It’s important to understand why SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is vital for your online success. What is SEO? you might ask.
The internet is a bustling live market of competing business, peacocking to gain the favour of complex and ever-changing algorithms. The process of SEO involves various tools and techniques that are used to make a business rank higher when someone searches for their related products or services. Ultimately, it’s about slowly working over time to hopefully make your business reach the top of ‘page 1’.
Everyone wants their business to rank at the top of the first page in online searches, but this is never a guarantee as SEO is a constantly evolving holistic process. SEO is never an overnight success story. However, understanding SEO and then taking action will be the reason your website ranks high, attracts more customers, and ultimately produces long-term business. Today, let’s take a look at some ideas for you to incorporate into your own website which will, overtime, improve your SEO performance.
1. On-page Website Optimisation
On-page optimisation is extremely important for your website’s performance in search rankings. On each of your webpages, there are plenty of great opportunities to improve SEO. We will mention just a small number of techniques you can use now to improve the optimisation of these pages.
Good content: In the past, ITM Digital has discussed why ‘content is king‘ and we stand by it today. Having strong and well written content is key for both search engines and customers alike. In order to attract and then retain customers, you need to communicate a strong value proposition, and in order to attract Google, you need to coherently signal that your business knows what it’s talking about.
Using proper tags: You should structure your page’s content in accordance with Google’s hierarchy of importance when it comes to the principles of web page design. For instance, make sure that your headings and subheadings have the correct ‘H-tags’.
Internal linking: Using internal links to other posts and pages within your website will increase the ranking of each link, as you are signalling to Google that they are worth linking to and that your website is mapped out well for indexing. Make sure that your links are spaced out and that they are relevant to the content they appear in. For example; if you would like to learn more about how to improve the performance of your website, we have written some great blogs on this subject.
Alternative Image Text (Alt Text): Sometimes referred to alt tags and alt descriptions, ‘alt text’ is the alternative text for the image files of your website. Unlike file names, this secondary alt text is partially used for when someone’s internet browser can’t render certain image files, but more importantly, it’s also a very useful tool for SEO. Learn more about how to optimise your website’s imagery here.
2. Update Your Content Regularly
You may have launched a beautiful website four years ago, however it’s time to freshen things up! The more often you update your website with posts, new images, downloads and testimonials, the more often Google and other search engines will return to visit and index your website.
When we say you should regularly update your website content, we don’t mean that you need to constantly be changing literally every word on your website. For example; your core pages, such as your ‘About’ page, may not require a lot of updates. Uploading new blogs, like this one, is a great way to attract faster attention and thus more opportunities to get a higher ranking. Confused? Let’s explain a little more how this works.
When search engine bots scroll at your site more frequently, you have the chance to achieve higher rankings based on the content you offer to the world wide web. Google, for example, uses highly advanced programs and algorithms that constantly scan the internet in order to rank websites appropriately. Based on a large number of factors, including all of the techniques mentioned in this blog, Google ‘bots’ will then index your website. When you add new content, the search engines will notice and come back again to index/rank your website.
3. Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?
There’s never been a better time to ask yourself this question. Mobile users on websites pages accounted for 31% in 2015, but they have grown to at least 54% in 2021 and in some industries this figure is much higher. This percentage is only expected to continue its growth year after year.
When it comes to indexing, Google and other search engines reward users who ‘play ball’ by embracing the changing trends of their world-wide users. For example, bad bounce rates can negatively affect your organic SEO as your website may be viewed by bots as ‘less trustworthy’.
Mobile device users are five times more likely to leave a website if the layout has not been optimised for their screen sizes, which significantly increases bounce rates. Optimising your website for mobile devices will keep users on your pages for longer and increase your SEO, for when those judgmental digital bots decide to arrive again!
4. Don’t Forget About Voice Search
You’ve probably heard of, or even spoken to both Alexa and Siri by now. It turns out that voice-based searches are growing in popularity at a very fast pace, due to the mass usage of personal digital assistants; such as Alexa and Google Nest. In fact, it was estimated that last year around 50% of internet searches were being carried out by voice-enabled searching. Some are already suggesting the future of most internet searching will one day be through voice-enabled devices.
Just like the increasing popularity of mobile devices with online searches, your website will be rewarded for thinking ahead. If you want your business to successfully rank and then for you to be able to future consolidate those rankings, you need to be adaptable and be ready to hit the ground running. In short; you’re going to need to be found on voice search and it’s time to take action.
There are various techniques to consider with this level of SEO, but a major factor is going to be the tone of your content. When people search for restaurants, hotels or plane tickets using traditional search engines, they will search for a key phrase like ‘restaurants near me’. However, with voice-enabled searching, people are far less formal:
‘Alexa, what’s the best Indian restaurant in the Dublin?’
The key takeaway here is that in order to adapt to the changing medium of internet searches, your on-page content may need to be gradually optimised to reflect a more conversational and informal tone.
5. Get Advice & Help From SEO Practitioners
If you’re thinking that this all sounds good but you’re not sure where to start, our advice is that you get in touch with someone qualified, who deals with SEO and website design professionally on a regular basis. This way you can move forward with confidence when it comes to the implementation of the above SEO actions on your website, as well as many more that we will get to another day.
Our SEO experts at ITM Digital in Naas, County Kildare work with website optimisation every day. We also deal with off-page SEO and digital marketing; which includes Backlinks, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Content Writing, social Media Marketing and much more. If you, or someone you know, needs assistance in these areas, then contact our team today. We’ll be more than happy to speak with you. Otherwise, we wish you the best of luck in your SEO endeavours!
Don’t forget to check out some of our related blogs;
- 5 Reasons Why Small Businesses Should Use Google Ads
- Why Digital Strategy Is Important
- Why Content Is King
- Top 5 SEO Tips For Your eCommerce Website
