The goal of search engine optimization or SEO is to make your online presence highly visible in search results. Having a beautiful and information-packed website alone is not going to cut it — it’s important to make sure that there are different types of good content on the web pointing to your site. In addition to this, you need to understand what search engines are truly looking for.

If you’re looking for ways to ensure that your SEO efforts will really boost your site’s rankings in the search engine results pages, listed below are the different criteria you need to meet, according to a Sedona SEO company.

1. Responsive design – Google has emphasized countless times that it prefers a responsive design for mobile optimization. Therefore, move from a mobile- switched design and make your website responsive so it automatically displays its content clearly and properly on any kind of device.
2. Evergreen and top quality content – This kind of content will not only be more useful to your target audience and be able to secure their positive experience with your site, but it will also make your website less impervious to frequently released updates. The trends with web content today are veering away from “short and sweet does the trick” posts, to providing better value with long and info-packed visual storytelling and bullet point presentations.
3. Relevancy – Make sure your content is able to address highly specific searches because the main purpose of search engines is to provide users the most relevant results for every search query.
4. Site speed – How fast your website and its pages load is something search engines greatly take into account. According to news, Google may start labeling results that are hosted on AMP or Accelerated Mobile Page soon. Likewise, site speed is a vital factor in enhancing user experience. If your website doesn’t load within three minutes, 75% of users get annoyed, 69% get frustrated, 19% say they lose trust, and 13% get angry.
5. Integration with social media – Social media marketing is a powerful way to increase online visibility. It’s imperative that your site has accounts with and is linked to all popular social channels because most people spend an average of seven hours everyday on these channels, getting information and even completing important transactions.
6. Local SEO – Google is now serving results based on users’ locations so your business needs to use geo-targeted keywords in its content. Make sure you’re getting different kinds of local citations and mentions in social media, Yelp, and blogs.
7. Internal linking – This provides website visitors further reading options and can boost your website’s rankings for particular keywords.