Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most crucial things to consider in your digital marketing strategy. As per the latest statistics, 61% of marketers are of the view that SEO is the key to online success.

For those new to the term, SEO is the process of improving your website to boost its visibility when individuals search for services or products related to your business in search engines such as Bing, Google, etc.

As SEO is something people spend a lot of their time on, they are often left thinking ā how long does SEO take to work for a website?

After all, we all want to see positive results from our SEO efforts, as quickly as possible.

So, does it take a couple of days, months, or years for SEO to work? Well, there is no one answer to this question. SEO is a long process; it doesn't happen overnight. Plus, various factors impact the results you get from your SEO efforts.

But still, we can tell you an estimated amount of time it will take to notice good results from your SEO efforts.

SEO, if done right, can take at least 6 months to start working. To see positive gains from your SEO strategies, 6-12 months is considered an ideal time frame.

Want to know more on the subject? Keep reading!

Why Does It Take So Long for SEO to Work?

Before discussing how long it takes to see good results from your SEO efforts, let's first look at why SEO takes so long to show results.

We all are well aware of the fact that Google updates and improves its search algorithms pretty consistently. Also, it has constantly worked to optimize algorithms so they can no longer be tricked with shortcuts, such as keyword stuffing. It even keeps on improving the search engine's functionality.

Owing to all of this, it has become more challenging to rank. And as a result of this, SEO takes a long time to show results.

Keeping all of this in mind, here's what we recommend you do when it comes to SEO.

You need to think of SEO as an investment that demands consistent work and maintenance. This is the only way you will notice sustainable growth in results.

How Long Does SEO Take To Produce Results?

Now, coming to the more important question that both digital marketers and business owners commonly ask:

How long for SEO to take effect and show results for a website?

As we mentioned, a lot of factors impact the results you get from SEO efforts. If you are working with an experienced digital marketing agency, you can expect to see results within the first 6 months. But if you are working with a newbie, you would have to wait longer.

Note: Some websites even get results within 3-4 months!

How to Tell if SEO Is Working the Right Way?

Fortunately, there are some ways to check if your SEO is working. You can use a variety of tools to understand your rankings and check for areas of improvement:

• Keyword research tools
• SEO plugins
• Link building tools
• On-page SEO tools
• SEO software platforms
• Technical SEO tools

The Key Metrics of SEO

When you use the tools we talked about above, you will come across certain metrics. Here's what these metrics mean:

1. Clicks: The count of times a user has clicked on your content, links, or ads.

2. Impressions: The count of times a user has seen your content, links, or ads.

3. Organic Traffic: The traffic that comes to your site via a search engine after a search query is inputted.

4. The Number of Backlinks: The links from outside domains which point to web pages on your domain are called backlinks.

5. Domain Authority: The relevance of your site for certain industries or subject areas.

6. Referrals from Other Sites: The traffic coming on your site from links on other sources/web pages.

7. The Number of Ranking Pages: The total number of pages on your website that currently rank high on search results.

8. Conversions: The number of actions site visitors take on your website. Examples of such actions include ā adding email id to a mailing list, filling out a form, or simply clicking on a link.

9. Brand Mentions: References from other sources or sites that mention your brand, services, products, or company in a direct manner.

10. Page Authority: The relevance of a site page for certain industries or subject areas.

What Are the Expected Results From SEO?

This is another commonly asked question. But again, there is no fixed answer. The kind of results you can expect from SEO and how soon you notice them depends from project to project.

Tip: These questions help in determining the results you are likely to see from SEO:

• How search engine friendly or optimized your site is already?
• How competitive is the market?
• What is the type of optimization you plan to carry out or are currently carrying out?

Note: Some of the reasons you may not be seeing results include:

• You produced substandard content.
• You optimized your content more than it was required.
• You tried a few things here and there and didn’t have a strategy at all.
• You worked hard for some weeks and then just waited for quick results.

9 Things Your SEO Strategy Needs to Succeed

An SEO strategy is a comprehensive plan to increase the search engine rankings of a site in order to get more organic traffic. If you want to know what you should do to succeed in your SEO strategy, then read on:

1. Know Your Audience

Your content will gain trust and authority if you write for your audience. This means, you need to know and understand your audience. Here are some tips that will help you know your audience better:

• Create buyer personas
• Define your value proposition
• Learn how your offerings benefit your audience
• Learn from your competitors
• Check if you are targeting a national or a local audience
• Take the help of analytics to learn about your traffic and demographics

2. Use Keyword-Rich Phrases

Today, implementing SEO “hacks” such as keyword stuffing in your content doesn’t signal algorithms that your content is of quality. However, you can still scrape Google to identify the most relevant keywords and phrases to incorporate into your content in a way that will get the attention of search engine algorithms.

3. Create Impactful Headlines

You can see your rankings soar if you dedicate time and effort to creating headlines that pack a powerful punch. Headlines that are catchy and possess the relevant keywords are the ones that are more likely to rank high.

4. Take Care of Website Issues & Optimize for Mobile Devices

If you notice that people are not finding your site, check the technical SEO aspects of it. One of these aspects includes mobile optimization. This means, apart from desktop, your website should be optimized for mobile browsing as well.

5. Know the Content Types That Rank Well

Ensure you create content keeping these two things in mind — the intent of your site and what your users want.

Here are the types of content you can create:

• Product listings
• Repurposed content
• Long-form content
• Direct answers
• Video and image carousels
• Tools and widgets

6. Add Images

You should add images to your content to:

• Let the search algorithms know that your content has relevancy regarding your target audience’s search intent, and
• Communicate information visually to your audience.

Tip: Learn how to optimize images for better search results in 2022.

Note: When you incorporate images in your posts, ensure you do the technical SEO on the backend, such as sourcing and alt-text, to rank higher on search engines.

7. Get More Reviews

Today, more and more individuals are reading reviews before they decide to purchase the offerings of a business. As per the latest statistics, 93% of consumers read online reviews before going for a purchase.

An increase in reviews for your business means an increase in ranking for you.

You can always contact your past or current customers to get more reviews to help your new customers trust you.

8. Structure Your Posts Carefully

The layouts and structures of your posts play a huge role in SEO rankings.

Hence, always structure your posts with the best practices. We recommend that you format your posts with things such as:

• Short paragraphs of text
• Numbered lists
• Subheaders
• Important Keywords
• Bullet lists
• Related Links
• Infographics
• Videos

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9. Add Interactive Elements

You can also consider adding interactive elements to your site pages. Examples of interactive content include calculators, quizzes, interactive ebooks, and polls. Such elements help readers thoroughly engage with your content.

Wrapping It Up

If you want to know how long it takes for SEO to take effect and give results it can take at least 6 months to start working (if done right!).

In order to get large gains from SEO, we recommend that you be consistent with it. You need to understand that SEO is something that gives long-term results. And hence, you need to do it just right to achieve success from it.

In case you are looking for short-term gains, you can always concentrate on other digital marketing disciplines like social advertising and paid search.

Now, start optimizing and trust the process!

Optimizing is a necessity. It means there is always room for improvement, and the current state is not your final destination. For instance, if you study your business website, you may find that you can optimize it further. However, the real question is why and how to optimize a website.

Below are the benefits and best tips to optimize your website for success!

Benefits of an Optimized Website

Some common benefits of an optimized website include:

A. Organic SEO

Search engines, like Google, consider various factors when determining a website's ranking. Yes, they think beyond keywords. They consider other aspects too ā page load speed, site mapping, metadata, experience on different browsers and screen sizes ā and much more. A well-optimized website nails all these aspects and can quickly secure a high ranking on Google.

B. User Experience

A well-optimized website offers a seamless experience to the users. Your website must have a logical structure, no broken links, consistent displays across all devices, and provide effortless browsing. Remember, a poorly optimized website will push away your users, and your bounce rate will go up. Plus, all your ad spending will go to waste.

C. User Actions

The ultimate aim of many websites is to persuade users to take an action - fill out a form, set up a meeting, make a call, or download something. However, is your website optimized enough to attain this goal? For instance, several websites still depend on those annoying pop-ups to drive more customers or include ineffective CTA that either completely misses or confuses the visitors. An optimized website ensures that the user performs the intended action by including relevant CTAs and zero archaic stuff.

D. Brand Positioning

One of the main objectives of a website is to give a good impression of your brand. We cannot stress this enough, but a well-optimized website gives a long-lasting positive impression. On the other hand, a poorly-optimized website will do the exact opposite.

How to Optimize a Website?

Website optimization has a wide scope, however, you can do so in two simple steps:

A. Analyze

Study your website's performance. Analyze the user behavior and determine what path the user is following and why they bounce to other websites. Look out for broken links, incorrectly named images, and missing pages.

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B. Optimize

Follow these steps:

• Ensure that the on-page optimization is on point. For instance, meta tags and URL slugs should be there.
• Check the loading speed of the pages.
• Make your website mobile-friendly.
• Analyze the backlinks and look for more opportunities.

Tips to Optimize a Website

Some common website optimization tips include:

1. Follow a Holistic Approach

It is one of the most common tips to optimize a website. Don't jump straight into the complexities. Understand all your digital marketing efforts and analyze how they fit with other aspects, such as social media pages. Then, move to auditing your website, examining the on-page elements, off-page elements, technical factors, and user-facing areas.

2. Test Again and Again

Optimization and testing go hand-in-hand. Effective website optimization is based on data-driven results, with the latter based on testing using the correct methodology.

Remember, Website optimization is a continous process. It starts with investigating and then deciding what you want to change. Then, you test/try out new things and analyze the results of the change. The cycle goes on.

3. Analyze the Data

A single slice of data may not be able to offer you much information. However, if you collect and analyze a lot of data, you will get tons of valuable input and may also observe some patterns.

For instance, if a few people visit your site and ignore your CTA, it might not be a major concern. However, if many visitors fail to take action on your CTA, you must make some changes.

Look for pages that get the most traffic and conversions. Then, reverse-engineer those pages' success to get traffic across the entire site. It is one of the most valuable tips for website optimization.

4. Conduct Thorough Keyword Research

There was a time when you could pick up any random keyword and write a 300-word article to rank for it. However, SEO does not work like that anymore; it is much more complicated and refined now.

Use reliable tools to find business-related keywords; make sure they fit your business's ideology and the potential customers' user intent. Try to understand why the user would search for this keyword and what they would look for.

5. Produce Long and Value-Rich Content

SEO experts believe a blog post should ideally be around 1600 words. It can be, of course, more than that.

Before deciding the content length, search the keyword, check all the top 10 blogs in the SERPs, and aim for a word count similar to those blogs.

However, remember length is not everything. The length signifies how much information you are providing to the users. The user should spend a long time on your content and read it to the end. Therefore, ensure your content is also of good quality and has valuable information. It is one of the top tips to optimize a website.

6. Optimize for On-Page SEO

If you are deciding on how to optimize your website, invest in on-page SEO. It will help you optimize your website when developing certain pages. Properly place URL slugs, headlines, subheadlines, and meta tags. Your headline must contain the primary keyword as close to the beginning as possible. The keyword must also be present in the slug and at least one subheadline.

Maintain a keyword density of upto 2.5 percent in the content. Make sure you do not go overboard with the keyword usage, instead, sprinkle the keywords evenly throughout the content and image alt text. Also ensure the keyword is in context with the body text so that Google understands just what you are talking about.

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7. Optimize for Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to optimizing your website through external aspects like guest blogging, social media activity, brand mentions, and influencer marketing. You should know that backlinks can significantly improve your SEO. However, do not get links from small sites with low authority as it can negatively affect your SEO score. Instead, aim for well-respected publications.

8. Make it Mobile-Friendly

With more and more people browsing the internet through their mobile phones, it's imperative to target those potential customers. Plus, Google also prioritizes mobile-friendly websites and gives them a higher rank. You can choose the route of responsive designs. You can download free WordPress themes with responsive design templates which allow you to not worry about adding any extra code.

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9. Speed up the Pages

If you are thinking about how to optimize your website, you should know that page speed significantly impacts your SEO and conversions. If your website doesn't load in a few seconds, you will likely lose your visitors to another, faster website. Similarly, if the contact form does not get submitted in one go, the user will give up and not submit the form a second time. Take the help of Google's PageSpeed Insights to know how fast your site loads and what pages you must fix to make it even faster.

10. Ensure the Website is Secure

Hackers and spammers are always out for their next target. Therefore, secure your website so that you can continue offering valuable content to your audience without fearing being attacked by outsiders.

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You can take the help of a well-established marketing or white-label agency for this, as they have an army of developers and security enthusiasts to weed off any potential security threats from your website. They also run regular security checks on your website to ensure its safety and uncompromised status.

11. Keep Your Website Updated

You must be wondering how to optimize a website. Well, do not underestimate the power of keeping your website updated. It will improve your Google rankings, increase conversions, and reduce the bounce rate. Remember, no one wants to read an outdated blog and buy products that are not relevant anymore. Every person visiting your website should get only the latest that you have to offer in terms of both solutions and products.

In Conclusion

As a business owner, website optimization should be your top priority for ensuring success. It will help you position your business better than your competitors and allow you to offer a smooth user experience to your visitors. Additionally, an optimized website is bound to have higher ranking in search engine result pages. You can optimize your website by following the above-mentioned tips or hiring a white-label agency to do all the difficult tasks for you, while you sit back and do what you do best, run your business!

Marketing to target customers in your specific area can be challenging, especially if you are a small business. You may not have the resources to get in touch with them or the budget to run ads in the local newspaper.

If you are facing the exact same situation, fret not! You can take a few actionable steps to boost your search engine rankings in the local search results.

Here's why we say this:

If you look at the current statistics, 97% of people have conducted a search online for a local business. 28% of local searches result in a purchase.

This means, all you need to do is get your local SEO in order.

In this post, we'll discuss some useful tips to achieve the same.

Implementing these tips will help prospective customers see that you are located near them and they might end up purchasing from you.

Let's begin with these tips.

What Is Meant by Local SEO?

Before we get to the main subject, let's define local SEO first.

Local SEO is an SEO strategy that helps boost the visibility of businesses in local search results on Google.

It can benefit any kind of business serving a geographical area or having a physical location.

Tip: If you carry out a search on Google for any major keywords associated with your business and a map pack (a map with three listings) shows up underneath it, then you can very well increase business growth with the help of local SEO.

14 Tips to Improve Your Local SEO Results

If you want to boost local SEO, it might seem an uphill task at first, but improving it is actually not that difficult.

Take a look at these tips and you will know what we are talking about:

1. Claim Your Google Business Profile

One of the essentials of making your local SEO successful is claiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile (previously called Google My Business).

If the latest statistics are to be believed, 46% of the total searches on Google are for a local service or local business. Google Business Profile helps create an online presence for your business. It will display your profile on Google when people search for your business name.

Google Business Profile views can result in a phone call, website visit, or a direction request.

Tip: Learn and implement Google My Business optimization tips to improve your chances of ranking higher in local search.

2. Carry Out Internal Linking

Setting up internal linking holds immense value in giving your local SEO a boost.

This is because when you do internal linking across your pages, Google gets more context about your site. As a result, the less frequently visited sections get a boost in the search engine results.

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3. Start a Blog

The benefit of starting a blog cannot be emphasized enough.

Insightful, informative, and well-thought-out articles keep individuals on your site for longer and help you rank for more keywords.

Even if you look at the latest statistics, companies with blogs generate 67% more leads every month than those without them.

4. Keep a Check on Your Meta Titles and Descriptions

Meta titles and descriptions are also two of the things you need to keep in check in order to stay on top of local SEO.

A meta title is the text shown on the browser tab and search engine results page to indicate a webpage's topic.

Meta descriptions, on the other hand, usually inform users with a brief summary of what a page is about.

These two, when optimized promptly, hold power to convince your potential customers to visit your site. Think of these two as your shop's window on Google. The window has to be enticing enough to persuade people to enter your shop.

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Make sure you have unique titles and descriptions for each page. Incorporate your SEO keywords as well as the location. See if you can add a compelling CTA as well.

5. Ensure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly

If you look at the current statistics, 76% of people end up visiting a nearby business within 24 hours of searching for it on a smartphone.

This means your website needs to be mobile-friendly.

If you don't have a mobile-friendly site, then your potential customers will easily get annoyed when they view your website on their smartphones. They will quickly leave the site, and it will negatively affect your rankings.

Take a look at some of the steps you can take to optimize your site for mobile:

• Use bigger fonts for easy readability.
• Ensure intuitive UI.
• Use copy and images sparingly. They should be used just to convey the required information.
• Ensure your site loads quickly.

All in all, if you are looking for ways on how to improve local SEO, making your website mobile-friendly should take high priority.

6. Turn Your Attention to Local Keywords

To move ahead in your journey of becoming a player in local SEO, another step you need to take is to focus on local keywords.

Let's take an example to understand why we say this:

A business delivering packages from one place to another will struggle if it tries to rank for the keyword courier delivery service. Instead, it should focus on local keywords such as courier delivery service in X.

When you focus on local keywords, it becomes easier for you to rank on the first page of search engine results.

7. Assess Your Website's Speed

To boost local SEO, you need to review your site speed and improve it if necessary.

This is because a slow-loading site can drastically reduce the time for which people stay on your website. As a result of this, your site's search engine rankings can decrease.

If you see that you need to improve your site speed, you can always hire a web developer. Or, if you don’t want to take this route, you can do certain tweaks yourself, such as:

• Optimize the size of your images. Decrease image size while maintaining their quality with the help of tools such as JPEGmini or Kraken.
• Decrease the use of web fonts.
• Detect 404 errors, which means “page not found.”
• Decrease redirects.

8. Always Keep an Eye on Stats

Today, we all know about the ever-changing nature of the Google Algorithm. We are also aware of the fact that backlinks can vanish, or our competitors can do a finer job at boosting their local SEO.

All of this points to one major conclusion SEO isn't something that you just do once and forget about it.

In order to stay on top of SEO, you need to keep checking your stats.

For this, use tools such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Bing Webmaster Tools. These will help you check how many people visit your site and help track your rank in the search engines as well.

9. Use Location Pages

Another tip you need to implement to boost local SEO is setting up location pages.

Location pages are a prerequisite if your business has multiple locations in a certain area. Ensure these pages include the following (at least):

• Name, contact details, address
• Store hours
• Testimonials
• Individualized descriptions
• Parking availability
• Promotions
• Google Maps attached to the page

Note: When you have multiple locations, you should create unique content for each one of the pages.

Tip: In case you have a single location, you must create an About Us page possessing local, relevant information.

10. Use Local Business Directories to Your Advantage

Another important tip that falls in our list of how to improve local SEO is:

Get your name, phone number, and address into local business directories such as MapQuest, Yelp, and Foursquare.

Here’s a complete list of things you should include in your company listings:

• Phone number and address
• Business name
• A comprehensive description of your business
• A backlink to your site

This information should be consistent across all directories.

11. Ask for Reviews

Search engines such as Google value feedback from customers. Getting five-star reviews is significant for increasing your presence when it comes to local SEO.

Ensure you ask satisfied customers to leave their feedback on your Google Business Profile.

Tip: Reply to both positive and negative reviews.

12. Keep Tabs on Your Competition

Another step that you must take to boost local SEO is to check what your competitors are doing in search engines.

When you check where your rivals are ranking for different keywords, you can determine if it's going to be difficult or easy to win the search engine ranking race.

Here's what you precisely need to do:

Check the keywords they are using, go through their website, check who is linking to them, and so on.

13. Optimize for Voice Search

We all have seen a rapid increase in the usage of voice search over the years.

Keeping this in mind, ensure you optimize for voice search. In other words, you need to optimize for how individuals ask questions when they speak into their devices.

Here's what we recommend you should do:

Make adjustments to the SEO of your content in a way that it fits a more conversational tone of an individual speaking. This is because your prospective customers will use more long-tail keywords while carrying out voice searches.

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For starters, this is what you can do:

• Use the traditional question starters (when, who, why, how, and what)
• Voice searches are often performed when a user quickly needs a particular piece of information. For instance, your target customer can use voice search to know your hours of operation. So, make sure this information is readily available.

14. Earn High-Quality Backlinks

Link signals are important factors for localized results and local pack results.

But you may wonder, what are link signals?

The backlinks pointing to your website are link signals. It’s critical to get high-quality backlinks to improve your local SEO.

Here’s what you can do to get high-quality backlinks:

• Guest blog on reputed websites that have high domain authority.
• Create content on your site that others would want to link to.
• Email or use social media to engage with local influencers and get them to link back to you.

Wrapping It Up

A local SEO strategy helps you bring in leads, sales, and revenue. From claiming your Google Business Profile to optimizing for voice search, implementing these tips can make your local SEO successful.

In the end, we want you to always remember:

The SEO approach for small businesses that concentrate on a specific city or town needs to be considerably different from that of businesses with a nationwide presence.

So plan and act accordingly. Good luck!

Today, video content forms an indispensable part of a powerful digital marketing strategy. It helps boost your brand’s credibility and increases user engagement.

Owing to the extensive benefits of using video as a marketing tool, businesses all around the world are leveraging it to increase brand visibility and growth.

And why not?

As per Social Media Week, 55% of people view online videos daily and 78% people watch online videos weekly.

In this day and age, not having a dedicated video marketing strategy means losing a good chunk of customers.

You, as a business, may also want to leverage the benefits of video content and share engaging and informative videos on the web.

But for this, you need to undertake measures that help rank your videos on Google.

Now, do you know how you can rank your videos on Google and make your brand visible online? Do you know what video rich snippets are and the importance they hold?

In this post, we’ll talk about how to strategically optimize your videos for Google search with video rich snippets. In short, we’ll know the secrets of video snippets success!

Without further ado, let’s jump right in.

What Are Rich Snippets?

Before we dive into video rich snippets, it’s important to know what rich snippets are.

We all know what a SERP (search engine results page) result comprises of:

• A URL
• A meta description
• A title

This is called a “snippet.”

Rich snippets, also known as rich results, are the Google search results consisting of some additional details such as events, reviews, recipes, etc. It helps a searcher better understand a website and make a decision about whether or not they should visit it.

Here’s what rich snippets look like:

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As you can see, these search results are visually more appealing with add-on information shown alongside the URL, title, and description.

Note: Do not get rich snippets confused with featured snippets.

Featured snippets, or as they're also called, answer boxes, place content extracted from a web page in a box. This box takes the zero position on the SERP and answers your query in a way that's bound to grab your attention. The CTR (click-through rate) of featured snippets is significantly high as they are the first things you see on a SERP.

Now, on the other hand, when you talk of rich snippets, they rely on structured data pulled from the HTML of a web page.

What Is a Video Rich Snippet?

Now, it's time we come to the main subject of our post ā video rich snippet.

A video rich snippet is the information appearing on Google with a small video showing up along with the result.

Now, you may wonder what's the purpose of this snippet?

A video rich snippet helps a user learn about a certain search query in a more comprehensive manner with a related video. It works as a brilliant way for businesses looking to boost the CTR (click-through rate) of their search results.

Here's an example of a video rich snippet:

As you can see, video snippets consist of a title, description, and URL like any other snippet. But they also include extra information such as the upload date and duration of the video. They even have a thumbnail.

Now that you know what video rich snippets mean, you must also know one other thing.

Search engines can’t watch your videos, even though they know that your content is out there.

They need to put in a lot of effort to learn what your content is about. Hence, to assist them in this process, you need to incorporate structured data into your content. More on this in the next sections.

What Do You Mean by Structured Data?

According to Google, “structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content.”

Let’s understand structured data with the help of an example.

Suppose you write an article on “how to make a pancake.” A post without structured data won’t share information such as the ingredients used, the time taken to prepare it, and the number of calories.

However, with structured data, you can assist search engines in crawling with relevant information, such as:

“It takes a total of 30 minutes to cook this recipe.”

“It contains 186 calories.”

“This is how it looks.”

And so on.

To help you understand this better, here’s an example of a video rich snippet that appears on entering the search query “how to cook a chicken stew.”

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To add structured data, the majority of websites use Google-recommended schema.org.

The reason for this is that most leading search engines easily understand this markup. You can also call schema markup the language of search engines.

How Can I Add Video Rich Snippets?

Although there are other options to add video rich snippets, we'll discuss the simple option of Google's Structured Data Markup Helper to implement schema.

Adding schema markup to your website is easy, all thanks to the help you get from this helper. Here's what you need to do.

Step 1: Visit the Structured Data Markup Helper Page

Go to the Structured Data Markup Helper page and sign in.

Step 2: Choose the Website Tab

From the two tabs, Website and Email, click on the website option.

Step 3: Choose a Data Type

Google will prompt you to choose a data type to learn how to categorize your data. The options you get here include:

• Job Postings
• Datasets
• Book Reviews
• Events
• Articles
• Local Businesses
• Question & Answer Page
• Products
• Restaurants
• Software Applications
• Movies
• TV Episodes

Step 4: Enter Page HTML or URL

If your page isn't ready and published, you can paste its HTML in the bar present at the bottom. However, if your web page is published, you can paste your URL.

Step 5: Tag the Elements You Wish to Markup

Next, you need to highlight page elements and assign tags to them, which will help you optimize the video for SEO. Ensure you create a comprehensive markup.

Choose the ‘Add missing tags’ button in case you can’t find a tag on the list.

Step 6: Create the HTML

Next, click the ‘Create HTML’ tab that you will find on the top right.

You will see a drop-down menu. We recommend ‌you choose JSON-LD because Google prefers this structured data type. It’s easy to use too.

Copy the code and insert it into your web page. Submit the web page to search engines after you create the HTML.

Test Your Video Rich Snippets

Before you publish your page, it’s crucial that you thoroughly review the inserted schema markup. This step ensures that you fully utilize the potential of video SEO.

Use Google Rich Results Test to quickly gauge the performance of your schema markup.

Note: Even if you have correctly implemented your rich snippets, there’s no guarantee they will be shown in the SERPs immediately afterward. Google talks about the same in its guidelines.

Google can take weeks to crawl and index your page in the proper manner.

So, all you need to do is implement the markup and leave the rest to the search engines. If all goes well you may see results in a few months, if not weeks. And certain changes may be required too.

Tip: You should learn how to fix schema validation errors.

Final Words

As the wheel of content creation and consumption keeps on moving, businesses find it harder to grab the attention of their audience. This makes it even more important to adopt the practice of adding video-rich snippets for video content. If you put in your best work with the tips and tricks we have discussed so far, you will most likely get to boost click-through rates for your pages and drive more traffic to your site.

Now, what are you waiting for? Take steps to stand out on SERPs with a beautiful and intriguing video attached.

As per the latest statistics, the top five organic results account for 67.60% of clicks in Google.

Keeping these statistics in mind, one can easily conclude that top Google rankings can help you attain success in your online business.

Owing to this reason, business owners are constantly searching for ways to improve their Google rankings without getting penalized.

The truth is, there is no one magic button that can help you directly jump to the top of the SERPs. However, there are certain steps you can take to achieve this. It requires dedication, creativity, and persistence to improve your Google ranking, especially because of the dynamic nature of the Google algorithm.

If you too are wondering how to rank high on Google without getting penalized by the algorithm, read on.

1. Learn About the Google Algorithm

As we already know, Google constantly introduces changes to its algorithm. Most of these modifications are not publicly announced, but if you spend time in the inner circle of search engine experts, you'll be able to figure those out!

Here are some major algorithm updates that you should know about:

• Core Update (May 2022): This algorithm update led to noticeable ranking fluctuations.
• Page Experience Update (June 2021): This update affected News alerts, Core Web Vitals, and organic results.
• Core Update (December 2020): This update laid focus on content relevance and quality.
• Mobile-first update (July 2019): Googlebot prioritizes websites that work well on mobile phones.
• Mobile-friendly update (April 2015): Favoring sites that have mobile-friendly versions.
• Pigeon (July 2014): This update worked at the integration of local search results such as Google Maps.
• Hummingbird (August 2013): Focussed on understanding the intent and context behind the search of the user instead of just taking into account the literal words they typed.
• Penguin (April 2012): Targeted spammers and sites that purchase unnatural links to increase their rankings.

Of course, there were other updates too. To learn about all the updates in detail, check out Google Webmaster Central.

2. Assess Your Current Google Ranking

In order to improve your Google ranking, it is essential for you to know where you currently stand. Luckily, there are several tools to help in this regard.

A. Use Ubersuggest to Know Your Website's Keyword Rank

If you have been targeting certain keywords in your page content, visit Ubersuggest so that you can assess your rank.

Firstly, you need to log in. Then, click on the Traffic Overview located under the competitor report. As a next step, enter your domain. Now, you can view the list of SEO keywords you rank for, an overview of your SEO keywords ranking, and the top pages.

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Scroll further down to see the SEO Keywords chart, which lets you know where you rank for main keywords.

B. Check Your Site Speed

Site speed is an important Google ranking factor. If your site loads slowly, you have a significantly lower chance of a high search position. It will impact your ability to convert too. According to the latest statistics, for every 100ms improvement in load time, Walmart witnessed a 1% increase in revenue. So, it is easy to spot the difference a change in load time can create.

To improve your Google rankings, it is vital to check your site speed. Run your own website speed test by using tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom Website Speed Test, and WebPageTest to find out.

C. Check the Overall Health of Your Website

It is crucial to check the health of your site before you begin optimizing.

Have you seen a sudden decrease in organic traffic after years or even months of consistency?

Do you think Google has banned or de-indexed your site?

Thankfully, there are a lot of tools that can help you answer these questions.

For instance, use the MxToolBox Domain Health Report tool to check for major problems in five categories: blacklist, DNS, mail server, general site problems, and web server. You can work towards fixing them from thereon.

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Tip: To know whether you have been penalized by a major algorithm update, try out FE International's Website Penalty Indicator tool.

When you enter the necessary details, such as your domain and database, a graph appears showing your website traffic in relation to major update rollouts.

If you want to check for a Google penalty, you can try Google Search Console. Log in and search for the Security & Manual Actions report. It will tell you if Google has taken manual action against your website.

Note: The report is only shown if a human reviewer has determined that your website breaks the quality guidelines of Google. It doesn't tell you if a change in Google Algorithm has penalized your website.

In case you have a manual penalty, fix the problem and submit a reconsideration request to Google.

3. Assess Vital SEO Metrics

Now it is time to track and measure some of the most important metrics so that you know the areas that need improvement.

A. Organic Traffic

To know how many visitors land on your website, log in to your Google Analytics account. Then, check the acquisition channels report.

B. Organic Traffic Conversions

You must focus on the keywords that bring traffic to your website. Take the help of Google Search Console for the same. It shows the number of clicks you get for certain keywords in organic search results.

4. Ensure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly

Your website must be mobile-friendly and prepared for a mobile-first Google.

Mobile devices account for about half of website traffic around the world. So, if you want a higher ranking, ensure your website performs well on mobile devices.

In January 2017, The Google Webmaster Blog stated:

“Starting today, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as high.”

In 2020, Google began sorting websites by mobile device friendliness (mobile-first indexing). In case your site is difficult to navigate, it will severely affect your rankings.

Fortunately, you can determine if your website is mobile-friendly by taking Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

All you need to do is enter your URL and click on “RUN TEST.”

The result states a “yes or no.” You even get a list of page loading problems. This way, you can take care of these issues and make sure your mobile website runs in a smooth manner.

How to make your Site Mobile-Friendly?

Here’s what you can do to make your website mobile-friendly:

• If your site is built on a famous CMS platform, such as Wix or WordPress, most of the themes are mobile-friendly. You may have to update your website to the most recent version to benefit from these features.
• Don’t use pop-ups that just won’t close.
• Ensure form fields and CTAs use huge, easy-to-tap buttons.

Note: These days, designers can build a mobile-friendly, professional, niche-based website for you if you don’t have one. But there is one thing you should know – they will take several days to build it.

Here’s a solution for this- use DashClicks’ Site tool and create a mobile-friendly, custom-branded agency website in just a few seconds. Pretty cool, right?

Listen Up: Mobile and local search share a strong connection. Google caters to hyper-local search, connecting brands and customers in the smoothest and fastest manner.

Therefore, ensure your Google My Business profile is fully updated and comprehensive.

For a person searching in your area, these profiles can serve as a deciding factor. Claim and update your business listing if you haven't already. Ensure you do the same for other local listing sites as well.

5. Look For Current Penalties and Fix Them

We have already discussed some ways in which Google can penalize you. Some other common practices penalized by Google include:

• Keyword stuffing or hidden text
• Hacked website
• Sneaky redirects
• Cloaking (full version of content is accessible to Google, but users get access to only partial content)
• User-generated spam

Note: You also risk a penalty if your website features less-than-valuable and thin content.

6. Do Keyword Research

If you want to get a lot of traffic and improve your website ranking, you should focus on using keywords relevant to your business.

Conduct keyword research and make a list of the best keywords to optimize your website. Do not forget to look for long-tail keywords, as they are used more often to search on Google.

Tip: To find long-tail keywords, you can use some tools such as keywordtool.io and Ubersuggest.

Refer to our Keyword Research for SEO Guide to find the right keywords to use in the content of your website.

7. Improve Google Rankings With On-Page SEO

After you determine which keywords you want to target to maximize your performance, you are now in the position to make meaningful on-page SEO changes.

How to perfect your on-page SEO to improve your Google rankings? Let's take a deeper look:

A. Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are short excerpts from a webpage that show up in search results of Google in order to quickly answer a question by the user. It is a great way to push your result to the top of the first page.

Here's how to target them:

Brainstorm and think of a question about your industry that searchers are frequently typing into Google. Then, figure out a way to incorporate the answer to it into your website's featured snippets.

B. Optimize Title Tags

Ensure all of your title tags are unique, descriptive, and cater to your targeted keywords. Do not use the same title tags repeatedly.

Some title tag optimization tips you should know are:

• Title tags can make-or-break traffic as well as conversions. So, put your potential visitors before Google.
• Use dashes ( – ) and pipes ( | ) between terms
• If you are an e-commerce company, you can use this format for title tags – [Product’s Name] – [Product’s Category] | [Brand Name]

8. Create Top-Notch Content

When you write amazing content, you provide real value to your site visitors.

When Google sees a large amount of valuable content which is neither filled with keyword stuffing nor spammy, it takes notice. Hence, you should definitely focus on creating top-notch content to boost your Google rankings.

9. Get Backlinks the Right Way

To determine the worth of your website, Google looks to other websites. When you list your website in spammy directory websites or pay for backlinks, you play with fire. Untrustworthy and spammy backlinks can lead to a Google penalty. It is something that’s just not worth it.

Instead of getting poor-quality backlinks, you must work towards earning high-quality alternatives. This way, you get to improve your website ranking.

High-quality links come from authority websites that have earned respect in Google’s eyes over time.

To get these links, you can do guest posting and then get an authority link back to your website.

Tip: To find blogs and websites to guest post for, search for your keywords or industry topics along with a phrase such as “Submit a Guest Post” and “Write For Us.”

Once you know a few blogs to submit a guest post to, you still have one more step to take. You want to see if writing the guest blog is even worth the effort.

For doing this, check the Domain Authority of the site by using a tool called Open Site Explorer.

A high domain authority is ideal, so consider websites that have a number at least larger than 30.

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10. Be Active on Social Media

Search engines such as Google try to take into account as much information available about you as possible when deciding whether to rank you. Social media is great in this regard. It helps search engines determine where they should place you if an individual searches for a topic that falls in your niche.

Search engines consider these questions specifically:

• How updated are your social media accounts?
• How active are your social media accounts?
• How many times does your site’s content get shared on social media platforms?

Also, as per the latest social media statistics, 4.59 billion people use social media around the world. This means, if you leverage social media, it can bring huge traffic to your site, and in turn, increase your search ranking.

Conclusion

After all is said and done, ensure you cover the following in order to improve your Google rankings:

• Dedicate time to entirely understanding your target audience and their needs.
• Conduct research for long-tail keywords and create useful content to solve their problems and make them return for more.
• Keep producing valuable content and promote it in every way you can.

Bottom line, to improve your Google rankings without getting penalized, you need to create valuable content, presented in a helpful manner. Also, keep in mind the things Google can penalize you for, such as bad linking practices, over-optimization, and duplicate content.

Also remember, it can take up to 6 months for your content to show up in the search results.

Now that you know how to rank higher on google without getting penalized, which of the above-mentioned ways you are going to start with first? Do let us know in the comments!

Showing up on the first page SERPs isn't enough if the audience shows no interest in your content. Instead of concentrating all your efforts on producing local SEO content to achieve the top position on SERPs, you need to fathom what converts searchers into readers, and readers into customers. We know the answer - you achieve this when you work towards improving your organic CTR.

Organic click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of searchers clicking on a search engine result - the result we are talking about here is your URL.

Increasing organic CTR means gaining more traffic for your website. You need to get every bit of traffic you can as the share of clicks being distributed by Google is on a continuous decline (because of SERP features and paid ads looking less similar to paid ads).

If you concentrate your efforts on increasing organic CTR, you can also improve your Google ranking. When your URL is frequently clicked on and visited, the search engine algorithm considers your page as relevant and valuable for future queries that contain your content keywords.

Organic CTR, although primarily dependent on ranking position (the more individuals see your content, the more the likelihood of them clicking), is also influenced by a number of other factors.

It is now time we discuss the different ways in which you can improve your organic CTR. Let's start:

1. Structure Content for Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are rich search results appearing in the form of a content box on SERPs. These brief excerpts attempt to provide relevant answers based on the user's query. Placed at the top of the SERPs below the paid ads and above the organic search results, featured snippets content is automatically extracted from webpages that Google has indexed.

According to a study by HubSpot, the organic CTR for their high-volume keywords rose by over 114% when the results appeared as featured snippets. So, for the purpose of increasing your CTR, you can think about structuring content for featured snippets.

When you check the SERPs of your primary keyword and a featured snippet appears, make it a point to structure your content similar to the way the featured snippet is showing their answers.

For instance, if a list-based snippet appears, ensure your content is also designed in a numbered list format.

2. Pay Attention to Your Titles

People don't see much on the SERPs other than your titles. If you want individuals to click, you must make it a point to get creative with your titles.

The different ways to improve your titles are:

• Use Brackets in Your Title: Brackets in headlines are known to increase clicks.
• Make it a Numbered List: Numbers in titles contribute to an increase in CTR.
• Don't Use Heavy Title Tags: They are simply boring and don't encourage more clicks.

3. Use Title Case

In sentence case, most major and minor words are lowercase. On the other hand, in title case, major words are capitalized and most of the minor words are lowercase.

Use title case because it makes the heading stand out, leading to more clicks.

4. Improve Page Load Time

When you ensure that your website loads as quickly as possible, it helps you to drastically improve your organic CTR. This is because a click is considered only if the visitor lands on your site. In case your page load time is lagging, the click may not occur.

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Note: SEO-friendly website is optimized for speed and fast loading time. So, ensure your website is SEO-friendly for the purpose of boosting your organic CTR. In case you need an SEO-friendly, professional, niche-based website, then you must know it takes several days to build one. However, if you use DashClicks' site tool, you can make an SEO-friendly, custom-branded agency website in just a few seconds. Pretty cool, isn't it?

5. Get Emotional

When you incorporate emotion, people notice it. Emotion works as a powerful psychological tool that can encourage clicks.

You can always use emotional words in your titles or descriptions, such as instant, proven, best, secret, etc.

6. Optimize Your Page URLs

Your page URL is one of the pieces of information displayed on the SERPs. So, you must optimize it to boost your organic CTR. Here's how you can do this:

• Make it as descriptive as you can.
• Incorporate your keyword naturally in your URL (so that the core topic is highlighted to the users).
• Keep it short to make it look attractive and easy on the eye.

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7. Use Long-Tail Keywords

One of the most simple ways to increase organic CTR is to use long-tail keywords, particularly in your title tags and headings.

Owing to their highly descriptive nature, long-tail keywords match your content to search intent.

When users see a long-tail keyword that can answer what they are looking for, they click on the URL.

Now, how do you research long-tail keywords?

Use keyword research tools such as Ubersuggest. Enter the seed keyword in the search bar and click on search. Then select Keyword Ideas located in the left sidebar. Now, you can choose the relevant keywords for your post from the list of keyword ideas.

8. Write Effective Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are the snippets of text shown below the title tag in SERPs. When you write attractive meta descriptions, you tell users about your page and compel them to click on the result.

Here's how you can optimize your meta description:

• Use keywords to communicate to the users that your article can provide an answer to their problem.
• Make it as relevant and specific as you can.
• Use powerful and persuasive language.
• If possible, add a CTA such as find out how or learn more.
• Answer the user's question in the meta description itself.

9. Create Posts With Images

A lot of people use images in their posts. But did you know it can boost your organic CTR? Images in your content are a great way to increase engagement. They are also a necessary ingredient to your content popping up in infoboxes and featured snippets on the SERPs.

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Apart from this, your URL is more likely to be clicked when users check search results in the images section of Google.

For this to work, make it a point to follow image SEO best practices such as adding alt text and precisely naming your images.

10. Use the Listicle Format

Listicles is an article made of a list that is readable and snackable - our brains just love them! So, make sure to include them in your content strategy to boost organic clicks. Ensure you include numbers in your title tag and headlines. We say so because the users get convinced that they are about to open an easy-to-reach article.

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Tip: Listicles also increase the likelihood of appearing in featured snippets.

11. Check for CTR Winners and Losers

Another step you should take to boost your organic CTR is to calculate the winners and losers of your existing pages. This will show which pages, content types, and titles are top-performing and which are performing poorly. For this, you use Google Analytics.

First, visit Acquisition then Search Console, and then Queries and know which Google searches lead to your existing pages.

The report will display important information such as impressions, CTR, clicks, and the average SERP position of your current pages. It also displays sessions, bounce rates, conversions, and other useful data. You can also check your landing pages in the same menu.

Using these reports, you can check what is working and what isn't. Then, you can visit old web content and pages to optimize them to boost your organic CTR.

12. Learn Copywriting Basics

The art of copywriting studies psychology to fathom the reason people click and how to optimize content so that they click. Quality copywriting is known to increase conversion.

Some copywriting hacks you should know in order to boost your CTR are:

A. Make Your Title a Question

We all know that the use of voice search is increasing. Individuals are speaking full-sentence questions into Google. So, ensure you make your title a question to increase CTR.

Use a tool called Answer the Public to find popular questions on your subject and select the relevant ones as your title.

B. Check Out Title Templates

Research about how to create intriguing and clever titles. Here are some examples:

• The Seven Benefits of Aloe Vera (Number Five Will Shock You!)
• Most People Have Trouble Naming 17/25 Of These Things Do You?

13. Update Your Title Tag to Include the Current Year

A step that automatically increases your CTR is when you add the current year to your title tag. Google tends to show results that have the year in the title, specifically in industries that change at a rapid pace (such as marketing).

Whenever you add the year to your title tag, ensure you also update the content to match the ongoing trends.

14. Add a Personal Touch

Take a look at this title of an article: We Tried 5 Slack Alternatives during 5 Weeks (Our Team Feedback)

The article appears to be human-friendly and opinion-based. These types of articles grab a lot of eyeballs and hence improve your organic CTR. So, share your experience and opinion in your articles wherever applicable. Also, make it a point to add words such as our team, we've tried, our feedback in the article titles.

15. Use Yoast Preview (in WordPress)

For WordPress users, Yoast is an SEO tool that helps boost your organic CTR. Before publishing your post, preview your snippet the way it will be displayed on SERPs. Then, make any changes based on the recommendations provided.

When you preview your snippet, you can see if it actually makes sense!

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16. A/B Test Headlines on Social Media

Craft such a headline that it compels users to click on your article. But, how to know if your headline will resonate with your target audience?

We know the answer - test it on social media platforms.

Once you optimize your headline, test it by sharing your article with your audience on social media. Wait for a few days and then change the headline and re-publish the article again. Wait for the exact number of days you waited for the previous post. Then, when the time is over, check the engagement rates for both the posts.

The headline with the most engagement is the one you should choose! This A/B test works even better if you have a large audience base on social media.

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17. Use Negative or Positive Sentiment

The use of titles with either negative or positive sentiment is known to increase organic CTR, but even today, you can see titles with a neutral sentiment.

To understand what we are saying, check out these examples:

• Positive: 15 Incredible Ways to Increase Sales Tremendously
• Neutral: 15 Ways to Boost Sales
• Negative: 15 Terrible Mistakes That Kill Sales And Ruin A Business

Note: The average organic CTR is between 3-5%. But, it is important to note that a good organic CTR is benchmarked against your own CTR curve and not against industry standards.

Conclusion

Organic click-through rate is a crucial metric that you should track as it impacts the amount of traffic that comes to your site and your rankings.

Having a high CTR is great for your business as your website gets more traffic. It also means more brand awareness because your rankings improve.

Today, with so many ways to improve organic CTRs, business and website owners can easily get the desired outcome.

Now, it is our turn to ask a question, which of these strategies will you use to boost your organic CTR?