20 Mar Top 5 SEO Tips
To follow up our previous blog about the importance of SEO we thought we would put together a list of what we feel is the top 5 SEO tips one could offer to someone looking to try and boost their search engine ranking. We will try our best to explain each, however if you have any questions on the matter at all you can always get in touch with us through our contact form and we will do our best to help with your query.
1. Speed Speed Speed!
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
Page load speeds are everything in today’s digital environment, so to this end it’s critical that anything that is potentially slowing down your website is removed or optimised; this could be large images, complex javascript or styling, etc. It doesn’t matter if you have the best content or styling across the internet, if your page load speeds are not up to par then receiving organic traffic from searches will be an uphill battle.
Data provided by Strange Loop tells us that a delay as small as 1 second can result in a 7% loss in conversion, with 11% fewer page views. To a visitor this is lethal, many will abandon the website to go to a competitor and likely refuse to use the site again.
There are a few ways to help with page speed:
- Images
- Convert images to smaller size formats such as jpeg.
- Compress all image files to further reduce their size.
- Minify CSS and JS files.
- Declutter any sidebars.
- Only use essential widgets and plugins.
You can easily test your site speed using many different free SEO tools online, some such tool we implement are Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix.
2. Human first, Search Engine second
Photo by Cory Schadt on Unsplash
When writing content for your website it can be easy to fall into the trap of including a high number of keywords in your content to drive search results up; this however will have a negative effect on your conversion in the long run as visitors struggle to find any concise content on your page. Instead focus on writing content for the visitors you want to browse your website and write content that you feel will help a visitor, whether it is to help them select from a range of products you are trying to sell or just guidance on how to approach something, this will inevitably include keyword rich content in the quantity that it should be written in. An incredibly comprehensive blog has been written by Neil Patel on how to approach SEO Copywriting and is worth a read as it is full of excellent guidance.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to write this content yourself there are many that offer SEO copywriting services online, something that we at Flashbang Media are looking to expand into soon.
3. Meta Data
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Often an afterthought by many when setting up a website or when adding a new page to their site is the meta data that is present on that page. The meta data is the information used to explain what a web page is, we will run through some of the main ones that should always be included. As a foreword, all meta data should be unique to that page they are on, it will impact search ranking if a title or description is used across multiple pages as they will appear as duplicates.
The page title is the title given to that page and what is present in the browser tab to identify that page. Often this will include what the page is i.e. contact us, services, etc. the name of the website and then maybe a locational keyword.
The meta description is a short summary of what the web page includes, it should be a short concise explanation and should avoid being too long. It can be useful to include location keywords or a contact number in here if there is space.
Twitter and Open Graph tags are used when a link to your web page is shared. These tags include their own information about the page including; site name, title, type, description, featured image, etc. This is so that these details can be customised for when the link has been shared, the twitter tags are used primarily to hold information pulled through by twitter and open graph tags are a standard format for use across many other platforms.
Depending on the web platform you use there are various plugins that can assist with the addition or even automation of these tags. If you’re a WordPress user then Yoast is a popular choice for this.
4. Links
This section can be split up into three parts; inbound links (or backlinks), outbound links and linking domains, all of which are equally important.
Inbound links or backlinks, are links that are present on other websites that link to your own. These links could be present in a product description a reseller has on their website, or perhaps a blog post a happy client has posted, etc. A common way to increase the number of backlinks is to get your business on as many business listing websites as possible as each entry will have the option to add your website link. Another way is to keep your social media channels active and on as many posts as is reasonable, to include a link in some way to your website.
Outbound links are as important as inbound ones, even if they can direct some traffic away from your site. However, you should see it as a way to help the online community as a whole as they provide a way for pages across the internet to link to other relevant content that a browser may find useful, in this way your page can help your neighbouring businesses, suppliers, customers, etc.
Linking Domains is similar to that of inbound links, however they vary in that they are only counted once per unique domain, if a website links to your site five times it will still only count as one linking domain. These linking domains are associated with your website to provide validity to its content which is great if they are highly reputable and trustworthy websites with a large digital presence, this sounds good in theory though it can also jeopardize your website’s chances, if those linking domains are of poor quality their reputation will likely damage yours, so be careful which sites your website is referenced on.
5. Sitemap
Photo by Марьян Блан | @marjanblan on Unsplash
Something essential to include when setting up a website is the creation of an accurate sitemap, this sitemap includes every page that you want to be crawled by a search engine so that it can be presented to a browser should the page be relevant to their query. When trying to improve your search ranking, especially on Google, this sitemap can be uploaded to Google’s Search Console, so that a website crawler will navigate this map and gather the relevant information about your website. A good thing to note about this is once you have provided the sitemap address to the search console it will be actively reviewed on a regular basis for changes.
Conclusion
Hopefully this information all made sense and will prove helpful for those that were in need of it. Of course this wasn’t an exhaustive list of SEO techniques but it is a good start, there are many other blog posts online that include other tips and tricks for SEO success. As previously mentioned, should you have further questions about anything discussed in this blog post, don’t hesitate to get in touch via our contact form and we will help you out.
If you’re interested in SEO for your website, why not take a look at our SEO packages. Alternatively, take a look at our other services for more!
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