A few simple steps to help you move your website up the search engine ladder
First thing’s first, for anyone that is new to all the online business jargon, SEO simply stands for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ and its function is to help push your website to the top of any search engine. However, with your help provided, you can help push your website further to the top of search engines so whenever someone uses certain words and phrases to search for businesses like yours, you can make sure to be that users first click!
A search engines’ job is to simply act upon the request of the user and provide the best match to what they are searching, based on popularity and relevance. The way search engines provide this information is based on a series of links from your website to the database that the search engine holds. This database is found by ‘crawlers’: imagine tiny people running through a network of imaginery wires inside the search engine, looking for useful keywords and information to determine the relevance and popularity of links on your website that will help to push your site to the top of search enquiries. Whether you are building your own website or if someone is doing it for you, it is important to understand how to create a site rich with information that helps users and consumers find you easily.
There are several ways to help your website climb to the top. One way search engines determines the popularity and relevance is based on what the user is typing into the search engine to look for specific services, products and information. So, keeping the titles and subtitles of each page of your site is accurate and descriptive is a good place to start. Adding text links to each page will help people navigate people through your site, whilst also allowing search engines to understand how relevant you are in relation to certain searches.
Keep your URL simple and keyword rich. This will not only help users to find you quicker but will help keep you near the top of search engines. Speaking of key words, make sure to not keep key words (i.e. your company name or the service you offer) hidden from the search engine ‘crawlers’ in different forms of media, such as images or videos.
Keeping it simple and clear for the purpose of your URL and key words and links n your site are very useful for SEA to understand the relevance of your site, however, annotating your website in a way that someone would actually describe images or videos could help SEO recognise the content of what you are presenting. For example, rather than just writing ‘Building a Table’ as a How-To video for DIY beginners, you may elaborate on the content to something someone would actually search ‘How to build a large kitchen table for beginners’. This helps both the SEO and user find and understand your content before clicking.
Keeping your content fresh and updated is also key to keeping it near the top. Sites that haven’t been updates in years may lose its relevance and popularity so will lose traction and fall down the list searches. Keeping your site updated is not only a must for your current customers but to also attracting new ones and gaining popularity on all search engines.
Understanding what people are searching for is key to organizing your site and tailoring it for the user. Is your typical user searching for your specific page? (i.e. typing in your company name or something similar?) Are they searching for a product or service that you, or anyone else, are providing? Or, are they searching for information that could relate to your product?
Being visible for your customer in the first few suggestions on their search could be crucial to you gaining business. Being a top result on a search page results in the highest amount of traffic to your website, which will ultimately gain you a higher volume of potential customers. So, be smart about your SEO and the rest will be history! If you need any more tricks and tips or would simply like to talk to one of our experts, give us a call today, we would love to hear from you.