect Search Visibility

One question that often comes up when discussing search visibility is “how does search engine visibility” relate to Search Engine Optimization? In the simplest terms, the better your search engine optimization, the higher your site visibility and visibility score.

So, the same factors that go into improving your search engine optimization increase your website’s search visibility. 

The most influential factors that affect your site visibility include:

• Your SERP ranking positions
• Keyword optimization
• Google’s algorithms

Other Factors That Can Increase or Decrease Search Visibility

While keywords, your SERP positions, and Google’s algorithms are the strongest factors that affect your search visibility, there is a multitude of small factors that go into how your page ranks and for what keywords. 

These SEO elements include:

• Local search visibility
• Local mobile visibility
• Paid search engine visibility (PPC)
• Page load times
• Visual appeal of your website
• Ease of use of your website
• Value of content on your website

How to Increase Your Website’s Search Visibility

Of course, the thing everyone wants to know is how to grow their website’s visibility on Google. There may be no quick-fix for a low site visibility score. But like training for a marathon, you want to take consistent, incremental steps to improve your website and individual pages’ search engine performance strategically. 

We recommend you focus your effort on these tactics:

1. Target Keywords on Page 2 of Google’s Results

Most websites track hundreds, even thousands of keywords. This makes it impossible to target each and every one. However, your visibility will increase exponentially if you can move your URLs from page 2 of the search engine results to page one. 

So, within SearchAtlas, go to Top Keywords under the GSC Insights tool. Then, sort by position, and identify pages that are ranking between positions 11 and 13. 

Then, improve your content on these pages using the Content Assistant tool.

2. Identify and Use Long-Tail Keywords And LSI Words

Long-tail and Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords are often less competitive. This makes ranking for them a bit easier and allows you to target a cluster of keywords all at once.

Furthermore, 15.5% of all search queries on Google are first-time-ever Googled search terms, which means that people are always coming up with new ways to find what they’re looking for–and this gives you a better opportunity to rank.

What are long-tail keywords?

Long-tail keywords are phrases that people Google to find specific keyword results. Long-tail keyword phrases are usually three or more words in one search query. “Running shoes” would be an example of a standard keyword, whereas, “best running shoes for new long-distance runners” would be a long-tail keyword.

What are LSI keywords?

Google is very good at figuring out related terms to specific keywords. The related terms are considered Latent Semantic Indexing keywords.

For example, if someone were to Google “marathon training,” Google may suggest that you also look at “marathon training courses” or “marathon training tracking systems.” 

SearchAtlas provides users with both long-tail keywords and LSI keywords in the Content Assistant’s Terms menu.

3. Check Your Website’s Mobile Friendliness

Everyone has a smartphone nowadays, so it’s only natural that you optimize your website for mobile devices. Doing so will allow smartphone users to access your site with ease. Search engines use mobile-friendliness as one of their ranking factors. This is why it appears as part of the page experience report in Google Search Console and why we include it in our GSC Insights overview report.

Some of the best practices for mobile optimization include ensuring your webpage’s speed is suitable for mobile devices. Additionally, you should use mobile-friendly UX and pop-ups for advertising. Also, you may want to use compressed images so they load faster and size properly on any device.

Moreover, you should optimize your mobile-friendly content for the visually impaired. This includes using descriptive but brief alt text for your images and keywords that can easily be searched on voice search. To verify if your website is mobile-friendly, you can enter your URL into this Google tool to check. Making your web pages more mobile-friendly has the power to increase your rankings significantly because Google only includes mobile pages in its index.

4. Update Your Meta Tags

For this one, we will ask you to take a step back and think about the thought process you go through when using Google for a webpage. When the search results load, you likely skim the top few results and make a decision on which webpage best fits your need.

That information you skim–the title and short description beneath the title are your meta tags. If you improve these tags, you can improve your click-through rate, which will improve your ranking and visibility.

5. Invest in Backlinking

The more websites that link to your site, the more valuable Google’s algorithms perceive your content to be–and the higher your website will appear in their search results. So, using a backlinking service or DIY backlinking with guest posting to websites with high domain ratings with links to your page can help your website gain traction in Google’s results.

6. Increase Your Visitors’ Time on Page

One of the biggest signs of the quality of your content is how long visitors stay on your web pages. As people scroll down your page, interact with elements, and stay within your website, Google is taking note. And these metrics are rolled into how you rank in the SERPs.

So, improving your content’s readability, adding more media, and creating content with more value can boost your ranking and overall search visibility.

7. Check Internal Linking

Internal links are a wonderful way to keep users within your website. In some ways, your internal linking is like a game of Shoots-and-Ladders where the final destination is a confirmed purchase.

However, when a user comes across a broken internal link, your users may decide to go elsewhere. This increases your exit rate and has a negative effect on your webpage rankings.

Furthermore, when Google’s crawlers get stuck on a broken internal link, they’re likely to stop crawling your page and give your page a demerit. 

Fixing these issues can improve your search rankings. SearchAtlas makes identifying broken links easy with the Link Report of the Site Audit tool.

8. Audit Your Site

Page speed has become an influential factor in how your page will rank as a result of Google’s Core Web Vitals rollout.

Using the Page Explorers tool in Search Atlas, you will want to check your website’s health and speed. Click on the View button to begin cleaning up the biggest issues first to improve your ranking.

9. Meet and Exceed Security Standards

One of the simplest ways to improve your SERP positions is to safeguard your visitors with digital safety measures. 

Technical SEO techniques that can boost your website’s security levels include applying Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to establish encrypted links between a web server and browser’s online communication. 

You can also eliminate 404 pages and broken links by redirecting these pages or populating them with relevant content. 

Additionally, be sure to eliminate bad backlinks that can negatively affect your search rankings. Spoiler: SearchAtlas is developing a Toxic Backlinks tool to help website owners more easily identify toxic backlinks.

Search Visibility and Your Website

Search visibility is a visibility metric or calculation based on where your web pages appear among search engine rankings. Also referred to as SEO visibility, this number takes the average position of the keywords your site ranks for and shows you how likely a person Googling any keyword you track for is to find your website.

Improving your SEO visibility requires a multi-faceted approach to the technical and on-page side of your SEO. As you check tasks off your list, don’t forget to give them time to take effect then track your progress with SearchAtlas.

Become discoverable by tackling any factors that are negatively affecting your website’s search engine visibility with SearchAtlas. This easy-to-use tool allows you to track each indicator of your website’s SEO performance, including your

• Google position tracking for individual keywords
• Top ranking keywords
• Top performing pages
• Search visibility score
• Domain authority or domain rating
• Performance in relation to algorithm updates

Need assistance with your SEO strategy? LinkGraph is an industry leader in SEO and ready to help.

The post Search Visibility Guide appeared first on LinkGraph.

Unlike the architecture of bridges and buildings, though, information architecture has more moving parts, a more abstract form of ‘building materials,’ and has only been around for a few decades. Additionally, information systems like websites are more malleable and can be adjusted and improved over time.

If you can master the principles of information architecture, you can build a website that will stand the test of time. Whether you’re in the process of creating your website or want to revamp your user experience and content, this article will provide you insight into how you can transform your website into a shining example of well-designed information architecture.

What Is Information Architecture in Relation to a Website?

Information architecture refers to the process your users go through to gather information about your products or services through a website or other digital platform like an app. Information architecture provides people with a systematic way to navigate from point A to point B in order to achieve an action or gain knowledge. In other words, better information architecture promotes easier accessibility of information through intuitive navigation design.

The best information architecture not only streamlines the user’s journey and goals, but it fulfills specific user needs by organizing a vast amount of information into little, easily digestible categories.

From Where Does Information Architecture Originate?

Much of the methodologies, techniques, and principles used to understand and improve information architecture design come from Peter Morville. Morville is the founding architect of this branch of user experience (UX) and content inventory systems. While he was the first, there is a large number of experts in this discipline who develop IA best practices through the Information Architecture Institute and user research.

What Elements Does Information Architecture Include?

Before we dive into how to improve your information architecture, it’s important to have a good sense of what is included in this field of study in relation to your website. While information architecture can apply to library science, spreadsheet science, and even physical structures, we will be focusing on IA in relation to websites.

So where can you find examples of information architecture on a website?

All it takes is for a website to load in order to be flooded with examples of information architecture. Information architecture is the strategic organization and presentation of your website’s content. In fact, nearly every aspect of a website and web design is part of IA. Of course, there is good information architecture and subpar IA, but all of the following are important parts of an IA system that go into your site:

• UX design/UI design
• Written content or web cop
• Graphic design and design patterns
• Images
• Buttons
• Links
• Layout features
• Website nomenclature
• Metadata tags
• Accessibility features

Good IA comes into play in all of the above. And these elements are often categorized into UX design, content creation strategy, and homepage layout (UI design).

How Do Information Architecture and SEO Work Together?

Search engine optimization (SEO) and information architecture both benefit website owners and web users by improving the internet experience. SEO and IA make quality content easier to find, understand, and navigate. SEO and IA differ in where they fit into the website creation process.

Good IA Supports SEO

SEO has the goal of increasing a website’s visibility through the science of configuring content, front-end web development, and back-end web development in response to search engine algorithms. The result is a website that search engines can find and display as search results to web users’ inquiries. This is an ongoing process. SEO requires a proactive and reactive approach since algorithms often change. Additionally, search engines see value to websites that regularly update their content.

SEO specialists regularly improve a website’s

• Written content
• Loading speed & responsiveness
• Organization
• Visual design
• Graphics and photos

Information architecture often works best when established before active web design begins. IA establishes a framework that supports the efforts of SEO specialists for the lifetime of a website. With a well-strategized IA, a website will have a strong foundation of logical organization. This makes a website more enjoyable from the user’s perspective since they can find what they need easily. In turn, this improves the website’s reputation. A better reputation increases the website’s authority and pushes it higher on search engine results pages, so more people can find it.

Good information architecture only as to be designed once.

Like most systems, the best IA only has to be designed once. If an IA system is effective, it will allow a website to scale and respond to changes needed for the most current SEO strategies. As more blogs, products, or landing pages are added to a website for SEO, good IA already has a designated location and system to handle them.

Why is Information Architecture Important in UX?

As your local librarians will tell you, providing easy access to information is priceless. Information is both empowering and vital for the best individual experience and a better society. However, when it comes to your UX, IA has a more specific importance. It increases your brand’s value to potential clients while bolstering your sales.

Good IA structure based on set principles has the power to help people find what they are looking for within seconds. One of the simplest examples of this is concise and accurate folder labels in your Google Drive. This naming or navigation system allows you to access the files and information you’re looking for quickly and effortlessly–leading to less frustration and wasted time.

While more complicated, Google Maps also uses IA to help people find what they’re looking for in the physical world. For instance, if you type “food near me,” your search results will be full of nearby restaurants. This demonstration of IA is a perfect example of what it means to help a user understand what they are looking for since the user is likely looking for businesses that provide food. 

How to Improve Your Information Architecture

Improving your information architecture can turn your website from an ordinary e-commerce page into a resource visitors enjoy using. These tips can guide you through how to improve your IA and help you prioritize which tasks to begin with.

1. Utilize wireframes in the prototype stages of your sitemap and IA design development.

Wireframes serve a multitude of purposes when it comes to developing strong IA and a sitemap. They work superbly as information architecture diagrams that can be moved around and changed before your design is finalized. 

At their very core, wireframes connect your IA to its UX design. In striking similarity to an architectural blueprint, a wireframe functions as a skeletal outline of a site or mobile app. However, this method of UX development is not limited to visual design, unlike a mockup. To accurately determine the logic of your site’s flow and the intended customer journey, this is a necessary step in your IA project timeline. Your site’s intended functions can best be evaluated through wireframing.

Through wireframing, you will have a solid idea of your visual hierarchy when you are ready to move your site to the content strategy phase. Common elements of a wireframe include 

• Search fields
• Breadcrumbs
• navigation systems
• Headers and footers. 

Ideally, you would use wireframes during your initial UX/UI design process. However, you can still utilize them on an existing website.

Identify Paths with Wireframes

Aside from assessing functionality, wireframing is a particularly useful method of identifying paths between web pages. This critical phase of the IA process will allow you to visualize how much space should be allocated for specific content.

When Prototyping Your Visual Hierarchy, Start with a Sketch

Low-fidelity wireframe versions of a website are quick to develop and more abstract because their main focus is on the visual hierarchy of your site. These bare-bones prototypes often implement mock content (like Latin text) as filler for spatial visualization. However, they provide you with a guideline for content volume when the time comes.

Linking concepts to tangible images and links can be a complicated process, even for the seasoned designer. If you have trouble getting your ideas to match your result, consider implementing a mind mapping software like XMind. XMind is a productivity tool used professionally to solidify brainstorming.

Move from Broad to Detailed Wireframes

Conversely, high-fidelity wireframes are more detailed versions are excellent blueprints for interaction design. They include metadata about a particular page element, like its behavior or dimensions. These more detailed versions are excellent blueprints for previewing your interaction design.

2. Keep your brand personas in mind throughout the UX design and content strategy process.

Unity and consistency across your brand are integral parts of a solid information architectural system. 

Your site is a reflection of your brand, from the elements of your visual design down to each blog post and product page. Accordingly, you should be keeping your brand personas in mind each time you implement a UX feature or post a new content piece. This ensures fidelity between your company and your target audience. Use your personas as a guide to help you, your design team, and your content strategist collaborate on your ideal user perception. 

Define and Implement Your Goal User Perception

Your goal user perception is the way you would like customers or potential customers to view your brand. Before making one of the many decisions IA requires, run your ideas through this line of questioning:

• Does this align with the image I want to create for my brand?
• Will this decision affect consistency across my site or organization?
• Am I appropriately conveying the good qualities of my business?
• Does this get us closer to our main goal?
• How does this project fit into the future of our company?

Any content or design elements that do not hold up to this line of questioning can be eliminated. Not only can this process help you avoid inconsistencies, but it reduces the possibility of having too much content on your site. This benefits your web admins, especially those who keep up with content creation for SEO purposes.

3. Your visual hierarchy determines readability, so prioritize your content accordingly.

Visual hierarchy is a principle of laying out and sizing visual elements to denote their importance to the viewer. For example, alignment, texture, whitespace, and contrast are a few of the visual design concepts that can help draw users’ attention to the right content. An effective user interface design does more than simply provide information. A quality hierarchy can persuade and impress users.

There are a few aspects of visual hierarchy that are highly beneficial to apply when creating UX design based on cognitive psychology. 

Visual Hierarchy Principles to Keep in Mind:

1: Larger images are perceived as more important

2: Bright colors garner more attention

3: Elements that are aligned are more pleasing to the eye

4: Higher contrast demands more attention

5: Repetition tells the viewer that elements are related

6: Proximity (or closeness) denotes interconnectedness in topic

7: More white space around an element draws more attention to it

Visual unity isn’t just essential to your brand image, it is also a critical part of your UX design. Familiar colors, menu hierarchies, and diagrams promote consistency and fluid usability. Even small distractions like slow-loading graphics or unaligned text columns can interrupt the user experience.

There are several useful IA software that can assist you in your UI development process, like OmniGraffle. OmniGraffle is used to create visuals and graphics for use in prototypes and mockups. As mentioned above, high-fidelity site frameworks utilize these types of visuals and graphics to help designers strategize where to put information and why it belongs there.

Visual Tidiness Affects More Than Just Usability

If you have ever been to a site that was unattractive, cluttered, or disorganized, you likely formulated a negative opinion of that business or organization. Perhaps you even deemed the information to be less reputable due to the nature or design of the site. This is why it’s important to stick to simplistic and user-friendly design. Together, a pleasant UX and UI can boost user confidence and solidify your site’s credibility. 

In addition to building trust among your users, a quality UX also lets Google and other search engines know that your site is worthy of ranking.

4. Structure and categorization are fundamental.

One mistake many people make is putting their content all in one place. In fact, overstuffing information into a single URL causes your UI to suffer, since there is no hierarchy or sense of organization. Too much information on a single page takes users much longer to sort through content to find a specific piece of information.

Users should be able to locate all desired information on your website quickly and easily. This requires a well-planned site map.

Category is… A Better User Experience

To create a better structure, you must first go through the process of categorization. Categorization is the process of organizing your content into a taxonomy system. Categorization is an integral part of navigation design because it has the ability to guide the user to the right content. 

Start by Finding Commonalities

Begin by grouping your content by similarities in content type. For example, in the image above, you will notice, at LinkGraph, we group our resources by format type (eBooks, blog posts, case studies, and videos).

The most common similarities should be land higher on your sitemap since they’re usually the starting place for narrowing down the user flow for optimal navigation.

For example, if your website centers on pet care, you likely will want to first group your products or articles by pet species. From there, you may want to divide the information or products into what aspect of care they provide. As you can see, this would make navigation easier for cat owners looking for a technique or clippers to trim their cat’s nails.

Using tools like SearchAtlas can make long-term organization easier by allowing you to group pages into categories. This allows you to see the category performance, so you can target where you can eliminate or improve content.

Eliminate Unnecessary Content and Categories

While generating new content is extremely important, making sure you have room for this content on your site is also essential. It can be tempting to hold onto content that you have created, but it is best to let it go to make room for site updates.

Omitting unnecessary or irrelevant data can also enhance the user experience. So, don’t be shy to perform a content audit and delete pages that receive little-to-no traffic. A potential customer looking for a specific piece of information may become frustrated or lose interest in your digital product if it is too difficult to find.

5. Your homepage shouldn’t be the only local navigation point.

While the ideal destination page is the homepage, users find nearly endless different ways to land on a website. For this reason, the digital design of each page on your website should share the same functions as your homepage.

Your website will likely be backlinked on other websites to enhance reputability and SERP ranking when your business begins implementing a content strategy. Since backlinking incorporates relevant keywords that may bring visitors directly to content, such as blogs or guides, you should ensure that every entry point of your website is equally user-friendly and visually appealing as the homepage in order to make a good first impression and move visitors beyond the landing page.

Alt: A landing page for HGTV on tips for adopting a dog. A pink box around the navigation menu.

For example, if a user enters your site through the contact page URL, it should be easy for them to find navigation elements that will take them to the homepage or digital product browsing section.

Provide tools to make finding resources easier

An efficient search system is the backbone of a great user interaction design. This allows an of your webpage participants to find what they’re seeking in seconds rather than minutes.

Provide FAQs with links to more specific information. This gives users the choice of how much information they need and an easy way to access it.

Keep a navigation menu at the top of all your subpages. Subpages need to provide access points for other activities you offer–Otherwise, your users may never travel from a subpage to your sales funnel (or another offering on your main page).

6. Go through the customer journey then map out a blueprint for improvements

Alt: Two caucasian women sitting side by side with a laptop between, going through the customer journey

The best usability testing you can perform is going through the actions of a potential customer. You can do this yourself by going through your website manually. Mind maps can also make the task of mapping the customer journey easy.

For best results, anticipate how a user will engage with your interaction design. Once you have a clear blueprint of your users’ needs, you can create an information hierarchy and a sitemap. Your sitemap allows Google’s bots to crawl your URLs to identify information used for SERPs.

Keep Speed In Mind

In general, the online community values convenience and speed above all. A recent UX study demonstrated that 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile app or site takes longer than three seconds to load. This means from decision points, your web design has about 3 seconds to sort and present the piece of information digital product the user is looking for.

This is to say that load time, page speed, and click response are essential parts of your information architecture and it is important to keep up with their performance. Thankfully, tools like the

Artificial Intelligence and the Customer Journey

The behavior of an internet user is relatively predictable, and artificial intelligence technology can now mimic user activity for rapid results from AI user testing and other usability testing efforts. In conjunction with heatmaps, you can pinpoint where users tend to get hung up and turn decision points into exit points.

Perform Regular Performance Audits and Fixes

SearchAtlas can make tracking and monitoring performance simple once your site is live. This can help you improve the customer journey by identifying navigation issues such as broken links.

Identify What Pages Visitors Use Most with GSC Insights

Finding which pages on your site that visitors utilize most can help you prioritize their functionality when auditing your site’s performance. This also gives you insight into which categories of content your target audience is most interested in.

7. Make sure the information part of your information architecture is high quality.

Findability, usability, and graphic design are all essential elements to good IA. However, the content you are managing needs to be as relevant as it is organized. The same way an information architect is well-versed in the science of organization, content strategists and content creators are experts in SEO and how to improve the content structures.

Reader engagement is a must when it comes to engagement time and scroll distance. The easiest way to improve your content to encourage deeper navigation is with clear headings as a road map to your content. The first thing many visitors will do is preview your headings and images for relevance to their search terms.

The quality of your metadata and headings will also drive more visitors to your site and reduce your bounce rate.

Structure Your Content for Usability and SEO

The Core Web Vital update made the structure of content an even higher priority. This change takes into account how long it takes for users to access the most important aspects of your website. The difference is now most IA design locates data-heavy elements below the page fold. And if these elements are vital assets to your brand, you need to give visitors a reason to scroll through pieces of content far enough to move beyond the fold. This is where the quality of your content comes in.

Information Architecture: The Science of Organizing the Customer Journey

The impact of well-strategized information architecture continues to become more and more profound. With information architects, UX experts, and content auditors, websites are better able to provide every user with easier access to their desired outcomes. Through the science of user behavior, cognitive psychology-based UI design, and strict hierarchy patterns, IA is improving the internet for all users.

Better IA can set your business apart from the competition. With LinkGraph’s team of visual designers, content curators and creators, and UX web developers you can turn your site into a top-performing contender on search engines, the worldwide web, and among your loyal base of customers. If you’re ready to watch your business grow, we’re ready to take on your next project.

The post 7 Tips for Better Information Architecture on Your Website appeared first on LinkGraph.

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google’s Core Web Vitals are a make or break ranking factor. Unlike many other SEO metrics, these metrics measure the performance of a website from the user’s perspective. The Core Web Vitals update is about making websites more enjoyable, more responsive, and more snappy.

While Google’s Core Web Vitals were designed to help web developers make the world wide web a happier place for everyone, Google also uses them as a ranking metric for search engine results. This means these straightforward metrics offer the opportunity for web developers to improve a website while SEO experts have one more way to improve a website’s ranking.

Core Web Vitals establish a win-win for businesses and their visitors. We can all agree the web experience is better without delayed load times, shifting content, or other issues. It’s also awesome that optimizing your website’s Core Web Vitals can result in a tangible impact on organic visitors and your business’s conversion rates.

What Are Core Web Vitals?

When a doctor checks their patient’s vitals, they get a snapshot of that person’s overall health without performing a full examination. Instead, they measure the most important indicators: temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure. This is similar to how Google’s Core Web Vitals give you a sneak peek of your website’s usability health and page experience.

Through three indicating factors, Core Web Vitals allow web developers and site owners to decide where updates need to be applied first.

What Do Core Web Vitals Measure?

While your health vitals include heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure, a website’s Core Vitals include:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
• First Input Delay (FID)

If you read these terms and felt suddenly overwhelmed, don’t worry. These, like so many other technical SEO and web development terms, are less complicated than they sound. And we’ll explain each in-depth for you.

Why Did Google Develop Core Web Vitals?

Google realized that many top-ranking websites didn’t provide an optimal experience for visitors–despite providing relevant content. It was difficult to quantify the usability of a website from a visitor’s perspective with the existing metrics. So, Google made it a mission to fix both.

Was the web experience really that bad? Yes and no. When Google first rolled out their Core Web Vitals, 98% of top-ranking sites did not pass Core Web Vital standards. Here’s an example of a website that took a huge hit in ranking positions after the Page Experience update went live in June 2021.

It’s important to remember that Google wants to improve the overall health of the web ecosystem. The internet is built for users, after all.

In addition to elevating and setting a standard to measure the biggest complaints among users, it’s important to note that other issues always arise. One is that web development techniques have become extremely diverse. And having metrics for the user experience accounts for all the many ways to architect a website. 

What Other Advantages Are There for Examining Core Web Vitals?

Google views these metrics as a way to initiate a sea-change for the entirety of the industry. According to Annie Sullivan with Google’s Core Web Vitals program, by emphasizing the user experience in relation to load time, third-party content management systems like WordPress, Shopify, BigCommerce will be motivated to improve their products. This benefits small businesses, users, and web innovation.

Breaking Down LCP, CLS, and FID

Core Web Vitals are defined by three main metrics: LCP, CLS, and FID. These aspects of a website all impact how long a user interacts with a website. 

By focusing on these issues, web developers can greatly improve the user experience. By targeting these metrics, SEO experts can better optimize websites.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

LCP is the render time for the biggest content element visible to the user–this differs from First Content Paint (FCP). The LCP does not count any elements that fall below the “fold line.” This is to say that if the user has to scroll to see it, it won’t count against your LCP.

So what may be identified as a website’s LCP? Most often your LCP is the page’s featured image or <h1> tag.

However, it could also be:

• A video preview
• An image, including a background image
• A block of text

What Is an Ideal LCP Time?

When it comes to speed, seconds matter when it comes to your user’s experience. Seconds can feel like ages to a user anxiously waiting for content they’re interested in to load. So, for your LCP, ideally, you want your LCP to be under 2.5 seconds.

Why does LCP Matter?

The amount of time for the most important elements to load can result in users backing out. This can cause your bounce rate to balloon. Furthermore, if users are waiting too long for elements to load, you could be losing sales.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Have you ever been reading an article and lost your place because the text shifted on the browser? This is likely because an image or video took some time to load somewhere above, leading to poor visual stability. CLS quantifies the number of these shifts.

CLS can also result in miss-clicks. For example, while logging into a website, if the login button shifts you may wind up clicking “forgot my password.” For obvious reasons, this is frustrating.

What Causes Layout Shifts?

Some of the most common elements that result in high CLS include:

• Images that auto-size
• Ads without iframes
• Too much javascript
• Font styles loading too late

What Is an Ideal CLS Time?

You want your CLS to be under .1 seconds.

Why Does CLS Matter?

The last thing you want is visitors to your website feeling frustrated. When a page shifts while in use, visitors wind up with a negative impression of your website and business.

First Input Delay (FID)

FID measures the amount of time it takes for a user to be able to interact with elements, such as entry fields on a page. FID also takes into account contingent entry fields or delays between when you press play and when a video begins.

This web vital was frightening for many web developers because many third-party widgets lag–and most devs use these tools to reduce laborious and cumbersome tasks. However, this metric will motivate CMS and widget developers to up their game.

You will notice that many tools, such as PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse use the phrases “Time to Interactive” and “Total Blocking Time.” These often stand in place for FID since some web pages do not have interaction opportunities.

What are input interactions?

Input interactions are any actions on your website that allow the user to interact with and the site needs to respond to. These include:

• Links
• Buttons
• Text fields
• Drop-down menus
• Check-boxes

What Is an Ideal FID Time?

You want your FID to be under 100 milliseconds.

Why Does First Input Display Matter?

Poor FID can lead to a major loss in conversions since many users will back out of a sales funnel due to wait times (and having more time to rethink their purchase).

Why Do Core Web Vitals Matter to SEO?

Core Web Vitals are a ranking metric for Google search results. And while there are over 200 factors that determine how your page will rank, poor Web Vitals metrics can have a cumulative negative effect on your website’s performance. 

Additionally, Google representatives have announced that Web Vitals will continue to play a role in how the search engine ranks websites for years to come. And we can expect these metrics to become even more important as they fine-tune and refine the search engine.

Bounce Rate and Brand Reputation

Additionally, an e-commerce website is similar to a brick-and-mortar business in that a user’s first impression matters. If you were to talk into a business and not be greeted or feel confused by the layout, you would likely turn and leave. 

The same is true with the eCommerce experience. When visitors leave, you’re impacting your visitor’s time-on-page and your bounce rate. We have no doubt that improving your website’s SEO through its Web Vital metrics will increase your conversions.

How to Audit Your Website’s Core Web Vitals

The easiest way to audit your website’s core vitals is to perform a free SEO audit to identify issues lowering your website’s score through field data metrics. Then fix these problems.

Your Core Web Vital’s Grading Scale

• 90 to 100 (green): Best
• 50 to 89 (orange): Moderate
• 0 to 49 (red): Poor

However, you can also check your website’s CWVs using a few different approaches.

Auditing Your Website with Using Web Tools

Lighthouse in Google Chrome

1. Switch to Google Chrome’s Incognito mode.
2. Navigate to your website.
3. Open page inspection: Right-click on the page and then select “inspect.”

Or, hold Crtl + Shift + C. Then select “inspect.”

1. After the inspection menu appears, select the double-arrow icon (). Then select “Lighthouse.”
2. After the menu loads, select the “Generate report” button () and what device type you want the report to reflect. We recommend looking at both.
3. Once the report appears, you will see a score for each category, however, you will need to use “Total Blocking Time” in place of FID. You can select the expanded list button for more details.

Using PageSpeed Insights

1. Using the PageSpeed Insights tool, paste your URL into the text field. Then select “Analyze.”
2. You will see that a report appears with the Web Vitals appearing as red, orange, or green. You will also notice the Core Web Vitals have a blue bookmark icon next to them, and a button you can select to expand each category to learn more.
3. When you scroll down, you will find suggestions to improve your website’s performance.

Using SearchAtlas Dashboard

If you are a SearchAtlas user, you can easily audit your Core Web Vitals in your GSC Insights tool. 

Simply find the page you want to review metrics for and select, “Page Insights.”

In addition to the Historical Data for the page, the tool also shows you whether the page is meeting Google’s Core Web Vitals standards.

4 Tips for Improving Core Web Vitals Across Your Web Pages

When you first see your Core Web Vitals report, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. However, it’s important to see Web Vitals as an opportunity. And some of the biggest fixes are also the easiest. Here are four we recommend you do sooner rather than later:

1. Know your numbers and set goals: Use SearchAtlas, Google Search Console, Lighthouse, or PageSpeed Insights to understand your current Web Vitals scores. Identify if your website struggles with a common issue. If you find a commonality, such as images that are not optimized, you can add web development commit hooks to your CMS to automatically fix these issues.
2. Review your real-users data often: While lab numbers are insightful, it’s important to check your reports regularly to understand what your real visitors experience. Remember to run reports after updates to ensure your changes don’t have a negative effect on your metrics.
3. Identify your Largest Contentful Paint and optimize it: You can identify your LCP by selecting the “Performance” menu. Then follow the instructions to record the page load. Once identified, compress the image or heading.
4. Consider content delivery networks for international business: While we don’t often think about physical distance regarding the Internet, it can cause a loading issue. If your server is countries away from a user, you may be better off using a content delivery network since CDNs can deliver content faster to more remote regions.

Final Thoughts on Core Web Vitals

Website Core Vitals are metrics that measure how enjoyable your website is for users. They are measured by load times of the largest contentful paint, first interaction delay, and shifting in website elements. While Core Web Vitals are one of many ways Google decides where a website should appear in their search engine results, improving these metrics also improves many businesses’ conversion rates and reputations.

Are these metrics here to stay? You bet. And as we anticipate Google’s updates, it’s important to keep your website visible with best SEO practices. Our team of technical SEO specialists can help ensure your website is optimized for Google’s Core Web Vitals. Get in touch today!

The post What Are Core Web Vitals? (+4 Tips for Improvement) appeared first on LinkGraph.

Retail SEO is a form of search engine optimization with specific techniques to work for e-commerce stores. While the fundamentals of SEO don’t necessarily change for retail, there are some specific best practices you can invest in to create a really strong online retail presence. 

Here’s a beginner’s guide to everything a retailer must know to improve their visibility and rankings in the search engine result pages.

Why Retail SEO Matters for Online Stores

So, why SEO? The easy answer is that consumers are relying on search engines to find new products like yours.

• 44% of people start their online shopping journey with a Google search. Without establishing a presence online, you’ll miss out on potentially almost half of your customer base.
• 37.5% of all traffic to ecommerce websites comes from organic search results. Ranking in Google for multiple keyword phrases allows your ecommerce brands to capture consumers that aren’t even aware of your brand.
• 23.6% of all ecommerce orders are directly tied to organic clicks. Not only are your consumers coming from online channels, but they are also converting once they find you.
• Around 95% of shoppers don’t go past the first page in the search results. If your ecommerce web pages don’t rank in the first 10 positions in the SERPs, it’s unlikely you’ll earn new customers from Google. 

So with all of these facts in mind, a well-designed and well-optimized website with great content should be any online retailer’s goal.

Benefits of SEO for Online Retailers

Still not convinced of the power of SEO for your retail website? Here are some benefits that any ecommerce retailer, big or small, can experience when amplifying their website’s SEO.

It Doesn’t Cost a Ton!

You don’t need a huge budget to implement a great SEO plan. 

In comparison to paying for digital advertising on platforms like Google Ads, Facebook, and Instagram, SEO is much more affordable to retailers.

Also, because ranking in search doesn’t end when your marketing budget runs out, it has long-term impacts that paid media cannot relate to.

By ranking in the top spots for high-value keywords, you can earn customers for perpetuity! This goes a long way to lowering your cost-per-acquisition in the long-term.

It is Customizable

You don’t always have to implement every single SEO advantage to get the best results. Rather you can customize SEO to meet your online goals.

For example, if you are trying to promote a specific product, completing extensive keyword research about the product can help give you ideas on what content to create about it.

Doubling down on your content production can be a useful marketing strategy, even if it is just creating a blog or two. 

Or, say you don’t have a problem getting customers to your website, but you struggle to make them convert. If this is the case, investing in page experience improvements can work wonders in both improving keyword rankings and encouraging the consumer to make a purchase or a phone call.

Since no one store is the same, no eCommerce website will be the same. A good SEO strategy will prioritize your ecommerce retail website’s unique goals and needs.

It Boosts Your Local SEO

For those online retailers that also have a brick-and-mortar store, your SEO efforts can also have a local impact.

Google works in a way where it will populate it’s map pack results based on the geographical location of the user. This can change even as you move around streets in your neighborhood. Your goal should be to show up within the map pack so users immediately see your brand when looking for local retailers.

Other local SEO efforts can also help those ecommerce retailers who have physical locations. Local SEO strategies like local citations, location-specific landing pages, and more are key for these types of retailers.

It Helps You Understand Your Customers

You may have a general idea about your customers, but do you really understand what questions or queries got them to arrive on your website? 

Luckily, SEO is all about data and metrics. The right software tools can tell you the types of questions that users are asking about products like yours.

You can also find out what kind of device they used to get to the landing page – whether it was a mobile phone, tablet, or desktop computer – and you can use this information to learn a lot about their shopping habits and improve the conversion journey on your website.

How to Optimize Product and Category Pages

Here are a few different ways to optimize your retail product and category pages for SEO performance and a better user experience for your customers.

1. Complete Comprehensive Keyword Research

Keyword research is the foundation of any eCommerce SEO campaign because if it wasn’t for keywords, your consumers wouldn’t be able to find you. 

When done properly, your keyword research will drive every content marketing task you implement on your website.

There are plenty of different techniques you can use to perform your keyword research, as long as you focus on consumer intent. Typically, there are two different kinds of consumer intent.

Informational Keyword Intent

Informational keyword intent is used to describe the type of information the consumer is looking for. These searchers are usually looking for how-to blogs, 101 guides, or blog articles that provide them an answer to their question. 

Here are some examples of informational queries:

• how to get scratch out of wood table
• what is the difference between laminate and tile flooring
• what can help fix a broken laptop screen

Usually, consumers looking for this type of information are at the top of the marketing funnel. That means they are still gathering information about various products or retailers and are weighing their different options.

Commercial Keyword Intent

Commercial keyword intent is when a user is looking for information that helps them make a purchase, usually as fast as possible. 

These users know what they want but aren’t sure exactly where to get it. These users have more intent to actually purchase, and would be classified as being somewhere near the bottom of the marketing funnel.

For example, some keywords that show commercial intent include:

• buy wood repair kit
• cost difference between braces and invisalign
• bathroom remodelers in my area

Determining keyword intent may sound like a daunting challenge, but it’s really not! Here are some tips to make the task easier on yourself.

• Look at what’s already in the SERPs. Pay attention to what keywords are written in paid ads, the knowledge graphs, and the organic listings on the first two pages.
• Take a peek at the cost-per-click of keywords in GoogleAds. The higher the price, the more competitive a keyword is, meaning more users are searching for it.
• Use tools like LinkGraph Keyword researcher.
• Use our LinkGraph tool, the Keyword Researcher to to see what long-tail keywords, questions, and autocompletes people are searching for

Once you have an idea of the right keywords you want your product and category pages to rank for, you’ll need to start adding them to your ecommerce content.

2. Enhance Your Content

Not every piece of your website will need optimizing, so start where you will get the biggest bang for your buck – with the product descriptions. 

When writing product descriptions, you’ll want to ask yourself “What is the easiest way I can add crucial elements to this page? And how can I maximize visibility with my content?”

You can do this by:

• Adding keyword-rich detailed product descriptions
• Using the SEO content assistant to find other synonyms and Focus Terms to include in your product descriptions
• Ending your product description with a call to action
• Placing testimonials all-around your website with reviews from actual customers,
• Optimizing your images with alt tags, making sure you have the optimal product image size and using keywords within the file name.

Doing all of the above creates keyword-rich product pages, which will grab the attention of both users and search engine crawlers.

3. Ensure your Product Pages Are User-Friendly

If your website doesn’t adhere to your consumer’s needs, then how will you get them to convert? 

User experience is key in the world of SEO, not only because it ensures your website gives the users what they want, but Google won’t rank web pages that don’t meet their page experience standards. 

This means that if your page speed is slow, if your website is not responsive for mobile users, or if your consumers can’t easily find what they’re looking for, you have the potential of losing your organic rankings.

Some easy user-friendly tips are:

• Make sure your retail website is organized, with a clear navigational system
• Remove any excess clutter from your pages
• Place your contact information on the header and footer of each page, making it easy for your customers to contact you
• Make sure your web pages are responsive for all devices, as many people do online shopping from mobile phones or tablets
• Use consistent styling throughout every single product page so users can easily browse through multiple products

Remember, the more user-friendly your website is, the easier it will be for your customers to convert.

5 Tips for Increasing Traffic to Your Online Store with Retail SEO

Now that your website is properly optimized for sales, it’s time to drive traffic to your store! Here’s how you can do just that.

1. Add a CTA to your Meta Description

Google will show your meta description in your SERP result whenever it promotes it for relevant keyword phrases. Adding an enticing CTA to your meta description can help drive clicks to your website.

2. Add Products Schema to Improve your Organic CTR

Adding the products schema to your product page will make it so you appear in Google’s rich results.

This allows users to see key information about your products like a product image, price, product reviews, or even when an item goes on sale.

To learn more about how to add product schema to your pages, read our detailed schema markup guide.

3. Set Up Your Google My Business Listing

You want to ensure your clients can find you, and your GMB listing can be powerful for driving both web traffic and foot traffic.

Google My Business works by targeting users in your local area, and you don’t even have to have an actual storefront to have one. 

As long as the listing includes your contact information and a link to your website, you’ll be providing new and potential consumers useful information that they need to convert. Learn more about how to set up your Google My Business listing.

4. Make Content Marketing a Priority

Don’t forget about the power of a robust content strategy! Even if your product descriptions and retail store is optimized for SEO, you can’t forget about the rest of your website! 

Consistently producing quality blog content will send signals to Google that you’re an active website, which will work in your favor to enhance your ranking signals.

Blogs offer an opportunity to provide your consumers with informational content about your products and services and target new keyword phrases or long-tail queries. 

How-to-guides that detail how to use your products or seasonal gift guides are great for driving traffic and conversions.

5. Check Out What Your Competitors Are Doing

Take a peek at your competitors to get some inspiration for your own marketing strategy! 

You can look at what keywords are drawing customers to their store, what content themes they’re writing about, and how they promote themselves on social media. 

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when creating your own marketing ideas; use your competitors for inspiration on where your website can improve!

In the digital world we live in, consumer habits are changing on an almost daily basis, making it especially important for retail shop owners to enhance their shop’s visibility online. 

Our team of ecommerce SEO experts can help bring your website to new heights. Give  call today and we’ll get started.

The post Retail SEO Guide: Get More Eyes On Your Online Store appeared first on LinkGraph.