2 SEO Techniques To Quickly Boost Your Rankings

[vc_row css_animation=”” row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern”][vc_column width=”1/6″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”4/6″][vc_single_image image=”31206″ img_size=”large” qode_css_animation=””][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is certainly no stranger to most modern-day website owners and entrepreneurs. Known for its marketing flexibility and consistent passive value, SEO is a critical component of any brand’s digital strategy. Yet, given that there are at least 2 billion websites in the world, it is no surprise that not everyone can reap the benefits of SEO.

Naturally, given the limited number of results displayed on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP), there will always be winners and losers in SEO. If your website is not featured amongst the top results on a SERP, then your competitor is depriving you of significant market share. As such, quickly improving your website’s SEO rankings and overtaking your competitors can provide tremendous value.

Read more to find out how boosting SEO rankings for B2B websites and B2C websites differ slightly.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]

Can SEO Rankings Be Attained Overnight?

Now for the question that every website owner has asked at some time: “can I instantly rank my website?” The short answer is “no”, as established competitors’ websites are typically already fine tuned for the search engines’ algorithm. This should be of no surprise as your competitors have probably worked optimising their website for a given algorithm for a long time. To get an understanding of how your competitors are faring, you should perform a competitor analysis for SEO.

Yet, there are a few SEO strategies and techniques that can go a long way to helping you close the gap. In fact, if you have already been performing SEO for your website, then these actions could put it over the top.

Before proceeding, we should mention that all techniques here are highly situational and may not be applicable to your website. As such, do carefully consider if they fit into your SEO strategy before attempting them.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]

Technique 1: Buying An Authoritative Domain

[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_single_image image=”31204″ img_size=”large” qode_css_animation=””][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]Authoritative website domains typically have 2 key advantages:

Firstly, as aged domains, these domains have more years under their belt which is a positive in SEO. Under this circumstance, the domain has been crawled for a long time by search engines and thus is well understood. Search engines are thus more likely to trust the domain and grant it greater visibility.

Secondly, naturally whether or not the previous domain owner engaged in link building, an aged domain is likely to have accumulated external links. This is important as a key component of search engines’ algorithms such as Google’s Rank Brain, is the quantity and quality of links. When a website has more third party links, it is seen as being more authoritative on its subject matter.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]

How to purchase an aged domain?

There are several websites that provide information on and sell website domains. Prominent examples include GoDaddy, Namecheap and Bluehost. Meanwhile, the local scene is Singapore is represented by 2 main players – Vodien and Exabytes. Once you have chosen your domain seller, you can proceed to check on the availability of your domain. If it is available, you can purchase it at the indicated price for a standard number of years.

It should be noted that any one particular domain name will have several country level variants. If you are a first time domain purchase, research on the different country level domains will certainly come in handy. These can have a huge impact on the website’s domain authority and the source of its links. It is good to note that there is no SEO bonus for keyword-targeted domains.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]

Before you purchase an aged domain

If you are keen on purchasing a particular domain, you should first check it for the potential value it can deliver to you.

Firstly, check on its domain age using the WHOIS domain tools webpage. Simply keying in your domain will allow you to check on its domain age as well as the owner should it be off the market at the moment. Prior SEO studies have found that the average age of websites on the first page of Google SERPs is 1200+ days. As such, it is a good bet that you will be needing a domain that has been in used for at least 3 years if you wish to be on page 1.

Secondly, do check if the domain has been blacklisted using Mxtoolbox’s IP blacklist check tool. If a domain has been used for spammy activities then it is likely to have an existing penalty from search engines. Not only would such a domain provide no link value to your website, but it may in fact harm it. If your domain of interest is on a blacklist, we recommend avoiding them for the time being.

Thirdly, use a domain authority check tool such as SEMRush or Ahrefs. Both of these software have a paid and free version. Naturally, the paid version yields you greater insights about the domain and its prior link profile. Nonetheless, the free version can still offer you a valuable overview of the domain. In particular, the following metrics should be paid attention to:

• Domain authority
• Quantity of referring domains
• Trust flow & citation flow
• Spam score or toxicity rating

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How to incorporate an aged domain?

As alluded to earlier, purchasing an aged domain for SEO purposes is a situational technique. It can be applied in 2 primary scenarios.

Firstly, you can replace your current domain with the newly purchased domain. This is relevant where your existing domain is either not relevant for your brand or is a hinderance for your SEO efforts. When changing your website’s domain, you will need to perform redirections of your current pages. By doing so, you would ensure that search engine crawlers and users can easily follow through to your new website domain. Additionally, this ensures that the link value of your pages are passed on to their new URLs. This can be critical for ensuring the continuity of your website’s SEO presence.

Secondly, if your existing domain is relevant for both branding and SEO, then you could create a content-based website using the new domain. Given its possibly high authoritative score, valuable links can be then passed onto your current website. Additionally, with careful strategizing, it is possible that both websites can coexist on SERPs. This would mean double the number of impressions for your digital properties.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]

Technique 2: Redirecting Non-Value Pages

[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_single_image image=”31205″ img_size=”large” qode_css_animation=””][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]As your website grows in size, naturally some pages will experience diminishing returns. With errors popping up on the pages or no visitors to the page, the website begins to be weighed down. This can be detrimental to your SEO efforts as your website is seen as being less valuable within its niche. As such, it is important that regular monitoring and cleaning up of your website is in order.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]

Broken pages

Broken pages most commonly emerge when you revamp your website or when you create a replacement page. Under either of these circumstances, website owners may delete a page from the backend but not redirected its URL. As such, search engines which have indexed the page continue to try to crawl the page, resulting in a broken page emerging. For users who access the page directly or through a third-party medium such as a search engine, they will instead land on a 404 page.

If you have connected a Google Search Console property, then you will find alerts on new broken pages. This certainly makes the upkeeping of your website slightly easier. However, it should be noted that at times, a false broken page alert emerges. As such, we recommend that you manually check on the reported page as well before creating a redirect.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]

Wrongly auto generated pages

If you use a Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress, then you can expect auto generated pages to pop up. The challenge here is that you would not be aware of the presence of these pages on your website. As such, these pages may be picked out by search engine crawlers and thus be a detriment to your website.

We recommend either regularly checking in on your website’s auto generated sitemap or using a crawling software such as SEMRush or Ahrefs to find thin content pages. Once such unwanted auto generated pages are found, a redirection can now be executed.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]

Duplicated pages

Unsurprisingly, duplicated pages do pop up from time to time when you are adding content to your website. For example, you may be revamping a particular page and thus opted to first duplicate a page before working on it. Once you publish the revamped page, you would have needed to remove the original page, swap the URLs and redirect it. Alternatively, you may have simply accidentally duplicated a page.

Similar to checking for auto generated pages, you can check using the website’s auto generated sitemap or a crawling software.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]

Loss of relevance

Do you find that a page on your website has experienced a steady or even sudden drop in traffic? It is possible that when first published, the content was highly valued by visitors and was placed at the top of SERPs. Yet, if it was not a piece of evergreen content, the page may have lost value with audiences over time.

In this case, we typically recommend revamping the content of the page to have it updated with the times. Yet, if the content is simply no longer remotely useful to audiences, it would be better off redirecting the page. It should be noted that the page that it is being redirected to should still provide the same value as your original page.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]

Keyword conflict

A keyword conflict on your website emerges when multiple pages are chosen to be indexed by a search engine. When this happens, users and resources such as traffic or incoming links might be split amongst the pages. As such, it becomes difficult to rank your website for the conflicted keyword, with possible large fluctuations in rankings occurring.

If you have a software that tracks the positions of the keyword and the indexed page URL, you will be able to find keyword conflicts. This can be seen in the indexed page URL flipping or changing on a regular basis.

Before redirecting a page due to keyword conflict, we need to emphasize that there are other alternatives. For example, no index tags or Google Search Console removal tool might suffice for your website’s needs. Additionally, it is also possible that both of your pages might be ranked by Google on its top positions. This is surely a huge boost to your digital presence, with more impressions.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]

Performing the redirection

A webpage redirection can be performed either through the HTACCESS file or via a plugin if you are using a CMS. For WordPress users who prefer to use a plugin, we recommend the plugin “Redirection” by John Godley. This plugin is hassle free to use for beginners while providing some flexibility in terms of the types of redirections offered.

Meanwhile, a HTACCESS file can be found within your website’s CPanel. Inserting the following code will help to create the redirection:

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine on

RewriteBase /

Redirect 301 [insert relative URL] [Insert absolute URL]

An example is:

Redirect 301 /marketing-services/ https://example.com/marketing/

In this case, /marketing-services/ is being redirected to /marketing/.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]

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