SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has become an essential part of not only creating a website, but also developing your business or brand. Improving your website’s SEO gives your site the opportunity to become part of the leading results that potential customers will come across when searching for a particular service.
Whilst the world wide web makes your services or products accessible to a myriad of people around the globe, SEO gives you a stronger chance of getting eyes on your website via ranking on the front pages of search engines.
It’s no secret that we are big advocates of creating strong SEO for businesses. In this blog, we aim to reveal some key changes you can make to your site today, that will improve your chances of ranking amongst or even higher than your competitors.
Much like a news article, web pages can leverage headings and subheadings to break down content and make what would otherwise be a verbose block of text, more digestible. However, these factors also aid search engine’s spiders. These spiders crawl the web, (shocker) and by extension, your website and determine the ranking of your site and in turn, the position of your site amongst search results.
Implementing titles is as simple as including the correct HTML (hyper text markup language) tags. This is a lot less technical than it sounds. By surrounding your headings with the appropriate tag. An example might be the title of this blog:
The H1 tag acts as the title of your page, informing these spiders of the content they can expect to find on a particular page. Additionally, the title, like other headings, should accurately reflect the content of the page as the quality of the page determines whether or not your page or website will rank successfully with Google.
From here we can implement sub-headings using the full range of h1 to h5 tags. Not only breaking content down for your readers but also acting as effective SEO!
Keywords are words or phrases that are consistently used across your website that are relevant to your services and target audience. For this reason, it is important to research trends and learn how to apply them in such a way that benefits your website. We have recommended Wordstream’s tools before, but they also provide a keyword research tool, making research accessible for you to find and use words that will benefit your website.
Having researched keywords that stand to increase your chances of reaching your customers, how do you implement them? A tried and tested method is to have “focus” keywords on specific pages. Consistent usage whilst maintaining the quality of the message you are trying to get across is important, as overuse can lead to a drop in “quality” and grounds for search engines to not list your page.
While keyword usage has been consistent throughout the web’s lifespan, new technology in people’s homes emphasises the importance of effective keyword usage. Smart Home speakers allow people to interact with the web using nothing more than their voice. Following a quick activation phrase, people can search the web without ever interacting with a screen. With this largely being a new and innovative approach to online searches, it is now important more than ever, that your keywords reflect yourself and your target audience.
How else can we grab Google’s web crawler’s attention when your website is being scraped? Outside of quality on-site content, it is equally as important to have another top “quality” sites linking back to your website or blog. How often do you click through one page to another when browsing the web? Those links aren’t always there just to make your life easier, it’s actually a proven method for improving SEO.
It is easy to control the links going out from your website to other websites, but how about getting your site linked from someone else’s? One method, which is brilliant if you’re a blog writer, is to create a “guest post” for someone else’s blog, with the intention of linking back to your own site. Research, reach out, and communicate with the site owner or whoever is in control of their content. Also, be sure to provide value - it is rewarding to build working relationships with others online. Another method would be submitting your URL to a link hosting website, such as 192.com, that’s express purpose is to host websites that offer a valuable service.
Seeing as we have covered SEO tactics that have existed since the web’s conception as well as newer ways people search, it’s imperative we push another new trend in web searches. With the rising popularity of video content in social media, it should come as no surprise that video content can rank better in Google’s SERP than text usually does.
Furthermore, Google in 2019 introduced a key moments feature for video content, making it easier than ever for users to browse to a particular part of a video that is relevant to them. This level of freedom for a client when they are viewing your site, means their attention is more easily retained - an essential component when preventing people from leaving your site.
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