Unfortunately for those new to the game, SEO isnât just a quick fix. It is in fact a series of tricks that work together to give your website the best possible ranking it can get in the eyes of Google. You may be thinking that the customer matters to you, not Google. But if you’re not ranked, you won’t appear for customers. That’s the value of SEO.
Having said that, itâs not like the search engines offer a guide to good SEO. In fact, they tend to keep quiet about the best way to steer SEO in a favourable direction. This leaves us to figure out the algorithms and how to rank highly. So, without further ado, here are a few of our top tips on how you can improve your own SEO on your website without hiring in experts and content creators.
Get to grips with Google analytics
Before you can truly understand which avenue your SEO should be going down, first you need to get to grips with your websiteâs current performance. Analytics will give you some insight into how people are currently coming across your website and how they are interacting with it, so that you can understand your website traffic and determine which search terms are leading people to you.
In essence, why are people coming across your website and what are they searching for to bring them to you? What’s the current value of SEO for you?
Understand your keywords
The next step is to identify what keywords link your service to the people who are visiting your website. Write down all the words that you think are key to your business proposition and what you offer, and then use keyword tools to figure out how valuable those terms are.
Engaging tools such as Googleâs free keyword planner are useful here as they give you some idea of how many searches each keyword has and how competitive the word is among other websites. It will also then provide you with some suggestions around keywords relevant to your site, to help you build out your list and bid on the words best suited in both yours and Googleâs opinion.
Trust us, this will all help your website to rank better among its competitors, leading to increased website traffic and subsequently more business.
Optimise your website according to your SEO strategy
Once the keywords are established, your website needs to be brought up to speed. This involves implementing the chosen words into as many aspects as you can â NATURALLY. This is key. Making sure the sentences flow smoothly and that the keywords are well integrated is critical to ensuring a good ranking. If Google thinks itâs nonsense, you could be worse off than you were before you started.
Key areas to focus on include the web page URL, heading tags, image names and alt tags, title tags and your web page meta descriptions. A lot of this will be happening in the back end of your website and wonât even be something that is obvious from a visitor point of view. But Google is always watchingâŠ
Make sure you donât lose sight of your content
Keeping the content relevant and up to date is vital for SEO. Not only do new news stories and blog posts give you increased opportunity to integrate those keywords to your site, but they signal to Google that your website is active and relevant in its field. Create high-quality content that will interest your audience, and theyâll stick around to read it. If you start letting the content drop, youâll swiftly see a corresponding drop in your website traffic.
Out with the old
Likewise, old content is pointless. Update your old content where necessary, and if itâs no longer relevant then simply scrap it.
Internal links
Google is a big fan of internal linking and proof that every area of your website is relevant to the overall industry youâre providing a service in.
Optimisation
In a world where most browsing is done on the go, ensuring your website is optimised for mobile usage is absolutely crucial â not only for your users but for your Google ranking. Mobile matters and Google have recently revealed that the status of your website optimisation is a factor in ranking your site among its competitors. So, donât let it fall by the wayside!
Site Speed
Much like the above, site speed is another thing that you think is out of your control but impacts SEO a lot. People care about how long it takes for a web page to load. Improving your site speed is something that can make a big difference in overall website satisfaction.
There are things you can do externally too. Promote your content in other places. Think social media, through guest posts on other related sites and even in directories. If you’re an expert, play on this and ensure that everything you do online links back to your own website.
This is a strategy known as backlinking and is another way of showing Google how relevant you are â by having other relevant websites link to your site. Itâs like a recommendation without direct endorsement. But for Google, it is enough to show that your content is valuable. This means your website deserves to be up there with the other strong contenders.
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