So, what do you know about SEO?
It’s something of a bitter truth, but if your website is not appearing on the first page of Google, or Bing, then it may as well not be on the internet at all… SEO research suggests that, 75% of searchers don’t look beyond the 1st page of results. Therefore, if your website is going to do anything for you, reaping you positive benefits in brand awareness and leads, it is increasingly important that your SEO techniques ensure you appear on that first page.
There are lots of different strategies and techniques that can be brought into play, but they don’t mean too much if the basics are not right.
Here are a few things to get into the habit of doing, to help you achieve better search results for your website and its pages.
Meta Descriptions and Title Tags
These little nuggets are very significant, they provide a user with a quick glimpse of the page content and show why it’s relevant to their particular search. As such, titles and descriptions can be the difference between a click and a strong pass.
As well as this, they bring insight to the searcher, and are also important ranking factors; online data shows us that descriptions and titles alone can greatly improve ranking when compared with unoptimised pages without them.
It is imperative that when designing your website, basic onsite SEO is implements, helping ensure maximum search exposure.
Image Alt Tags
Speaking of tags… Alt tags are often overlooked but they are very effective soldiers in the ranking wars. Essentially, these are short descriptions of a photo – but should also contain your main keyword.
The keywords that you add in the Alt Tag should be relevant to your page (and so should be your main keyword). Tags should be written naturally, and within context – there’s nothing worse than ‘spammy’ descriptions and it will only hold things back while also providing a poor user experience.
Internal Links
You should always add relevant links to your pages because this helps, not just the visitor, but also the search engines. This helps them gain a better understanding of your website and its information hierarchy.
When linking, you should make sure that none of them are broken. Search engines may penalize a website if it detects broken links, so be sure to check them properly and make sure that they are relevant as well as working.
Create Plenty of Relevant Content
It’s a well-established fact that the best and most effective way to improve search engine rankings, organically, is to create relevant and well-written content. Search engines love content, and they are attracted to new and fresh content that is relevant to the site it is published on, while answering a searcher’s question.
Keywords are important, of course, but you shouldn’t go overboard with them. Experiment with keywords and key phrases making good use of stop words (these are commonly occurring words that search engines ignore). By using stop words, you can make keywords and phrases appear in your text much more naturally.
Not everybody has the time to write great content though, but help is at hand.
To conclude…
So we’ve covered the basics of what needs to be included, but remember its only effective if done correctly. They are fairly simple steps to take, if done with time and care, but we know of everybody can, especially when running a hectic business.
To give your overall SEO a push in the right direction and get your website where it needs we’re here to support you – right through from implementation and monitoring to getting your business cemented in that top 10. You can request a quote or use the chat button that you can find at the bottom right of each page.