In Just a few years the whole digital industry has experienced a dynamic drift in the field of SEO.


However, certain fundamentals have remained unchanged.


For example, targeting keywords with the sole intent of improving organic ranking no longer works with search engines, but keywords are still essential.


SEO is simply not as hard as people pretend like it is; you can get 95% of the effort with 5% of the work, and you absolutely do not need to hire a professional SEO to do it, nor will it be hard to start ranking for well-picked key terms.


Google is a very smart company. The sophistication of the algorithms they write is incredible; bear in mind that there are currently cars driving themselves around Silicon Valley powered by Google’s algorithms.



Google works largely the same way today, although with much more sophistication and nuance. For example, not all links carry the same weight. A link from an authoritative site (as seen by how many links a site has pointing at it) is much more valuable than a link from a non-authoritative site. A link from the New York Times is probably worth about 10,000 links from sites that don’t have much authority.

At the end of the day, the purpose of Google is to find the “best” (or most popular) web page for the words you type into the search bar.
All this means is we need to make it clear to google what our page is about, and then make it clear that we're popular. If we do that we win. In order to do that, we’ll follow a very simple process that works every single time with less effort than you probably think is required.
The first thing we need to do is to figure out what that keyword is. Depending on how popular our site is and how long it’s been around, the level of traffic and difficulty we’ll get from this effort may vary.
The process looks like this:
  • Use UberSuggest, KeywordShitter and a little bit of brainstorming to come up with some keywords
  • Export those keywords to the Google Keyword Planner to estimate traffic level
  • Search for those keywords with the SEOQuake chrome extension installed to analyze the true keyword difficulty

1. Remove anything that slows down your site.

Page speed is a critical factor in SEO(by Neil Patel)

Earlier it was okay to have a slow loading website as there was a time when even most popular websites took minutes to load completely

A slow website may lead to generation of frustration which ultimately discourages your audience from conversions.

Data from Strange Loop shows that a 1-second delay in page load time can yield a7% loss in conversions.


 


On April 9, 2010, Google included site speed as one of the all-important ranking factors.

This means that if your pages are slow, you’re fighting a losing battle for top organic listings, regardless of the quality of your content or your professional website design.

According to the search engine giant’s internal studies, when a page loads slowly, visitors spend less time there. On the other hand, faster loading pages reduce operating costs and improve user experience, among other benefits.



To know More about Website Speed optimisation have a look at videos below by professionals who have been working hours a day for optimising thousands of websites and pages.



                                     
                                     

2. Write for humans first, search engines will follow.

A writer who was most likely trying to game Google’s algorithm with keyword stuffing, the practice of inflating an article with attractive keywords to bolster search ranking – without actually creating value. Not only is this a “black hat” SEO tactic that will do more harm than good in the long run, but it also makes the post hilariously unreadable to actual human beings.
From NeilPatel.com


Important Note

"Like your audience, search engines now care more about quality, rather than quantity. The single best way to ensure that people read your content, share it, and return to your site for more is to craft truly compelling, quality blog posts and multimedia offerings."



With that in mind, your audience should not be machines, bots, or algorithms; when you write for robots you end up sounding like a robot yourself – and that’s a massive turn-off to the audience you should actually be addressing, the flesh and blood people who will come to you searching for information, answers, or news (or, better still, who are already interested in finding or buying your product or service).

Which means that, for brands across the board, it’s time to step up the content production in a big way.

                                          

3. Write unique and relevant meta descriptions for every page.


One of the most important SEO tips that most people neglect is the well-crafted meta description.

The meta description is the first section that people see when Google serves up your page to search users.




Generally, the search engine giant doesn’t like duplicate content. Yes, there are times when there is a need to cite a paragraph or sentence from another site (and link back to the source), but "if publishing duplicate content becomes your way of life, you might get penalized by Google." -by Neil Patel



You can’t have the same meta description for a page that talks about email marketing and a page on making sales. There’s a big difference in those topics and your meta descriptions should communicate that fact.
If you’re a WordPress user, you can fix duplicate meta descriptions by installing theAll-In-One-SEO Pack or Yoast plugins.

4. Use readable and meaningful URLs only.


Stands for "Uniform Resource Locator." A URL is the address of a specific webpage or file on the Internet. For example, the URL of The Incredible Beings website is "http://theincrediblebeings.blogspot.com." The address of this page is "https://shivanshdwivedi.blogspot.com/best-seo-tips-that-actually-help-you-rank-higher" and includes the following elements:
  1. http:// – the URL prefix, which specifies the protocol used to access the location
  2. shivanshdwivedi.blogspot.com – the server name or IP address of the server
  3. /best-seo-tips-that-actually-help-you-rank-higher – the path to the directory or file.


Remember, search engines follow search users.
Brian Clark once said "Google bots are like infants, who need to be spoon-fed regularly. And, he’s right."
Even in this age of search evolution, including the RankBrain, search spiders are still programs, not humans. You need to guide them accordingly.




                                                 

5. Use the right keywords in your images. (From Neil Patel.com)

"Images are important in search engine optimization."
Google dedicated an entire section of its search results to images. This should tell you how concerned the search engine giant is with pictures.
When users are looking for a particular image, what do they search with?
Keywords.
For this reason, you should use the right keywords in your image names and accompanying text (like the caption). Of course, this is not permission to engage inkeyword stuffing.
However, if your image is of a “blue women’s hat,” don’t name your image “click here to buy hat.”
Always remember that in search engine optimization, relevance is more important that creativity or cleverness.

                                         

Conclusion

The age of a domain or web page is also one of the top SEO tips you should keep in mind. Indeed, it’s crucial for your success. For this reason, don’t constantly change your domain name. Pick one and stick with it, unless there’s a very good reason to change.

That does happen, by the way — just don’t make it a regular practice. I’ve used QuickSprout for over 10 years and I intend to keep the domain name.

If you’ve published a post in the past that’s no longer relevant to users, especially due to the recent Google changes, then instead of writing a new piece of content from scratch, work to update that page.

That way, you can retain the backlinks, social media shares and other on-site engagement metrics it’s already earned.

Finally, learn to focus on and create content around long-tail search phrases (e.g., social media marketing techniques), and not head keywords (e.g., social media).

When link building, think quality, not quantity. And, don’t forget to make your web pages mobile-friendly.

If you pay attention to these important SEO tips, I guarantee that you’ll create better content, drive more organic traffic, acquire more leads and grow your revenue.

Which other search engine optimization tips or techniques do you think are most crucial for improving search rankings? Are there any SEO tips that have worked against you? 

References

Google
NeilPatel.com
Quora.com
Youtube
Google Webmasters
Yahoo Developer Support
And other sites linked in this Article.