SEO website optimization in 2023? 10 tips you should apply!
SEO website optimization in 2023?
As time goes by, a strong presence of every company in the digital world becomes more and more important. That is why it is most important for every website to have a clear SEO strategy. The main goal of any SEO website optimization strategy is for your website to rank as high as possible on all search engines.
Each page of the website should be well optimized so that the search engine’s algorithm indexes each page well and the user experience is as good as possible, and the number of clicks is as high as possible.
That is why it is important to do a quality search for relevant keywords for your business. For our market, Google is the most important, so we will go in that direction. You have to keep in mind that Google’s algorithm changes on a daily basis, but for most of us the most important are the Google core updates that affect all participants in Google searches.
That’s when the biggest breaks or ups and downs of websites happen.
It is very important to follow the Google core update in order to understand what the possible errors are and how to fix them the easiest way. There are many tools for this, and we will mention some of them later.
This is why website SEO is constantly changing because Google is always looking for new and better ways to improve search results. Sometimes it is very successful, but often the opposite also happens. This means that all SEO people have a serious task to adapt to these changes.
That is why we will mention several SEO trends that, in our opinion, will be important in 2023.
Keyword research in 2023
As before, keyword research will be very important in 2023 as well. For those who don’t know keywords or Keyword in English are phrases that people type into the search engine to get the result they are looking for.
They can be short tail (one to two words) or long tail (several words).
Both are important, each in their own way, but it all depends on what you want to achieve. That’s why it’s important to classify all keywords into one of four basic categories.
They are:
-
Commercial keywords
-
Informational keywords
-
Navigation keywords
-
Transactional keywords
You need to have a good understanding of who your audience is and learn as much as possible about them to make it easier for you to write content that will be tailored to them. Target keywords where the competition is not that strong and which has a decent search volume.
If you’re not sure or don’t have much experience in content writing, hire a professional. Refresh some old content and insert some keywords used by your competitors.
If you want a tool that will help you with keyword research, we recommend SemRush.
Google search without clicks
This is known as Zero-Click Searches and is essentially a search without clicks. This refers to the result in the search engine that answers directly to the query and is located at the top of the Google page. These are most often the results where the answer to your question is given immediately, so there is no need to enter the website.
This method is great because it gives direct answers and Google is using it more and more often.
This method of search has become very popular with the increase of voice searches that require short and quick answers to questions.
Schema.org can be of great help to embed structured data markup on your web page.
This will make it easier for Google to convert the content into readable data.
The SEO community is divided on how to respond to this rapidly growing trend of click-free search. Because many websites are already losing organic traffic on Google.
Google already has a lot of functions that help visitors through ads or direct conversions to, for example, book a hotel, buy a plane ticket or rent a vehicle in a rent a car.
That’s why it’s important for everyone involved in digital marketing to make a good strategy to continue to attract new visitors organically and to study well the topics and keywords for which they are optimizing website pages.
If you have this problem, try to shift your focus to other keywords and provide your visitors with new content that will be essential to ensure your long-term organic traffic growth.
Try to make the content on the website great. Use E-A-T
In order to be successful on Google, you need to create the best possible content and the way Google requires it. Just be careful not to fall into the trap, because often writers forget that people will read their writing. That’s why you try to make the text readable and interesting to the readers, and which, on the other hand, will be helpful to the readers.
As everywhere there is great competition in all niches. So the only way to differentiate yourself from most websites is to have content that is different and has a very different approach.
Only such texts can become Evergreen!
And to create Evergreen content, use the E-A-T concept. E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness. In fact, these are the three factors that Google uses to evaluate the content of a website. Because all updates to Google’s algorithm are aimed at providing users with reliable and better answers.
That’s why it’s very important to follow the E-A-T guidelines to get the best possible results.
If you’re still publishing mediocre quality content, Google won’t reward you. So try to write quality content that will help people and where you will cover all the doubts. Do not use words that are incomprehensible to most.
The use of photos, videos and infographics is more than recommended.
So take your time, create interesting content and build your name in the online community.
Google Voice Search
This search method is very popular in the West, but it is slowly making its way into our market as well. Google voice search is part of SEO optimization in order to have the best possible position for voice searches. We can already say that it is the next big thing in the SEO world.
In some countries, more than 50% of people use this search method. And this is a consequence of the increasing popularity of services such as Amazon Alexa or Google Home.
That is why it is very important to prepare for Google voice search in 2023.
In order to apply this practice as best as possible, try to find the questions that your audience asks. If you ever get stuck, you can go to answerthepublic.com for help. It has changed since Neil Patel took it over, but it can still be helpful to get to the relevant questions.
Once you have a satisfactory list of relevant questions, you can create a question and answer (FAQ) section at the end of each important page.
Keep in mind that most voice searches on Google are local in nature.
For Google voice searches, it is essential that you form questions and provide short and clear answers to them.
For Google voice searches, it is essential that you form questions and provide short and clear answers to them.
This will make it easier for you to ask and answer questions well. Make your headlines powerful and never forget the power of subtitles!
Don’t forget the SEO audit
A large number of website owners neglect the technical aspects of their website. Because it’s not just what you see on the monitor that matters. It is important that your website meets as many of the requirements of the Google algorithm as possible.
Categories, wasting link juice, loading speed, site structure and much more are important. If you ignore these facts you can lose a lot.
You must do an SEO audit at least once a month for a website you care about.
The biggest job will be the first time, later it will go much faster and it will be much shorter. For the most accurate data, you must use Google Search Console. Of the paid ones, we recommend Screaming Frog or Sitebulb.
Just so you know it doesn’t matter the year, an audit of every website will be needed as long as it exists. A website SEO audit is a process that gives you an in-depth review of your website. Here it is not necessary to emphasize what is good, but what is wrong should be corrected.
For us, only two tools are enough for each SEO audit. They are SemRush and Screaming Frog.
And of course Google Search Console, if available.
The first two tools are paid, but you can always try them out with a 30-day free trial. With them, you will have a detailed insight into what needs to be corrected.
They are not complicated and you will quickly see how many good functions they have.
Mobile SEO or optimization for mobile devices
This is very important since a few years ago, Google started indexing all pages in the version for mobile devices. Because almost 2/3 of all searches are done via mobile phones and that percentage is still growing. That’s why it’s important to prepare your site for mobile devices first when creating any website.
By Mobile SEO we mean optimization for mobile phones and tablets. However, mobile phones are still much more important.
For example, do you know what the loading speed of your website is?
You can do a basic check on Google’s tool at pagespeed.web.dev. There you will be able to see results for mobile devices and desktop. If you have no experience with this tool, it is important that all parameters are in green. If not, find someone to help you.
Every 0.1 second improvement in load time can increase conversion rate by 8%.
So if you want to achieve better results with your website, be sure to reduce your page load time.
On the page we mentioned, you can find all the reasons why loading is slow. If you don’t have one, it wouldn’t hurt to install a caching plugin.
In our experience, WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache will be perfect for you.
Because page caching ultimately leads to making your site even faster. Enable lazy loading and optimize the size of all images on every page.
And make sure the content is easy to read on a mobile phone.
Technical SEO and UI/UX design
Content is very important, but there are other factors that should not be overlooked. Some of those factors are exactly UI and UX.
UI is actually User Interface and it represents icons, buttons, screens, switches and all other visual elements that you use on a website.
UX is User Experience and it is the process of creation by designers that will help users get the best possible answers and a good experience of using a website, including features, design, usability and branding.
Therefore, for the ranking of your website in 2023, it will be important that the website is easy to use and can be easily reviewed.
Take care that SEO does not cover only a few of the most important pages and do not rely only on a few keywords.
We will give you some tips on how to improve UI/UX through search engine optimization (SEO).
- Check the Bounce Rate regularly and try to understand why this is happening on some pages. From our experience, it can be loading speed, use of wrong keywords or some omission that visitors perceive as an error on your website.
- Track the length of visits to know how long visitors stay on your site on average. Try an A/B test. This way you will understand which elements are working well and which are ripe for change.
- Write headlines that grab attention.
- Do not create overly extensive navigation menus. Make menu access easy to access your site’s content.
Web page loading speed
This is less important for positioning on Google, but plays a big role with visitors. Because no one will wait long for your site to appear. That’s why it’s important to optimize your website’s loading speed.
As a first aid, we suggest Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
If you don’t want to dig deeper, see the core web vitals assessment. There are three items there and it is important that they are all in green. These are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). There are always two results, for mobile and desktop.
However, if you want a fast page, be sure to view the full result.
We will give you a few more tips regarding the loading speed of web pages:
-
Be sure to use compressed form of CSS, HTML and JavaScript files.
-
Compressing files over 150kb is considered mandatory.
-
Check if you have any redundant redirects as they take extra time to load.
-
Don’t forget caching. This will avoid Google reloading the entire page when someone returns to your website.
-
If you are not a local website, you must use a CDN (content delivery network).
-
Reduce the size of your photos and make sure they are in the correct format.
Although Google considers website loading speed to be a less important factor, it affects user satisfaction and as a result leads to increased conversions. Be sure to check the hosting because it often happens that the package or service does not meet your needs.
Take some time and check out what users are saying about other hosting companies.
Building quality backlinks
If you want the first page, building quality backlinks is essential. After onpage optimization, it is the next logical thing.
When it comes to them, quality is always more important than quantity. Without quality backlinks, the entire work on the website can be almost in vain.
Building external links to your website takes a lot of time and requires a lot of patience. In the past, this was solved by buying backlinks, while today Google strictly prohibits it and penalizes it drastically. We don’t advise you to do this because it’s only a matter of time before Google discovers it after some algorithm update.
Avoid everything that belongs to black hat techniques.
So create unique and quality content that will bring you links to your website. Even if they are from your niche, Google will reward you for it.
If you are able, ask your colleagues to give you a dofollow backlink, and it will be perfect if they are from your industry.
Guest blogging backlinks have worked very well for us because not only do you get a link from another website, but they are very helpful in developing your brand. This marketing technique certainly works and you can benefit from it in multiple ways.
We check toxic backlinks for our clients once a month, and we advise you to do the same.
A very handy tool for that is Semrush. There you can easily determine which websites are in question and you can easily create a disavow file that you will later publish in the Google Seargh Console. That’s the best way to “give them up”.
And it can only help you on Google!
There are no SEO shortcuts
SEO shortcuts can only bring you trouble in the long run.
Here we will give you some examples of what not to do:
-
Stuffing texts with keywords more than necessary. This is an old technique that some SEO experts and webmasters still use. However, today Google no longer ignores it but also punishes it. It boils down to the fact that the text is meaningless and consists only of keywords. Once the density of keywords was important, today it is not anymore!
-
Copying content. A well-known technique that many still use. Only Google solved that problem in 2011 with an update known as “Panda”. To know that the text you copied is ignored by Google, and in some cases penalized. The text that is indexed first is considered the original, and all the rest are copies that Google ignores.
-
Content spinning. This is popular in the black hat community and there are many tools for this technique. They will help you get nonsense text that uses different variations of keywords. As a result, there is a confused text that does not make any sense.
-
Buying backlinks. Forget about shopping through various platforms because you will only harm yourself. If you really have to buy, but only verified and quality external links. We advise you only domestic websites, especially from your niche.
-
Excessive use of anchor text. Here we mean internal links. It is mandatory for every page because this way you connect the pages on your website and make the work of Google’s crawler easier. However, if you go too far with linking, Google can penalize you for over-optimized content.
Conclusion
You must be wondering if SEO has a future? The answer is yes!
Because there are almost 2 billion websites. And that number is only growing as people rely more and more on search engines like Google. It will exist as long as there are websites. The rules will change, and we already notice that with every Google core update.
Its algorithm changes so quickly because it wants to give users the fastest possible way to get answers to questions or find the product they need.
Always focus more on the needs of your customers and not on search engine rules.
If you want to improve the SEO website optimization of your site in 2023, remember these few tips:
- Only target keywords that are relevant to your business or brand.
- Build quality backlinks because they are very important in the digital world.
- Improve your UI/UX design.
- Reduce the loading speed of your web pages.
- Analyze your competitors’ websites and find the answers.
- Write high-quality and original content.
- Do regular checks of the website in order to spot potential problems in time.
- Use free tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console.