For any company to succeed in today’s business world, a great website is crucial in providing an online presence for exposure and revenue. Sadly, it’s not that simple. If your customers don’t see your site in web searches, then you may as well not be online. This is where SEO comes in. But what is it and how does it work, you may ask? Well, let’s dig a little deeper and learn how to optimise your website pages…
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a set of metrics that can be applied to a website to improve its visibility. It’s a vital addition to any online marketing effort. Proper implementation can lead to amazing results, with a higher search engine ranking leading to an increase in traffic (website visitors) and sales.
Of course, the opportune place to be when someone is looking for the types of products, services, or information you offer is at the top of their search results. This is what SEO is all about.
SEO can be applied on-page and off-page. Let’s look at the factors that affect both types and how they can impact your search engine rankings.
On-Page SEO
1. Add a title tag. You will need this on every page of your website, as it will show search engines and your visitors what each page is about. It should be 60 characters or fewer and include the keyword or key phrase that you want to rank for. Four to six words are best.
2. Write a meta description. This is not always needed and is often ignored by the search engines. However, you can use it to explain in more detail what the webpage is about. Include the keyword or phrase within this description, too.
3. Create sub-headings. These make your content easier to read, plus help improve your search engine rankings. You can use them to add additional keywords and key phrases to your content. This shows search engines that you believe they are important to your content.
4. Build internal links. This technique can be powerful and may be strong enough to rank individual pages without any external (off-page) SEO. Just put a link in your smaller articles to a longer, more authoritative piece of content. This helps the longer content to rank higher.
5. Use image name and ALT tags. Give each image on your website a name that includes your chosen keyword. When indexing the page, the search engines may rank these images when people search for that particular keyword. Google may index your pages, but it’s best to do this manually by using the Google Search Console to speed up the process.
6. Avoid over-optimising. When creating the content for your website, it’s important not to over-optimise the content. This means that it will benefit you to sparingly use the main keyword while including related keywords and phrases. You may be able to rank highly for these other keywords as well.
7. Make your website mobile-friendly. These days, most searches and social media traffic will come from mobile devices. So, your website must work properly on mobile. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, this will impact your user experience and, therefore, your ranking signals negatively.
8. Make use of Google website tools. As most people’s preferred browser is Google, it makes sense to use their SEO and analytical tools to make the process easier and to monitor traffic to your site. This is where using the Google Search Console and Google Analytics is a must.
Off-Page SEO
1. You must build trust. Trust has become an important ranking factor. It shows the search engines that what you say is accurate and that visitors can trust your content. To develop trust, build high-quality backlinks from other trusted sources and ensure that your content is high quality and accurate.
2. Build backlinks. Most SEO experts gain backlinks by building relationships with other websites. It’s crucial to avoid spamming your links or building them too quickly. This could result in your website becoming de-indexed, which is essentially being banned from the search engines.
3. Get social signals. According to some SEO experts, getting likes and shares from social media may have an impact on your search engine rankings. So, it makes sense to create the most valuable content you can and share it with your own social media accounts, where others can like and share it too.
Now that you know what on-page and off-page factors affect your SEO efforts, you can make any necessary changes to your website, leading to a boost in rankings and sales.
Just remember that SEO takes time to work. It won’t happen overnight and may take many months for you to see the fruits of your labour. However, this effort will be worth it once you’re continuously getting targeted traffic from the search engines, with the sales that come with it!
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