Do you want your website to be ranked higher in Google? Observing and implementing our 7 tips on how to improve your SEO will help you on your journey to the top.
So, what is SEO?
SEO (search engine optimization) is the term used to represent the use of all the methods available to ensure visibility of your website and its content on the search engine results page (SERP). For those of you who still see the term SEO shrouded in mist, we hope our 7 tips on how to improve your SEO will clear the haze and the mystery, helping you to get better ranking in Google searches.
1.Keywords & Key Phrases (‘long tail keywords’)
Put yourself in the customers shoes – what will they search for if they need your product or service? Taking time to research this will certainly pay dividends in your quest to reach the top of the search mountain.
If your business is very much localised – perhaps a florist or tyre service centre based in Ballincollig – using the location in your keyword or phrase will help you show up higher in the listings.
Use a different keyword or phrase for each page of your website, specific to the content you have on that page – again if you are a florist and the page is about your wedding flowers service then a key word / phrase with the term ‘wedding flowers’ in it will help with rankings for a ‘wedding flowers’ search.
Be sure to include the chosen keyword in the page title, sub-heading and content for maximum effect.
2. Meta Tag
While this is not part of the search engine ranking process, it is essential to visitor searches. This is what you see on the search results page.
Think of the meta tag like an advertisement. It is the first impression the visitor gets of your business.
Make it interesting, descriptive and enticing to encourage the visitor to click through to your website.
The meta tag description is limited to 150 characters, keep an eye on this to avoid cutting off mid-sentence.
3. Internal Links
Linking to other areas of your website helps the visitor reach the product or service that interests them most, quickly and easily.
These links do need to make sense. Again using the florist example; if you write about the choice of bridal bouquets on the wedding flowers page, link the words ‘bridal bouquets’ to the relevant page. Linking this way means that the flow of reading goes uninterrupted, yet is instantly recognisable as a place the visitor may want to be without them having to search the menu bar.
4. Optimise images with keywords
As search engine crawlers can’t see images it is important to give them a description.
Using the example of the wedding flowers page – the image description could be ‘bridesmaids with mix of pink and white wedding flowers’
5. Text building for ranking
When writing and displaying the text content on your website it is important to use different sized text to signify the importance to the search engine.
The title should be ‘H1’ and include your chosen keyword for the page. This tells the search engine that this is the most important text on the page. When this matches what the visitor is looking for it will appear in the search results.
Use the keyword again in a sub-heading (H2) and then a couple of times in the body of the content.
By building your keywords into the text in this way the search engine crawlers see that this page is definitely relevant to the visitors search term thus resulting in higher ranking.
6. Call-To-Action buttons
A call-to-action button is where you are encouraging the visitor to your website to engage further with you, get in touch, sign up for a newsletter, download a free e-book etc.
Having call-to-action buttons on every page will not only increase time spent but improve the click through rate also. Both will influence your website rankings.
Google will see that the more time spent on your website indicates how relevant the information is to the visitors search.
Do be careful though –too many call-to-actions can appear pushy and be distracting.
7. Unique, fresh content
Updating your website content and posting new content on products or services regularly will increase your website rankings.
If the search engine crawlers see changes each time they visit your site they see this as being of benefit to the user and may visit more often, which will improve your ranking. However if they see no changes when they visit then they will visit less frequently.
Keeping your content updated may seem obvious, but you would be amazed how many businesses just leave their website sit there.
Google accounts for over 90% of global organic web search traffic. If you found our 7 tips on how to improve your SEO informative and want to implement these on your website, we can help.
Our team of web designers and content writers know how to create, or make changes to your website that will give good user experience, be easy to navigate, with relevant content and useful internal linking. Everything that Google is looking for. Why not give us a call today and make a start on the road to the top?
