While your website might have content that is 10 times better than your competitors, if it’s not optimised correctly, your customers might never see it! Search Engine Optimisation, also known as SEO is a term that has been used a lot, especially in the past few years. Although, a lot of times it can be confusing knowing exactly how to do execute it properly.
So, what is it?
SEO is essentially the process of optimising your website so that it can be easily found by search engines. If your website isn’t properly optimised, search engines like Google, Bing etc. won’t be able to find and analyse your site. If Google can’t ‘read’ your website, then it won’t get recommended to your potential customers.
Now, what do we mean by Google’s ability to ‘read’ a website? When someone types a word or phrase into the search bar, the search engine then immediately scans (crawls or indexes) millions of websites looking for matching content. That’s why it’s so important to be strategic with the keywords you use.
How do I know which keywords to use?
There are different types of keywords: long-tail and short-tail. The easiest way to think about it is that long-tail keywords are an expansion of short-tail keywords. For example, if ‘SEO’ is a short-tail, then ‘how to implement successful SEO’ could be a long-tail keyword. In other words, it’s a phrase that is specific but will still receive high search volumes.
For a blog post or website page, we suggest using one to two long-tail keywords throughout the content, headers and URL. This allows search engines to quickly understand what the page or post is about. While it may be tempting to overload the page with these specific phrases, overuse or ‘keyword stuffing’ will have a negative effect. Instead, keep it simple with one or two phrases that will ensure your website is getting the right traffic. If you’re using keywords that aren’t relevant to your page, you may still get people clicking, but the likelihood of them turning into sales is small.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are also an incredibly important aspect of SEO. The meta description for a page is what shows up under your Google listing.
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It helps give your readers, and more importantly, search engines a summary of what the page’s content is. They are typically about 150 characters and should include your chosen long-tail keywords.
Images with ‘Alt Text’
Not only do images enhance the overall look of webpages and blog posts, but they are also a handy tool to help boost SEO. The tricky part is that search engines can’t read images in the same way humans do. Instead, they use the ‘alt text’ to help them understand the image and then rank it accordingly within Google Images. So, when putting an image on your page, you need to make sure the alt text is accurate, relevant and insightful. We recommend keeping these under 125 characters and using keywords where applicable.
Internal Linking
Linking is an important part of SEO because it’s simple and effective. Internal linking allows you to plug different pieces of content you have on your website that the reader might find interesting or helpful. For example, if you’d like to read more about our SEO services, click here. This allows you to help circulate your readers throughout the website while keeping the content they’re seeing fresh.
Overall, Search Engine Optimisation is a great skill that will have lasting effects on your business. That being said, it’s not a one-off task. For continued SEO success, you need to be continually checking and refreshing what you are doing. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’d be happy to have a chat.