Introduction
If you’re a website owner, you’ve probably noticed that your site’s ranking in Google has changed. The search engine constantly changes its algorithm to favor websites with better content and user experience. However, there are also simple things you can do on your end to help improve your site’s rankings like getting an SEO packages. Below are five quick SEO-related changes that might have dramatically improved your site’s ranking:
Increase load speed
- Importance of speed
The speed at which your website loads is one of the biggest factors that can impact its ranking in search engines. Google has even confirmed this, claiming that page load time is a “signal” that they use to rank sites. The faster your site loads, the better it will perform in search results — and therefore, you should do everything you can to improve your site’s performance on this front.
- How to increase load speed
Here are some quick tips for increasing the speed at which your website loads:
- Remove unnecessary scripts and stylesheets from pages (including ads) by using a plugin like Autoptimize or Minification Plus. You can also minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript files manually if you’d prefer not to use plugins; there are lots of resources online with how-to guides for doing this effectively.
- Use an image optimization tool such as Smush Pro or WP Smush Image Optimization Plugin (a WordPress plugin) so images don’t take up as much space as they could on each page view. This will make pages load faster overall because there will be fewer bytes being downloaded for each page visit; also remember to optimize all images before uploading them anywhere on your site so they don’t need optimizing again later!
Download the latest version of your CMS
You should also make sure to download the latest version of your CMS (Content Management System), if you’re using one. This may seem like a trivial point, but it can have a big impact on how well your site performs and ranks. There are many reasons why you might want to update:
- Security fixes. If the latest version fixes a major security issue that was previously affecting older versions of your CMS, then updating is absolutely recommended!
- New features or functionality. Updating for new features or functionality is not always necessary, but it could provide some great benefits for your business—especially if you’re using an older version that doesn’t offer those things yet! For example, when WordPress announced its Gutenberg editor in 2018, which turned out to be quite controversial among users because it required them to learn new ways
to interact with their website content…
Add more descriptive ALT tags
- The ALT attribute is used to provide a text description of an image. It’s important that you fill this field with relevant information because it’s the only way for people with visual impairments, who use screen readers, to understand what the image is about.
- If you don’t have any descriptive text for your images, Google will display its own description of the picture in search results – which can be very inaccurate!
- An ALT tag should not be empty or repeated on every page. It should also be around 50 characters long (including spaces).
Get rid of broken links
Broken links, or internal link-based 404 errors, are a major problem for both users and search engine rankings. Any time a user clicks on a broken link and is sent to an error page or another page that doesn’t exist (a dead end), they will leave your site in frustration. They might even close their browser entirely and never come back, especially if this happens too many times. Broken links can also hurt your SEO by lowering the overall quality of the website experience for Google bots crawling through it. If your site feels like it’s falling apart — broken links everywhere! — then chances are good that you’re losing significant traffic from Google because of how poorly ranked it is compared to competitors who have better-constructed websites with fewer issues happening internally among all their pages.
To find out if you have any broken links on your website:
- Open up Chrome DevTools (or equivalent)
- Click on “Network” tab
- Hit CTRL + F (or CMD + F) at the same time You should see “Find in Page” appear right above where you type whatever word(s) start typing into that box instead of hitting return after each character gets added into what was formerly just text showing up as soon as new tabs opened up
Reduce number of URL redirects
There are some redirects that can help your site rank better, and there are others that should be avoided. If possible, you want to avoid using redirects on any pages with a high amount of traffic. Redirects slow down the loading speed of the page and can cause users to leave before they see your content.
Redirects can be used for many reasons, but one common reason is to keep users on your website by sending them back to their original destination after clicking an affiliate link or other link off-site. This way you make sure they see what they came for while also earning commission from their purchase (or whatever else they do from that point forward).
They’re also used when multiple versions of the same page exist but have slightly different URLs; this could happen if you have more than one product in your store that has a similar name or description across all products in each category (for example: “blue shirt” vs “blue jeans”). This type of URL redirection needs special care because Google heavily penalizes websites who try manipulating search rankings through keyword stuffing or cloaking content under different URLs; Google considers these practices as deceptive behavior which could lead to penalties such as being banned from Google altogether!
Your site’s ranking may benefit if you make these changes.
To increase your site’s ranking and traffic, you may want to make these changes:
- Remove unnecessary redirects from your site.
- Update content regularly so that it’s fresh and relevant for users, which can help you rank higher in search results.
- Ensure that the URLs on your site are consistent, clean and easy to understand by separating each page into a new URL – this will help with SEO as well as creating an easier user experience (UX). For example, if the URL is www.example-site-name.com/blog/about-us/, it might be better if it was www.example-site-name
Conclusion
So there you have it: five quick SEO-related changes that might have dramatically improved your site’s ranking. Of course, these are just a few of the many things you can do to improve your SEO and ranking. We hope this list will help get you started on a path towards better rankings for your website!