If you’ve learned how to make a website, but your website’s search engine ranking sucks, chances are that you are not doing the required amount of search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO is a combination of various strategies and techniques used to attract traffic to a website and improve the ranking on the search engine results page (SERP).

Whether you have just launched a website or desire to generate more traffic to an existing site, implementing a few SEO tactics can go a long way in improving your brand visibility and search engine ranking.

Why does my website suck?

Here are five sure-fire signs that your website needs serious fixing, and handy tips to enhance your online ranking and boost conversions.

Source: https://pixabay.com/en/computer-summary-chart-business-767776/

Your website content isn’t engaging

Quality content continues to be a critical factor for gaining traffic and improving the ranking of a website. You may have a great web design and all the products that the audience is looking for. However, if your content is not worthy of attention, then your site is bound to experience poor traffic and inbound links, killing your conversion rate.

In fact, Google Panda, a search result ranking algorithm, aims at enforcing high-quality content by imposing an algorithmic penalty on websites that post poor content.  

Use the following self-reflective questions to know whether or not your content is appealing enough:  

• Who is your target audience?
• Who are your competitors?
• Put yourself in the readers’ shoes and think – what type of content would encourage them to share it with other readers?
• Do you see any unaddressed gaps in audience education?
• What feedback or comments have you received from readers about your content offerings?

With the answers to the above questions, you will be able to chart out a clear content strategy for your target audience. Building a strong content strategy will not only attract traffic to your website, but give your customers a solid reason to depend on you for valuable information.

Your site doesn’t have a responsive design

The increased use of smartphones and tablets has made mobile viewing a standard. Smart Insights, a market research firm, has estimated that by the year 2019, 58 percent of all online content will be viewed using mobiles and other connected devices, with desktop viewing reducing to 42 percent.

Moreover, Google prefers websites built with responsible web frameworks and has altered its algorithm to favor sites that are mobile-friendly. Thus, failing to invest in a responsive design can sound a death knell for your website.

Online tools like Responsive Website Design Tester and Responsinator can give you a glimpse of how your site will look on the most popular devices, thereby, enabling you to make your website responsive and mobile-friendly.

Here are a few of the best SEO friendly WordPress themes from our friends at CompeteThemes to help you select the best responsive design for your website.

You haven’t built a healthy inbound link profile

Inbound links (or backlinks) are links on other web pages that enable your audience and the search engine to find your website or blog. These links also help you to cultivate relationships in your industry. Furthermore, search engines consider the quantity and quality of inbound links to increase your website ranking.

Inbound links from websites with .gov, .org, and .edu domains or in-industry authority websites are considered as good-quality, as these reputable websites have visited your site and given you a stamp of approval (approving your inbound link).

Also, backlinks should be relevant to your website content, audience, and industry. For example, if you have a fashion blog, inbound links from a reputable fashion magazine or fashion house will help you improve your search engine ranking and direct fashionistas to your website.

No one can ignore good-quality and value-adding content. In order to earn backlinks from reputable websites, start by consistently creating great blog content for your website, encouraging people to connect to it.

Several websites and media outlets allow bloggers to submit original and interesting articles on the topics relevant to their readership. Guest blog posting on authoritative and well-known websites in your industry can also help you get inbound links.

Expert roundups help build relationships with influencers in your industry while offering value-added insights to your audience. These influencers may later offer you guest post opportunities with solid backlinks, helping you rank high in SERP.

While executing a backlink strategy is a tough and scrappy process, there are many software options that can help along the way. Tools such as Ahrefs and SEMRush, are great solutions for monitoring new backlinks and backlink opportunities, while BuzzStream is a great platform for managing backlink outreach.

Your keyword targeting strategy sucks

It all begins with the words the user types in the search box. If no one is using your targeted keywords, it means you haven’t invested enough in researching what your audience is seeking.

Moreover, 50 percent of search queries on Google are four words or longer. Consequently, search engine algorithms have gotten smarter and are focused on the intent behind a user’s search. So if you are using short-tail keywords, you may face intense competition and low conversion rate.

Effective keyword research is a high-return investment that helps you understand your audience, build a strong content strategy, enhance your marketing effectiveness, and drive traffic to your website. Long-tail keywords help your audience obtain specific content based on what they are looking for.

Make a seed list of all the keywords pertaining to your brand and the industry. Digital analytics software tools, such as Google Webmaster, Wordstream’s tool, and Soovle, can help you build a rich keyword list and know what search words are trending.

Classify the keywords into four categories, namely brand words; product words; substitute, complementary, or competitor product words; and audience words, based on how effective they are at converting visitors.

For instance, the online jewelry store BlueStone can use the following keywords to attract visitors and increase the website’s conversion rate.

Categorizing your keyword list will help you cater to the intent behind an individual’s search and filter out irrelevant keywords, developing a universe of effective terms and increasing the traffic on your website. 

Your website takes forever to load

Research shows 47 percent of visitors expect a webpage to load in two seconds or less, and 40 percent of visitors will abandon a website that takes longer than three seconds to load. A poor online experience can ruin your business image, dissuading customers from visiting your website in the future. Website loading time is a major contributor to increased bounce rate and poor SEO rankings.

Using a simple webpage layout will reduce the number of HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests (comprising heavy JavaScript, CSS, video, and image files) your website needs to send to load the web pages. A simple web design will boost your site speed, improving your visitors’ browsing experience.

Also, remember to optimize the images by scaling them before uploading the files on the website. Image compression tools, like tinypng, can help you reduce the size of image files without compromising on quality.

As we mentioned previously, have mobile-responsive website is important. But how quickly those mobile pages load is important too. Websites should look to speed up their websites with AMP mobile pages.

Here is a great resource to help speed up your website's load time.

Now it's time to get your website to rank

When people look for products and services pertaining to your industry, you obviously want your website to appear as high as possible in the SERP.

If you have discovered that your website ranking is not up to the mark, use the information shared in this post to attract traffic to your site and improve your online presence.  

Be sure to check out G2 Crowd’s SEO software and SEO service providers categories for the best tools and agencies to help manage your website’s SEO needs.