The competition among online businesses is growing by the day. 

Every business wants to climb to the top of SERP’s ladder. But the space is limited. 

Not all businesses have the required money to maintain their supremacy at the top of SERP. 

Honestly, you don’t need much money to rank on the top, either. Google doesn’t ask for money to rank you on the top. Instead, it wants you to deliver value to its userbase. 

The more value you add to the user’s experience, the more benefits you derive. 

Here are seven tips to improve SEO:

1. Leverage Google analytics

To know whether or not your SEO efforts are bringing fruitful results, you must learn to leverage Google analytics. 

Google Analytics can help you see where your traffic is coming from and what areas they click on. 

Through analytics, you can see the amount of time people spend on your site, bounce rate, and what pages they visit, etc. 

All this information can help you understand your mistakes and what you need to do to rectify them. 

If you want your website to stand out, knowledge of Google Analytics is a must.

1. Install an SSL certificate

An SSL or Secure Sockets Layer certificate is a mandatory requirement for every website. 

SSL is a security technology that encrypts your website’s connection and passes it over a secure network to protect it from cybercriminals. 

SSL also enables HTTPS or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure on your website, after which a secure padlock is displayed ahead of the URL. 

Google has already stated SSL as one of the most important factors under its latest Page Experience Update. 

Moreover, SSL also plays a vital role in accepting online payments. The Payment Card Industry has already made SSL mandatory for accepting payments online. 

Now that we have answered why you need SSL. Let us talk about which SSL you should install. 

An SSL has three types, namely a single domain certificate, wildcard domains, and a multi-domain certificate. 

A single domain SSL cert can protect a single domain at a given time, whereas a multi-domain SSL can protect up to 250 multiple domains. 

In case of wildcard certificate, it can secure main domain and subdomains. It is essential to have any of these SSL certs from reputed brands like Thawte, RapidSSL, Comodo Essential SSL, Sectigo SSL cert and let Google identify you as an authentic website that can rank high in search rankings. 

1. Have a mobile-friendly approach 

With more than half of the internet users started surfing through their mobile devices, shifts towards a mobile-friendly approach can be seen. 

Today if your website does not support a mobile interface, it is best not to think of ranking on the top of SERP. 

Google has started valuing mobile users over desktop ones. A mobile-friendly approach means designing a UI that loads faster and display information in an arranged and appropriately aligned way on a mobile as it does on a desktop.

1. Create separate mobile versions

Google hates the scaled-back mobile versions of desktop sites, and they don’t want you to shorten the fonts and headers of your desktop site for mobile. 

They want a site to look as professional on a mobile as it looks on a desktop. Don’t use desktop plugins on the mobile version of your site. 

So, the way to keep Google and users happy is by creating separate mobile versions of your site instead of streamlining the desktop site.

1. Optimize images to rank higher

The image takes a sizeable chunk of the total weight of your web page. If it wasn’t for images, your page could load within much less time than it does with images. 

But images are important to frame your written content well. So, it is best to reduce their size. 

Also, don’t integrate much information in a single image; otherwise, you would need your images to be high-quality for zooming and opening purposes. As a result, the size of your web page will increase. 

Apart from that, use alt text in the images so that your website’s images can rank in the image section along with your content.

1. Create high-quality content

None of the points mentioned above will matter if your content does not add value to the user’s experience. 

So, it is best to create high-quality content that explains concepts, solves problems, and leaves users with ideas to do something new and creative. 

After reading the content, users must feel that their time has been spent well. 

But high-quality content alone won’t be sufficient. You would also need to integrate keywords. 

You can use Google’s keyword finder to figure out the right keywords and integrate them into your content.

1. Make your content readable.

Merely creating high-quality content won’t help. In today’s competitive online environment, you need to make your content more readable for the users. 

Don’t pack long paragraphs; instead, write shorter to-the-point sentences that make sense to the users. 

Always have an H1-H2 tag every 150 words to maintain the content flow. Keywords, too, should be placed naturally so that they don’t disturb the decorum of the overall piece. 

Also, ensure that you leave users with actionable steps at the end. Your content must entice the users to read till the end instead of bouncing back in the middle of the article.

Final Thoughts

SEO has become one of the primary concerns of businesses today, and many business giants are pumping in money to maintain high search rankings. 

But why pump money when you can rank for free? 

By creating high-quality content, optimizing images, a mobile-friendly interface, and taking care of security protocols like an SSL certificate, you can reach the top of SERP. 

Google values user experience over money. If your website provides a quality user experience, there is nothing else you need to rank on top. 

So, follow these seven tips given above to improve your search rankings and rank on top of Google’s SERP.