Whilst there have been many stories that SEO is becoming less important, this is simply not the case. SEO is still very much alive and as relevant ever. The only thing that has changed is how SEO is implemented. Stuffing your copy full of keywords is no longer the way to get your website ranking. Google is clever enough to recognise and prioritize high quality content now.
However, there is more to it than that! For those who are not SEO experts, there are a few basic steps you can take which will improve your SEO, and is likely to improve it quickly too. Here are our top 10 tips for SEO beginners:
1: Define your keywords
Keyword research should be the first thing you do when looking to improve your SEO. Both the search engines and the users depend on keywords to find your website. Ensure they are relevant, localised if necessary and right for your brand or product. There is a free Google tool you can use for this called Google AdWords Keyword Tool.
2: Produce good content
It may seem like a no-brainer but making sure your copy is relevant and readable is critical. Don’t stuff your copy with keywords but do make sure that your copy is relevant to what your customers are searching. Make sure you write for your readers, NOT for search engines. Keyword density must be between 2-4%. If your keyword density is 5% or over, Google will penalise your website.
3: Use Internal Links
Most people understand that external backlinks to your website are important, and many people designate huge amount of time to backlink building, but don’t forget about the importance of internal backlinks. By linking from one page of your website to another, you are guiding the user journey which can significantly reduce your bounce rate.
By using internal links where needed, it also makes it easier for the Google crawlers to index your page. Every web page should have at least 1 internal link.
4: Optimise page titles and page meta description
Every page on your website should have a unique tag which is less than 70 characters. Each page should also have a meta description which should be 150-160 characters long. These are important because search engines read meta descriptions to determine what your website is about. Ensure that these are relevant to the page content.
5: Do not duplicate content
As tempting as it may be to duplicate content on your website, don’t do it. Many people take a blog written by someone else and create the exact blog post and post it as their own. While this may save time and effort, it violates Google’s (and other search engines) Guidelines and your website will be penalised for it. Only post unique content if you want to drive traffic from search engines.
6: Use Google Search Console
Register your site with Google Search Console. This is a tool that analyses your website and provides feedback on how you can improve how your website appears in search engine results. As this advice is coming directly from a search engine, it makes sense to take it!
7: Check for any broken links
It is important that you check your website for any broken links. Search engines will not be able to index your site if they can not get through your links, and importantly, your users will not be able to find content on your website. This will damage your SEO.
8: Optimise your images
One of the most important on-page SEO tactics is image optimisation. If you want to get traffic from Google images, then you need to ensure your images are optimised by using your keywords in ALT Tag. Ensure you give your images descriptions and captions and reduce them in size as much as you can without losing the quality of them. All of this will help your SEO.
9: Check your website speed
If your website takes a while to load, this will affect your SEO. According to Google, the faster your website loads, the higher it will rank when comparing it to similar sites with a longer loading time. By ensuring your images are optimised, this will improve your load time and therefore your SEO.
10: Make sure your website is mobile friendly
This is a crucial factor that influences your search engine ranking due to its impact on mobile SEO. There are more searches being carried out on mobile than ever before, so ensuring that your website is either mobile responsive, or mobile friendly will help you enhance your user experience across all devices, and therefore improve your ranking.
Summary:
While you may not be an SEO expert, these are some basic tips that will help boost your SEO. Staying ahead of the SEO game can be a challenge and for some, this may seem like a job too far. If you would like some help from the experts, feel free to get in contact to discuss how we can get your website ranking for you.
