Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) plays an important role in any business.
SEO is the backbone of your rankings on Google and other search engines. Therefore, you want to make sure your SEO is correct to ensure you receive the maximum benefits.
Here are some tips and techniques to help you get the best rankings possible for your website:
Firstly, you may be wondering what SEO actually is?
SEO is a way of getting the best user experience. Through the use of keywords slotted into your content, you are informing the search engines of the purpose your website holds.
This then allows the search engines to recommend your site accordingly, depending on what the users have searched for.
The best site will appear at the top of the search results because the search engines believe it has the best content relating to what the user has searched for, so you want to be sure that you are within the first couple of pages of search results.
Commit yourself to the process.
In order to do SEO you need to commit yourself to it, especially if you want to do it safely and correctly. It isn’t just a one time thing that never needs to be repeated.
Search Engine algorithms change all the time, so you need to stay on top of those changes in order to continue to rank well, not making changes as the algorithms change will mean your site will slowly fall further down the rankings.
What are search engines looking for?
Search engines, such as Google want to be able to do their jobs as best as possible, by pointing users to the right content and the right websites.
So how is this determined?
- Content: The website theme/design and the headers, subheaders and content on the page.
- Performance: How fast is your site and is it working properly?
- Authority: Does your site have good enough content to link to or do other authoritative sites use your website as a reference.
- User experience: How does the site look? Is it easy to navigate? Does it look safe? Does it have a high bounce rate?
What are search engines NOT looking for?
Search engines will also have things they are not looking for and will avoid when ranking a website.
As you want your business to be highly rated by search engines, be sure not to include the following points:
- Keyword stuffing: Don’t overuse keywords on your pages, be sure to only use them once, maybe twice, otherwise search engines will see the page as keyword stuffing, which will decrease the performance of the page.
- Purchased links: Buying links will get you nowhere when it comes to SEO.
- Poor user experience: Make it easy for users to get around your site, too many ads and making it difficult for people to find content will only increase your bounce rate.
Have web analytics in place at the very start.
You should have clearly defined what your goals are for your SEO as this helps you stay on track.
You should also have web analytics in place from the very beginning so you can see what is working for you and what isn’t.
This will therefore help you avoid actions which ultimately isn’t benefiting your business and its progress.
During the development of your business, with the help of Analytics you can go back and make changes to your goals if needed or just make a few small changes to your SEO strategy to keep in line with your goals.
Don’t forget to optimise for multiple channels.
Your keyword strategy isn’t just important to implement on-site, it is important to extend this to other off-site platforms, so you should be thinking about multi-channel optimisation.
Some multi-channel platforms include:
- Offline (Radio, TV Adverts, etc.)
By being consistent with your keywords and keyword phrases within these platforms it will not only help your branding efforts, but train users to use these keywords when they are searching online.
Do keyword research at the start of the project.
Use keyword tools such as; Google Adwords, Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, etc.
What’s important is the amount of traffic and competition these keywords receive.
Certain tools such as Google Adwords and Neil Patel’s keyword tool will show you these figures.
The higher the volume the more the keyword is searched, but it may mean the competition for it is high, meaning it may be more difficult for you to rank highly for that specific keyword.
Be sure to do lots of research beforehand to ensure you are choosing the right keywords and keyword phrases.
Use unique and relevant title and meta descriptions on every page.
The page title is the single most important on-page SEO factor, it is rare for you to rank highly for a primary term (2-3 words) without the term being part of your page title.
The meta description tags won’t help you rank, but it will often appear as the text snippet below your listing, so it should include the relevant keywords.
Create great, unique content.
This is very important for every business; you want your content to stand out and create an impact on the users to keep their attention.
Therefore, write your own descriptions, information and content for your website, and include the keyword research you completed earlier in the process to target words and phrases that users search for.
Also, great content is a useful way to create inbound links to your website.
Start a blog and participate with other related blogs.
Search engines love blogs for the fresh content and highly structured data, so isn’t this a great way to bring more attention to your brand?
Reading and commenting on relevant blog posts can also increase your exposure and help you acquire new links.
Know your business model.
Although this is pretty obvious, many people don’t tend to sit down and focus on what their main goals are, which is the first thing you should consider before getting an SEO strategy together, because without business goals what does your SEO strategy have to aim for?
So the questions you need to ask yourself are:
- What are your goals?
- What defines a conversion for you?
- Do you know your assets and liabilities?
Your SEO strategy is very important for your business if you want to perform well on Search Engines like Google. Not having a clear strategy will hinder the business’s rankings, so be sure to take these tips and techniques into consideration.
If you need some more information take a look at our blog on SEO Trends that will Dominate 2017.