Stronger Organic Traffic for 2022: SEO Best Practices to Follow

Every SEO company knows that Google is always improving and expanding its algorithms to better serve its users. As a result, the search engine results pages (SERPs) have changed.  

Over the years, Google has mastered the art of analyzing search intent and answering queries with relevant web pages, as well as maximizing its advertising space by directing people to ads instead of organic listings.  

This is why Google has become everybody’s go-to search engine, whether they’re looking stuff up online or trying to promote their company.

However, if you’re among those businesses that rely heavily on Google’s organic search traffic to generate leads, this is bad news. You’ll have a difficult time ranking in the SERPs.  

Does this mean that SEO is no longer relevant and your business should just resort to paid ads? Absolutely not! SEO in West Palm Beach is and will always be relevant.  

Since the SERPs are constantly evolving (there's nothing we can do about that), what you should just focus on right now is to find the right tips and use the best strategy to boost your organic traffic this 2022.  

In this article, we will discuss the top SEO best practices you should follow to boost your organic traffic next year.  

Without any more delays, let’s get started.

SEO Best Practices to Drive More Organic Traffic to Your Site

Provide Excellent User Experience

Google’s goal, just like any other search engine, is to provide the best possible results for all search queries users make on the platform. It’s one of the main reasons why it keeps updating its algorithm.  

If it fails to serve its users with relevant content, these people are less likely to use Google again.  

This is why Google’s core updates are usually content-related, although the recent update released in June 2021 called the “Core Web Vitals” is centered around user experience.  

Google saw that it’s no longer enough for modern users to just receive relevant search results. They want access to websites that are mobile-friendly, fast-loading, easy to navigate and contain high-quality content too. Hence, the birth of Core Web Vitals.  

Core Web Vitals are page experience signals that are in a website's overall user experience.  

• Page loading speed – The amount of time it takes for your web pages to load.
• First Input Delay – Measures the time it takes for your website to respond from when a user interacts with it, like clicking a link or tapping on a button. In short, it refers to your site’s responsiveness.  
• Cumulative Layout Shift – Measures visual stability and helps assess how frequently your website visitors experience unexpected layout shifts. For example, you’re about to click on a link but the text suddenly moves so you end up tapping something else.  

This 2022, consider Google’s desire to constantly serve its users with the best results when optimizing your site for SEO.  

Since we know that people not only want relevant search results but also a great user experience, you should focus on both your site’s quality and its content.

This will help get visitors to stay on your site longer, which can ultimately boost your ranking on SERPs.  

The logic behind this is that if a user spends more time on your site, it’s most likely because they find it useful, engaging, or entertaining. With Google aiming to serve its users only the best results, it will push sites with high retention rates and engagement rates to the top of the SERPs.  

Here are some tips on how to provide your audience the best possible experience:  

• Boost your page speed: Having a fast website improves your organic ranking and helps boost your conversions. Optimize your website so that it loads within three seconds or less, whether on mobile or desktop.  
• Make your posts easy to read: Optimize the content of your website for readability. Write high-quality content, limit each paragraph to three to four sentences only, and structure your content with sub-headers.  
• Utilize white space wisely: To help your readers scan through your content easily and better understand what your blog posts are all about, break up your sentences and make use of whitespace by adding images and other visuals in your content.  

• Analyze how people navigate and interact with your site: This will give you a better understanding of the possible roadblocks that are stopping users from navigating smoothly across your site. It can also spark ideas for improvement.  
• Optimize for mobile: Since March 2021, Google has switched to 100% mobile-first indexing. In other words, mobile-optimized websites are going to be crawled first over non-mobile-optimized sites.  

Use Entity-Based SEO

Entity-based SEO focuses on keywords AND context to define a search’s true intent, enabling search engines to provide users with accurate and more relevant results.  

To boost your organic ranking, help search engines better understand what your website is all about by optimizing your content for entity-based SEO.  

One way is by including words or terms relevant to your niche in your meta titles or inside the title tags to provide search engines context.  

Context is crucial because there are a lot of keywords and phrases out there that have multiple meanings. Take the word “apple" for example, the term could refer to a fruit or a brand.  

This is also where internal links and domain authority come in handy. Linking to relevant, authoritative sources helps establish context and boosts the trustworthiness of your page.

Google ranks pages that are trustworthy, authoritative, and shows expertise. So, to boost your organic ranking this 2022, your goal is to help Google recognize your relevance to specific search queries by establishing the context and by optimizing your website for E-A-T.

If you’re not aware, E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s a factor that Google uses to assess the overall quality of a site.  

Optimize Your Content

Since the SERPs are constantly changing, you must regularly optimize your content for it to increase your chances of ranking organically. Below are some content optimization tips for 2022:

1. Find the right word count for your content

Every query demands different kinds of answers. Some queries are resolved quickly via featured snippets, others are better served with long-form content, while some work best with videos.  

Find out what kind of depth is required to satisfy your target audience’s queries. Are they looking for listicles? Video tutorials? In-depth articles?  

Once you identify the appropriate word count and the type of content your ideal customers want from you, it’ll be easier to rank.  

2. Use long-tail keywords

Earlier, we mentioned the importance of incorporating terms that establish context into your keywords to help Google better understand your content’s relevance to certain queries.  

This is where long-tail keywords come into the picture. Long-tail keywords contain longer and more specific words. While they tend to have lower search volume, they target searchers who are closer to making a purchase.

By targeting the right long-tail keywords for your content, you can appear in front of users exactly when they need you and when they’re ready to convert.

3. Experiment with your meta titles to optimize CTR

Your meta titles have the power to convince users to click on your search results, so use them to your advantage.  

Unfortunately, some marketers focus on writing keyword-rich titles instead of writing compelling copies to attract clicks. No doubt, establishing relevance is important. However, don't forget to consider how people decide on which search results to choose. So, don’t be afraid to experiment with your meta titles. It’s the only way you’ll know what works and what doesn’t with your target audience.  

4. Determine content with decreasing traffic

Keeping your content fresh and relevant to your target audience helps generate more traffic to your site.  

That said, identify which of your blog posts have stopped driving traffic or ranking for relevant queries.  

Over time, posts normally get outdated, but this doesn't mean that they're useless. Keep your content fresh by updating stats and facts, the year mentioned in the article, and the information you provide your readers in general. Don't forget to replace links that no longer work with new ones.  

5. Determine any content gap

Another way to optimize your content is to conduct a content gap analysis. This lets you determine how your current content is doing compared to your desired content performance.  

You’ll gain insights on how to improve your content, discover new topics your audience wants from you, and close gaps in the process.  

6. Create content that aligns with your audience's search intent

Keep in mind that consumers are looking for solutions to their problems or how to fulfill a need or want.

To provide them content that sufficiently answers their questions, consider the intent behind every query they make.  

What is it that they really want to know? What problems are they trying to solve? How do they want to solve them?

Try to cover questions and subtopics that are related to their queries. That way, you can answer questions before your audience even gets the chance to think about asking, increasing your odds of getting featured in the snippets.  

      7. Create more video content‍

Because video is the most popular type of content, Google is now putting video snippets next to search results.  

Creating more video content and optimizing them for SEO in West Palm Beach will no doubt boost your search ranking organically. Convert your older blog posts into videos, and do live videos, Instagram Reels and TikTok videos.  

Optimize for Voice and Mobile

You probably know by now that Google has gone mobile-first. If not, it means that the mobile version of your website will be crawled and indexed first over the desktop version.  

This 2022, we suggest that you focus on optimizing your site for the mobile experience. Your website should look great across all mobile devices, function well, and load fast.

How your website appears and performs on a desktop is and will always be critical, but given that Google prioritizes mobile-friendly sites over those that aren't, you should work on optimizing your pages for mobile.

This also means optimizing for your content for voice and local search.  

Voice is going to explode next year as more and more people in the U.S. use smart speakers and voice assistants as part of their lifestyle. So, it’s safe to say that voice search is something you should consider when planning for your SEO in West Palm Beach strategy.  

There's a huge difference between how people search through text and voice. A search-based inquiry tends to be shorter – something like "weight loss diet". A voice-based search, on the other hand, tends to be longer, like “what to eat to lose weight?”

Another difference between voice and text-based search is that voice tends to be locally based, and its results are usually taken from featured snippets.  

Since people usually conduct hyper-local questions through voice, you must create local content and incorporate localized keywords into it. Writing for featured snippets and optimizing for local SEO in West Palm Beach also help optimize your content for voice.  

Below are additional tips for voice search content:  

• Use conversational long-tail keywords.
• Create detailed answers to frequently asked questions and dedicate a page for it.
• Use schema markup to establish content and tell Google what your site is all about.
• Claim your business at Google My Business.
• Optimize for local SEO.

Follow These Best Practices for a Better Ranking This 2022!

SEO is constantly changing, so you should stay on top of trends to make sure your business thrives this 2022.

By providing excellent user experience, optimizing for voice search and mobile, updating your content regularly, and establishing context for your content, you can surely boost your rankings in the SERPs and drive more organic traffic to your website.  

Digital Resource is an SEO company in West Palm Beach. We specialize in helping small business increase their online visibility through effective digital marketing.  

Our job is to put you ahead of your competitors and help you achieve business goals through digital marketing. If you want your business to thrive this 2022, don’t hesitate to reach out to us!

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