We may be emerging from lockdown, but the initial reluctance of the British public to hit the high street and restaurants shows that digital marketing strategies are going to remain vital for business success, as we continue to rely on e-commerce and virtual connections. Making sure your potential customers can find your website has therefore never been so important. Our top five tips will help improve your website’s SEO – naturally.
SEO – a quick reminder
SEO is the acronym for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’. This refers to increasing the visitors to your website, by exploiting the way in which the major search engines sort the results generated when someone carries out an online search. Harnessing the power of SEO is a great way to optimise the traffic to your website, without having to pay for ads.
Google is the King in the UK, with 70.6% of searches originating from their platform. Google has over 200 ways in which it formulates its search pages, with the complete algorithm a closely guarded secret (after all, if we all knew the precise formula, everyone would create websites to match it).
There are also other operators who you might want to consider, especially if your business operates within a niche:
- Bing: Bing is the second most popular search engine and is particularly popular within an older demographic, as well as being disproportionately favoured by households with a high income. Therefore, if your business is geared towards an older market or sells luxury items, it might be worthwhile gearing your SEO digital marketing strategies here. Bing’s criteria for analysing data is more straightforward than Google’s, making it easier to optimise your website traffic on its search engine.
- Yahoo!: While only maintaining a 2% market share, 80% of Yahoo! users use the engine at least once a day, making it important to consider within your SEO strategies.
SEO strategy 1: Leverage the page URLs
This is the first element search engine spiders read, so make it relevant to your goods and services. Make sure you have the keywords as near to the front of the URL as possible; for example, ‘affordable-vegan-leather-shoe-shops’ works better than ‘where-to-buy-vegan-leather-shoes-in-kent-at-an-affordable-price’ as the key words are too far at the end of the URL. Notice, as well, how we kept the URL short and concise; this will also help with your SEO as it filters out the filler words.
Most Content Management Systems (CMS - the platform through which you manage your website) will automatically take the page title to create the URL. This means that to get URLs that work well for SEO, you’re in danger of creating lots of pages with very similar titles, which doesn’t make for a good visitor experience. If your CMS has the capacity to create a URL that is different from page titles, use it; if it doesn’t, ask your website designer to put that function in.
SEO strategy 2: Post regular, original content
Regular, original content signals to the search engines that your website is very much alive and kicking; if you don’t post regularly, you are sending out smoke signals that your website is dormant, and therefore no longer relevant. Posting regularly is good; posting content that is SEO optimised is great:
- Keywords: Your content needs to be keyword rich. Don’t overegg it; if it doesn’t read naturally, the search engines will consider that you are spamming and mark you down. Writing about your core products or services will naturally generate content that revolves around your keywords.
- Headings with keywords: Headings and subheadings indicate to the search engines that your content is structured and therefore create a good visitor experience (tick!). Headings with your keywords take your SEO up another level.
- Relevant back links: Back links are links to other websites. They are valuable in SEO as the search engines take it as a sign that your content is informed. The more relevant they are to your business, the harder they will work for your SEO; for example, if you’re looking to build a local clientele, it would pay dividends to link to local attractions and events, showing the search engines that you are part of the fabric of the local community.
- Originality: If the content you post is too similar to content on other websites the search engine will pick up on this and block you from appearing in relevant search results. Your content must be original – the punishment for plagiarism is being blacklisted, the equivalent to being sent to online Siberia.
- Regularity: Search engines prefer you to post content at the same time each week/month, as opposed to on an irregular schedule.
SEO strategy 3: Fill in the on-page SEO
If your CMS has the ability to check your SEO then use it and from there, adjust it accordingly. If not, there are lots of different platforms with the ability to carry out this function, such as:
- Seobility https://www.seobility.net/en/seocheck/
- Sitechecker https://sitechecker.pro/
- Woorank https://www.woorank.com/
SEO strategy 4: Make the most of your images
The search engine spiders can’t read images, so you have the ability to add ‘alt text’. In theory, this is a description of the picture; in practice, it’s your chance to add more keyword-rich descriptors to improve your SEO further. So, if you’re a local care home, instead of ‘elderly man with woman’, try ‘care home resident with expert carer’. Or, if you’re a recruitment firm, instead of ‘man shaking employer’s hand’, put ‘specialist recruiter places top tier position’.
SEO strategy 5: FAQs
The Google algorithm now values FAQs as a sign that you are answering the questions that people are asking. This is especially relevant if you can provide the answers to the key questions that consumers are searching as it will help Google identify your website as a source of knowledge. For example, if you are a pet grooming service, it might be in your interests to answer the question ‘how to house train a puppy’, as this is a commonly searched query in Google and will bring traffic to your website.
Harnessing the power of SEO can be a confusing concept to grasp at first, but doing so effectively will be a low-cost way to drive up the traffic to your website and ultimately generate new business.
Whether you’re improving your existing online presence or you want to start out with a website with fully integrated SEO considerations from the get go, contact Eonic’s friendly team of Kent-based web designers.