SEO is one of the most potent forms of digital marketing if your business has a website. This is because it’s estimated that there are over 5.9 million searches on Google per minute. And that’s just Google – there’s other platforms like Bing that generate significant traffic levels.
By optimising your content for search engines, you are improving your chances of being able to tap into that high levels of traffic. You can boost your visibility, enable search engines to crawl your web content easier, and ultimately place higher in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). This all means more traffic, enquiries, and customers.
But how do you do this? SEO is a multi-faceted process and if you don’t have the time or knowhow to dedicate to it, you can contact us to see how we can help. However, in the meantime, I’ve also created a simple set of SEO optimisation tips that you can utilise.
On-Page SEO Optimisation Tips
On-page SEO relates to your web content and its quality. Once the search engine crawlers have accessed your site, they will then index your pages and look for relevance, quality, and other factors. You can do things like adding keywords, making your content useful, and including meta tags to improve your chances of ranking higher on SERPs.
Make Your Content Unique, Useful, and Authoritative
Google promotes its principle of EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust). Your content should try and reflect this. It should demonstrate the experience of the user and show that they are an expert on the topic. It should also show that you are an authoritative voice on the subject, and that your opinion is trustworthy.
Don’t create content for contents sake – your written website content must be useful and provide real value to your customers.
Include Links in Your Content
Your content should include internal and external links to help show authority and make the hierarchy of your website easier to understand.
Internal links are ones that point towards other pages within your website structure. External links point to relevant content outside your website structure. Try to include 2-3 internal and external links in each piece of content.
Make sure they are relevant to the subject of the page, and that they flow naturally within the context of the paragraph they fit in.
Use Keywords Strategically
Keywords form the foundation of your SEO efforts. This starts with excellent keyword research and understanding which ones you can rank for and will yield the best results.
With your keyword research in place, it’s then a case of using them strategically in your content. They should be used in locations like the meta tags, H1 heading, H2 headings, in the first paragraph of a web page, and sporadically throughout the main body text.
Make Sure Each Page has a Meta Title and Description Tag
The meta title and description tags are two of the most important on-page SEO features. If you want to start somewhere for your SEO optimisation tips, address your meta tags. Firstly, make sure that every page on your website has them – even less-important pages.
Secondly, make sure your meta tags are formatted properly and optimised:
Meta Title – It should be between 50-60 characters, contain your primary keyword at the start, and succinctly describe the page’s contents.
Meta Description – It should be between 155-160 characters, also contain your primary keyword at the start, and provide a more detailed description of the page’s contents (different from the title).
Structure Your Content Logically
Don’t write your content as one huge wall of text! This is immediately off-putting for users, but it makes your text harder to contextualise and index for search engine crawlers.
Things like product pages, blog articles, and about pages must have a logical structure and utilise plenty of headings. Look at the flow of your text and see where you could insert H2 and H3 headings to break up larger paragraphs.
Also, make sure that things like blog articles flow nicely with an introduction, body content split by H2s, and end with a conclusion that summarises the article and offers some closing insight.
Use Schema Markup for Rich Snippets
Schema markup is a type of descriptive language that gives additional context to your web content. This is a collaborative language developed by a range of companies including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. There are specific types of schema markup such as product, FAQ, event, person, local business, and offers.
By adding this markup to your web content, you allow the creation of rich snippets on search engine results. These make your page stand out as they add additional information beneficial to customers. For example, for local SEO, the local business markup allows customers to easily find your company and info like opening hours and contact info.
Off-Page SEO Optimisation Tips
Off-page SEO deals with content outside your immediate website sphere. This includes things like customer interactions, external content, and backlinks. The aim of off-page SEO is to boost your authority and reputation and provide additional means for search engines to find your site.
Build a High-Quality Backlink Portfolio
Creating a quality backlink portfolio is one of the most important SEO optimisation tips. A backlink is a link on an external website that points back to your website. You should aim to have multiple backlinks pointing back to cornerstone content or pages that you want to drive traffic to.
The backlinks must be high-quality too with the following parameters:
- Posted on high-authority sites with consistent traffic.
- The text surrounding the link should match the context of the link.
- The anchor should include a relevant keyword if possible.
By creating high-quality backlinks, you demonstrate to Google that your website is authoritative and is a trusted source within your industry.
Encourage Social Proof
Reviews and testimonials on other platforms like Trustpilot and Google My Business can boost your off-page SEO. Firstly, the positive content and activity are great indicators for Google when ranking your website. Secondly, they provide backlink opportunities to direct traffic back to your website.
Create accounts on review sites and request that your customers leave reviews. Don’t be pushy with it, but a simple email, or even a face-to-face request after a business meeting is appropriate.
It’s important that the reviews are genuine though – never create fake reviews as they are usually found out and can be damaging to your reputation.
Create a Detailed Google Business Profile
A Google Business Profile is a great off-page SEO tool as it serves as another type of social proof but gives your business more weight on SERPs too.
This is a free service and I encourage you to register an account today or if you already have one, to make sure it’s as detailed as possible. On the Google Business dashboard, you can add info like opening times, products and services, a map, contact information, and general about info.
There’s also a spot for customer reviews which can be especially beneficial. These can include a star rating, photos, and a written review. When people see positive reviews, they immediately feel more assured about using your company.
Technical SEO Tips
Technical SEO deals with the underlying structure of your website and its accessibility. Essentially, you want to make it as easy as possible for search engine crawlers to find, access, and navigate your site. You also wants customers to be able to do the same.
Improve Page Loading Speeds
Did you know that most people wait a maximum of 6 seconds for a web page to load? This is why page loading speeds are essential. Simply put, people get bored and frustrated and will quickly go elsewhere if your site is sluggish.
Google and other search engines also hate slow speeds and it’s known to be an important ranking factor. You can use Google PageSpeed Insights to check your loading times and look for errors that need to be fixed.
Common issues include unoptimised images, broken code, and background scripts that should be disabled.
Create an XML Sitemap
Think of an XML Sitemap as the contents page of a book. It contains a complete list of your website’s hierarchy so that search engine crawlers can understand your site architecture and how to access it. The sitemap also helps give context to your different pages in relation to their parent and child links.
There are many online XML sitemap templates and platforms that assist with their creation. Once you have completed it, it’s important to submit it to Google Search Console. Make sure that the sitemap is updated too as you add new website content or remove old pages. If you use a WordPress site we highly recommend the Yoast plugin as this handles the sitemap for you and updates the sitemap automatically when a new page is added.
Maintain a Robots.txt File
A robots.txt file explains to search engine crawlers which pages they should crawl and which ones to avoid. It’s a simple text file where you specify rules for different crawler bots.
It’s important to note that the robots.txt file doesn’t automatically block crawlers and bots, it’s still up to those bots to honour your robots.txt files request. All of the reputable crawlers likely will honour this file but it’s important to be aware that this isn’t a security feature that can stop bots from accessing the site.
So what pages should you add to a robots.txt? Website admin pages are a great example here as these pages don’t provide any useful information, they are simply there to login and edit the website.
It’s also important to remember that adding a URL to the robots.txt doesn’t exclude it from being indexed on Google. If you want to ensure that a URL isn’t on Google then you need to use the noindex tag instead.
Also, if you are running an extremely large website, you may find that crawlers assign a “budget” to your website. Essentially, they allot a set amount of time and resources crawling your website due to its size. Therefore, maintaining your robots.txt file and disallowing access to unimportant pages makes sure that budget is used effectively.
Check for Page Errors
Search engine crawlers follow “breadcrumb” trails. For example, they will find one page on your website, index it, then follow any links they find to continue to the next page.
This is why one of the simplest SEO optimisation tips is to check for page errors. Make sure that every page on your website is accessible. You can use automated link checking tools to speed up the process. There should be no 404 errors and no redirect issues – everything should be accessible and point to the right location.
Remove Duplicate Content
Duplicate content can be webpages with the same webpage content that is copied & pasted to a different URL. Search engines ignore duplicate content as they only need one version of each page to deliver to their users.
Make sure that every page on your website has a unique meta title and description, H1 heading and, more importantly, make sure that every piece of written content is original. Don’t copy and paste large amounts of content between pages.
Check Mobile Accessibility
Mobile accessibility is important for SEO and customer satisfaction. This is because it’s estimated that 96% of the world’s global digital population used their smartphone to connect to the internet in 2023. Simply put, your site needs to be mobile responsive otherwise you’re potentially alienating a large part of your customer base.
Search engines know this too and they look more favourably on sites that have excellent mobile optimisation. To check mobile accessibility, you must look at how your site loads and displays on smartphone browsers. It should still be easy to use, look great, and offer the full functionality of the desktop version.
Make Your Web Content Appealing to Google with These SEO Optimisation Tips
I hope you have found these SEO optimisation tips useful. Don’t worry – although these tips might sound complex, many of them can be completed using the tools of your website development platform. For example, ecommerce stores like Shopify allow you to easily add meta tags sitemaps and make mobile-responsive pages.
If you don’t know where to start or which tip to implement first, an SEO audit is a fantastic way to find common problems and decide on how to fix them. This is something we can help with so why not book a strategy session or get in touch today to get your SEO back on track?
