5 SEO Tactics to Boost Your Organic Rankings

Daniel Bianchini // Co-founder

Search engine optimisation (SEO) plays an important role in the online growth of any business. By developing a deep understanding of SEO and how it works, you can use different tactics to improve how your website ranks in search results.

Search engine optimisation refers to the process of increasing the visibility of your business in search engine result pages (SERPs). It is one of the core principles within digital marketing, and as such, it is often one of the first things you will want to invest in when it comes to improving your online performance.

However, there are many types of SEO that you can undertake in order to boost your organic rankings and, in turn, generate more conversions for your business.

The 5 SEO Tactics Needed to Boost your Performance

There are various SEO tactics that can be completed to boost the organic performance of your business. In this article, we’ll be exploring the five most important types of SEO that you need to focus on in order to increase your organic rankings.

These five types of SEO are:

  • On-Page SEO
  • Off-Page SEO
  • Technical SEO
  • Local SEO
  • Voice Search

Common Ground - five types of seo

 

With each of these five SEO tactics, you will be able to help improve your website rankings for the keywords you are targeting. Below, you’ll find out how you can use each of these SEO types to grow your business and boost your organic rankings.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is the type of SEO that you are probably most used to dealing with. This SEO tactic refers to the changes that you make on your website in order to improve your search rankings.

Effective on-page SEO relies on the creation of high-quality, relevant and informative content. There are many factors involved in increasing the quality of your on-site content and increasing its likelihood of ranking well on Google. Elements of on-page SEO that you will want to focus on includes using keywords (which Google and other search engines will crawl your site for), optimising your URLs and title tags, and including internal links, amongst other tasks.

As Google themselves say in their How Search Works whitepaper, “the most basic signal that information is relevant is when a webpage contains the same keywords as your search query. If those keywords appear on the page, or if they appear in the headings or body of the text, the information is more likely to be relevant”. Hence why keyword research is a fundamental component of SEO, particularly on-page SEO.

If, for example, you run a business that sells walking boots, you will want to ensure your website content features keywords related to walking boots. Be as specific as you can, but don’t unnecessarily stuff your pages with keywords. Remember, the keywords used in your on-site content need to be relevant and optimised for each individual page.

Along with optimising keywords, you should also take time to consider the content quality, formatting, and structure. By investing time into these on-page SEO tactics, you will be able to improve on-site ranking signals, giving your web pages a better chance of ranking high in search results.

Improving your on-site SEO has secondary benefits such as improving user experience – with clear headings, content formatting, and relevant internal links, your site will be much more user-friendly.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is just as important as on-page SEO when it comes to boosting your organic rankings. This type of SEO relates to anything you do off-site in order to improve your search engine optimisation.

Link building is one of the most common off-page SEO tasks that will be performed. Link building is an integral activity for SEO, and can also be one of the most difficult activities to get right.

Having a targeted link-building strategy allows your business to acquire relevant and high-quality backlinks for your website. These backlinks can then, directly and indirectly, impact your SEO performance by building link equity and trust.

At Common Ground, our team of SEO experts can help your business develop a targeted link-building strategy by reviewing your objectives in line with your off-site profile, market, and competitors.

Other elements of off-page SEO also include influencer marketing, unlinked brand mentions, and optimising your social media profiles, to name a few tasks. All of these tasks are beneficial for your off-page SEO. This is why it is important to ensure that your SEO strategy also incorporates content amplification and distribution – there is more to SEO than writing great content.

Technical SEO

This form of SEO is focused on the behind-the-scenes activity of your website – ensuring it is technically optimised. Technical SEO tends to go hand-in-hand with on-page SEO by making sure that the backend elements of your website are optimised for search.

Ensuring your website meets all the technical requirements of a search engine is really beneficial for boosting your organic rankings.

Search engines need to be able to find your website, and you could have incredible keyword usage but if your site isn’t working then you still won’t show up. For this reason, it is important that you are investing in technical SEO.

There are various tasks involved in technical SEO including, but not limited to:

  • Improving site speed
  • Having a mobile-optimised website
  • Using schema markup
  • Making sure your sitemap and robots.txt files are updated
  • Using an HTTPS connection
  • Optimising images
  • Fixing crawl issues
  • Removing broken links

Although technical SEO may seem intimidating, it is an important component in improving search rankings. The end-goal of investing in technical SEO is in order to improve user experience for anyone that visits your website.

You can begin improving the technical SEO of your on-site content by improving your site speed, resizing and minifying images, ensuring your site is mobile-optimised, and checking that your sitemap and robots.txt file is up to date.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, though. Technical SEO covers a wealth of website issues, and it is important to ensure they are all sorted.

 

[activecampaign form=3]

 

Local SEO

As the name suggests, local SEO refers to the process of ensuring your website shows up in search results for localised keywords such as ‘hair salons in north London’ or ‘gyms near me’.

Local SEO is important for businesses with a physical location. By prioritising local search performance, you can increase foot traffic to your physical business location. As you know, getting more customers through your door is a sure way to increase your potential revenue.

There are many tasks that can be carried out to boost your local SEO, and therefore increase foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar store, office, or venue.

One of the first things you will want to do is to make sure you have claimed your Google My Business page. Doing so will make sure that your business name, address, phone number, opening hours, reviews, location, and other relevant information is displayed within Google search results and Maps.

You should also make sure that your contact information is visible on your website and contains schema markup. Once done, make sure your website contact details appear correctly on relevant local business directories and other websites to improve your NAP consistency – an important element of local SEO.

Another thing you can do to improve local search performance is to implement a local keyword strategy whereby you can ensure your website displays localised search terms in your on-page content in order to help convert local website visitors into leads and in-person customers.

Improving the performance of your business for localised search results isn’t easy but it should be a priority for anyone that wants to increase local SEO rankings and drive more foot traffic to their local business.

Voice search

In recent years, voice search has fast become one of the core types of SEO that businesses should be prioritising.

Voice search is becoming a more popular way to use search engines thanks to Siri, Alexa and the Google Home network and, therefore, you will want to make sure your site is optimised for voice search.

People tend to use voice search as it’s a convenient function. However, it can also be a powerful way for you to get your business in front of your target audience.
To improve your voice search performance, you should focus on targeting conversational search terms, filler words and long-tail keywords, as this tends to be how people search using voice control.

If you don’t already, you should also add an FAQ page to your website that answers all of those frequently asked questions and contains schema markup to increase the likelihood of your website appearing in relevant FAQ rich snippets. This is because when people use voice search it is often to ask a specific question – how, why, where, when or who.

According to research by BrightLocal, 56% of all voice searches are made on a smartphone. So, you will also want to make sure the mobile version of your website is well optimised for voice search.

Other types of SEO to be aware of

Outside of these types of SEO, there are several other kinds of SEO that you will want to be aware of. Namely, the three other types of SEO that are often talked about are:

  • White Hat SEO
  • Black Hat SEO
  • Grey Hat SEO

These types of SEO refer to the legitimacy of the SEO tasks completed to improve SEO.

Common Ground - types of seo - white black grey hat seo

White hat SEO is considered to be SEO tactics that align with the best practices and guidelines set by search engines. Meanwhile, black hat SEO refers to SEO techniques that tend to violate the search engine best practices and guidelines and, as such, are risky and can yield quick yet short-term results.

White Hat SEO

This refers to SEO tactics that help you rank without breaking any search engine rules.

White hat SEO includes many of the things we’ve already discussed in this post – tactics that are within the guidelines, and that maintain the integrity of your website and your brand. Keyword usage, improving your site speed, and naturally acquiring high-quality backlinks are all examples of white hat SEO techniques.

Black Hat SEO

This is essentially the opposite of white hat SEO.

Black hat SEO refers to techniques that don’t align with the guidelines set out by search engines. These are underhand tactics that can make you rank organically but can also lead to you being penalised by Google and other search engines – your site could even be shut down.

Some examples of black hat SEO include:

  • Keyword stuffing
  • Link farming
  • Hidden text or links
  • Doorway pages
  • Sneaky and irrelevant redirects

There are others, too.

While black hat SEO may seem tempting as it can yield quick results for your business, it should be avoided as they can pose a huge risk to your site, and as such can backfire.

Results gained from black hat SEO rarely last long. If you use these techniques, you will likely notice organic performance gained using black hat tactics is lost the next time Google releases a core update. For this reason, we recommend sticking with white hat SEO techniques.

Grey Hat SEO

As you can probably deduce, grey hat SEO involves practices that sit somewhere between white hat and black hat tactics.

Grey hat SEO tactics aren’t completely ideal, but they won’t be likely to get your site shut down. Some techniques include:

  • Duplicate content
  • Buying old domains to link from
  • Cloaking
  • Paid backlinks

In essence, grey hat SEO could be considered to be black hat techniques masquerading as white hat SEO. We advise against using grey hat SEO tactics as this type of SEO could still be damaging to your organic performance.

Engaging in this type of SEO could end up costing your business more money in the long-run if you then have to spend more time undoing the damage caused. So, make sure you are only using white hat SEO tactics and continually amending and finetuning your SEO strategy to guarantee the best results for your business.

Final Thoughts on the Different Types of SEO

If you want to grow your business online then you need to make sure you are investing in SEO.

The different types of SEO complement each other and work together to make sure your business shows up in the organic rankings. By using all of these SEO tactics alongside each other, you’ll get faster and better results.

Stick to white hat SEO and you can have confidence knowing that the time, money, and effort invested into SEO practices will yield long-term results for your business.

If you are looking for a partner to assist you with implementing a performance-based SEO strategy for your business, we can help. We run successful campaigns that focus on high return strategies in order to deliver the visibility, traffic, and conversions your brand deserves.

 

[activecampaign form=5]
Daniel Bianchini // Co-founder

You may also like

Go to Top