Have you already reached the number one position for your target keywords? If so, you might feel confident knowing that you would generate more traffic than ever. While this might be true, don’t be surprised if you couldn’t hold on to your rankings even for just a few weeks. Remember that other people are trying to reach the top spot as well, and you should always be on your toes if you want to defend your position. The last thing you want is for all of your hard work to go to waste. Just like Brand That Name, an SEO company in Leeds that maintain their rankings on the top position on Google.
Many new online marketers think that they can leave their website once it already ranks number one on Google. But if you want a consistent source of traffic, it pays to take a more proactive approach in order to solidify your position at the top. In this guide, you will learn the best ways to maintain your SEO ranking.
1) Update Your Site
This may sound like a tip for complete beginners, but even veteran webmasters forget its importance. In case you didn’t know, Google considers the freshness of your content when deciding where to rank your webpages in their search index. One of the easiest ways to boost your website’s ranking power is by keeping your site updated. For instance, you may have plenty of content containing outdated information. It’s worth taking a step back to review these pages and make the necessary updates if you find any.
Take note that this applies to how your website looks and functions as well. If your website has quality content but it looks like an old 90s website, you might turn off your visitors. Use a modern layout and experiment with different design elements that could reduce bounce rates and increase engagement at the same time.
2) Boost Site Speed
In an age where Internet speeds have become faster than ever, you can bet that online users wouldn’t be patient enough to wait for slow webpages to load. Most SEO experts agree that site speed is one of the most important ranking signals used by Google. This particularly applies to mobile webpages, since a vast majority of search queries now take place in smartphones and tablets.
Remember that millions of blog posts are published each day. Your target readers have plenty of content to find even if they leave your website. You would want to capture their attention by boosting the speed of your webpages and then following through with excellent content.
3) Improve Link Building
When it comes to link building, the only focus you should have is on quality. If you’re still playing the numbers game, then you may be shooting yourself in the foot. Google has become way smarter over the years, and it can detect whether any website receives links at an unreasonable rate. You would be better off building links naturally from relevant and authoritative sources.
Backlink services in the past may have worked, providing customers with links from comments, social profiles, and social bookmarks. But these forms of low quality links no longer produce desirable results. On the contrary, they could be the reason why your site could get penalized. If you want to hold on to your rankings, one thing you could do is build links to different webpages instead of pointing all the links to your main money page.
4) Add Outbound Links
At first, it might seem counter-intuitive to add links that redirect your visitors to other webpages. However, you should do it if you know that it can increase the user’s overall experience. This practice is embraced by some of the highest quality websites, and there is no reason for you not to do the same thing. You can link out to authoritative and relevant websites to help your visitors find the information they need. You can get rewarded by getting more repeat visitors because your target audience will start to view you as a credible platform.
5) Build Social Media Presence
You probably know that Google considers the authority of the websites in their algorithm, so it only makes sense to build a solid social media presence. This doesn’t mean you should solely focus on social signals such as likes, comments, and shares. Instead, focus on establishing an excellent brand reputation through your various social channels. Also, don’t forget to use these avenues to communicate with your target audience.
6) Optimize Rich Media
If most of your content is made up of huge blocks of text, you might find it more difficult to maintain your rankings. The reason for this is that more and more online users prefer rich media such as videos, photos, and infographics when consuming online content. Remember that online users tend to have very short attention spans, so your goal is to get their attention with attractive visual content that also contains the exact information they need.
7) Target the Right Keywords
Lastly, you can improve your keyword research in order to give your webpages a better shot at holding onto their rankings. When it comes to keywords, the trend these days is to focus on voice search. There is a difference in how people search when typing and when talking. It could get a little tricky at first, but figuring out what your target audience says when using voice search can go a long way in your attempt to further optimize your existing content.
