Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is continually changing. Just a few years ago, all you had to do to generate traffic to your site was to spam keywords across each page until Google’s automatic indexing bots deemed you worthy. Nowadays, SEO is more challenging to master—but the rewards are worth it.

How can you stay on top of your SEO game? Here are five effective techniques that you can apply to your site to boost your search engine optimization and attract more viewers.

1. Better Engagement Means Better Rankings
The amount of time someone spends on a page is colloquially known as engagement. The stronger your engagement, the more likely search engine giants such as Google will catch wind of your content. After all, a site that contains valuable information and content that’s worth reading is a site that could contend for the top spot of a Google search.

Improve engagement by creating content that’s easy to read and digest. Use shorter paragraphs, shorter sentences, and plenty of subheaders. Bullet points are a surefire way to convey important information quickly while drawing the reader’s attention to each item.

2. Emphasize Topics, not Keywords
Google is gradually losing interest in keywords and turning its gaze towards topics—that is, what consumers are looking for rather than the words and phrases they’re using during a search. After all, Google wants to connect its users to the best answer as quickly as possible.

A keyword-laden site can certainly have the answers, but it may not be the most valuable content. Google gives precedence to websites that can provide the best solution possible. And to provide such valuable content, you must understand your audience, organize your content by themes rather than keywords, and use keywords sparingly. Focus on creating the high-quality content on your topic and the keywords will come naturally.

3. Build a Strong Backlink Foundation
Backlinks matter. A strong foundation of backlinks is still crucial to improving search engine optimization results. In fact, sites with great content may be overlooked if their backlinks are lacking.

However, for your backlinks to be genuinely effective, they need to direct users to high-quality content that’s both useful and valuable. The days of littering a website with low-quality links, such as paid links, are over. Instead, focus on creating the best content for your particular topic that other site owners would want to link to naturally.

4. Update Existing Pages
We know what you’re thinking: long content goes against the bite-sized mentality of engaging web content. But be that as it may, Google tends to favor websites with content that regularly exceeds 2,000 words.

The easiest way to meet the new length criteria while keeping the content you’ve already created is to add more value to your best-performing articles. Keep them updated and continue to add to them to build bigger, better and more useful content.

5. Boost the Speed of your Site
Finally, Google has been stressing the importance of site speed as an SEO factor since 2010. Although the goldilocks speed is still open to interpretation, surveys suggest a site that loads in 2 seconds or less is one that keeps the attention span of its audience.

Various apps are available that can measure the speed and loading times of your website across a variety of browsers. When in doubt, have a web design and development agency take a look at your pages to see whether anything can load faster or more efficiently.

Adapt the Latest Search Engine Optimization Trends
To succeed at SEO, you must create high-quality content that engages your audience while driving conversions and click-throughs. Keep an eye on the latest SEO trends, such as keyword significance and backlinks, to gauge the direction search engines are moving in.

If that sounds like a lot to juggle, it doesn’t have to be. At Falcon Marketing, we’re the online marketing experts. Using the latest techniques, we build result-focused search engine optimization campaigns that get our customers results.

Contact us with any questions or concerns regarding SEO. We’re here to help.