Google currently has 85.53% of the search engine market so it’s safe to say that you’ll want to be ranking well on the search engine giant. In order to gain leads and increase sales, you’ll first need a professional website that is optimised for SEO. Then for your business to begin its SEO journey, it’ll have to be set up with Google Search Console and Google Analytics in order for you to maintain, monitor, track and report results.
At Cariad Web Design, we take optimisation into account from the get-go. Our developers build websites that are fast and responsive, with web pages that are well-equipped for SEO. A fully optimised site will improve your chances of getting noticed by searchers and potential customers on Google. However, optimisation is not a one-off task, so here are some tried and tested methods to complement your SEO strategy, boost search rankings and increase organic traffic.
1. Conduct Keyword Research
Keyword research is the foundation of good SEO and for most SEO campaigns, this is the first step. It helps you find exactly which are your business’s target keywords as well as valuable insights into the queries that your target audience is searching for. The information you get from these search terms can also help you to inform your content strategy, as well as your overarching digital marketing strategy.
It’s important to identify your main ‘money’ target keyword as this can drive leads, sales and conversions. However, you need to have a mixture of keywords so be sure to include low competition keywords that are easier to rank for. The simplest way to go about this is to start typing your term into Google Search and take a look at the suggested searches that pop up. Or use a keyword tool that scrapes Google keywords – there are many free options from Keywordtool.io to the Surfer Keyword Research Tool.
2. Use Title Tags, Meta Tags and Descriptions
Title tags are a crucial factor in helping search engines understand what your website page is about. Not only this, they also help searchers understand the content on your page, which in turn leads them to either click on your page or choose a competitor’s page instead. However, it’s important to note that Google sometimes rewrites or ignores the title tags, and the search engine uses the H1 tag 50.76% of the time instead.
Meta tags are snippets of code that tells search engines key information about your page. This includes how to display it in search results and meta tags also inform browsers how to display it to visitors. Every page has meta tags, but they’re only visible in HTML code so chat to your web developer about your site’s meta tags.
On the other hand, a meta description sums up a page’s content and presents that to users in search results. This is one of the first bits of copy that your potential web visitors will see, so optimising it for SEO is imperative. Meta descriptions should be compelling and include target keywords to simultaneously help your brand appear in organic search results and convince the searcher to visit your site. These descriptions can greatly improve search rankings along with other on page SEO efforts.
3. Use Image Alt Tags
The title of an image is referred to as ‘alt tag’, ‘alt text’, or ‘title tag’ but are in fact attributes. These attributes allow you to add textual descriptions of your image, which can help with both Google rankings and accessibility. Your image alt tags need to provide context to what an image is showing as it informs search engine crawlers, resulting in your content being indexed correctly.
4. Build High-Quality Backlinks
Link building is the process of building one-way hyperlinks (or backlinks) to a website with the goal of improving search engine visibility. The most popular link building strategies include content marketing, building useful tools, email outreach, PR and broken link building. For SEO, this practice is done with the goal of increasing the quantity of high-quality inbound links to a web page as this will increase ranking.
For it to be a quality backlink, it’ll have to come from a high domain authority website, meaning a site that is trusted by both search engines and searchers.
You’ll also need to fix any existing broken links as these can hinder your search performance because it sends signals that your website is outdated. It may also negatively impact the efficiency of your web pages and ultimately ruin conversion rates.
5. Use Social Media
By including relevant keywords and information in your social media captions, alt-text and closed captions, you’ll increase the chances of having your content surfaced to social media users. Think of it like this – SEO in social media platforms works similarly to SEO in traditional search engines. And while social media may not directly contribute to SEO ranking, the links you share across social platforms will increase brand awareness and exposure.
6. Prioritise Creating and Repurposing Content
Quality content creation, including blog posts and website copy, forms the backbone for SEO techniques to be implemented. For this reason, you’ll need to regularly post optimised content. Here are a few top tips on how to go about creating a solid SEO content strategy:
- Look up your search terms and take note of page one Google Search results.
- Make a list of the top five topics and their long-tail keywords.
- Create a content schedule for blog posts to be written with internal links.
- Set up your blog page (if you don’t already have one) and start posting once or twice a week.
- Audit your site’s existing content to see where improvements can be made and which blogs can be repurposed.
Getting to the top of Google search rankings is a slow and steady process, but having the right web agency by your side will ensure that you’re on the right track. Mastering SEO is no simple feat and there’s only so much you can do without an expert. In order to be rest assured that your website is SEO-friendly and equipped to get your desired ROI, get in touch with us or if you’re interested in a brand new pay monthly site, check out our FAQs to see what we offer.
