Here are our 7 tips to increase the SEO ranking on your website
For lots of people, SEO can seem like a mind-boggling mess of algorithms and impressions. Even when you think you’ve nailed the difference between a title tag and a meta description, the finer points of how to increase website SEO can still be confusing.
You don’t have to know everything about SEO to make your website more visible. There are some quick and easy ways to help your business rise to the top of search rankings. Let’s start with these 7 tips to increase website SEO:
1. Make sure you’ve got good content
While we love slick imagery and cool design, Google loves content. All your web pages, especially your main pages (Home, About, Services, Contact) need concise, well-written, descriptive content to feed the search engines. Ideally, you’ll optimise these pages to target specific keywords and phrases while still sounding like a human being. The goal is simply to provide enough information for people and search engines to find you.
2. Write unique title tags and meta descriptions for every page
A title tag specifies the title of a web page. These are the previews displayed on search engine results pages that people can click on. Your title tag should be unique on every page and use your target keyword or phrase if possible. eg. for this page the keyword we have used is: ‘Increase SEO’ and the title tag is: ‘7 tips to increase the SEO ranking of your website’
The key is to not make them too long. Google typically only displays the first 50-60 characters so focus on writing a unique, accurate and concise description of the page content.
A meta description provides a brief summary of a web page. Search engines will usually display the meta description in search results, so these are a good way to entice people to click through to your site. eg. for this page the meta description we have used is: ‘Here are 7 tips to increase your website’s SEO ranking. Search engine optimisation seems complicated, but a few simple things can make a big difference.’
Again, length is important. Somewhere between 155-160 characters is good. Think of your meta description like advertising. Focus on writing compelling and engaging content that people will want to click through to.
We highly recommend SEO plugins to help you better understand the process of setting up your website pages correctly. Below is and example of the ‘Yoast SEO’ plug-in for WordPress that we use, for more information on Yoast you can list their website here.
3. Check for any 404 errors
A 404 error is the standard error code sent when website content has been deleted or moved. Dead or broken links are more common when you update pages on your website or have content linked to external sites (news pages, blogs etc). 404 errors are annoying for users – but they also give search engines the impression that your site isn’t well maintained. Google has a tool for checking crawl errors, or you can set up page 301 re-directs using plugins from your CMS.
4. Make your content sharable
Making your content sharable via social media is a simple change that will increase website SEO; and is a win-win for site owners and visitors. Being able to share content gives your site visitors a way to curate content on their own social feeds while earning you more inbound links – another method Google uses to rank websites. Your blog is a great place to start.
5. Optimise your images
Just like you optimse your content with key words and phrases, you should optimise your images too. Every image on your website should have an accurate, descriptive title. While you’re at it, think about adding alt tags and captions to categorise and describe what the image is doing on your website. When you do this, your images become indexed and searchable in the Google Image Search, which helps boost SEO.
6. Load your site faster
Waiting for websites to load is eternally frustrating. And while having a faster website won’t directly improve SEO, it’s very important for user experience, which leads to higher conversion rates. Some things you can do right now to make your site load faster include using the right type of image files, deleting any unused plug-ins and enabling file caching. There’s plenty more on this topic in this post How fast should my website load? – Website performance optimisation explained
7. Include a structured mark up
Finally, if you’ve done everything on this list and still want more, you might want to delve into structured mark ups. A structured mark up is something you can work on if you want to start appearing in those rich snippets that feature as the top, stand-out query for search results. (Those short summary style answers that appear at the top of Google.) This gets a bit more technical, so let us know and we’ll help you out.
Search engine optimisation seems complicated, but a few simple things can make a big difference. If you can do everything on this list, you’ll be well down the road to increasing your website SEO.
