A successful SEO strategy is beneficial for all businesses, whether you’re a new start-up or a big name in your industry. A well-rounded SEO approach can increase your website traffic and rankings. Read on to discover what SEO is, why it’s important, and how to improve your strategy.
What is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)?
SEO is the process of ranking a website or a piece of content higher on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. When you type something into a search engine, the most relevant results are shown. The content displayed first is deemed relevant based on the search engine’s algorithm. These algorithms are updated frequently; Google updates theirs between 500 and 600 times a year!
When writing content or designing a website, you want it to be easy to find. But when many others write for the same topics or offer the same services, your work or website can get lost in a sea of pages. To prevent this from happening, it’s important to optimise the work.
While the preferences of search engines are ever-changing and involve hundreds of factors, there are a few key focus points for a successful SEO strategy. Search engines prioritise displaying content or websites that are engaging, user-friendly, trustworthy, relevant or compel the user to take a desired action.
How Do Search Engines Assess Websites?
Search engines use something called website crawlers. These crawlers are also known as web spiders or bots.
The crawlers frequently scan the web for new or updated content. They are designed to mimic the human experience. So, if the crawler dislikes something on your site, based on the algorithm it is given, it’s likely a person will too. This determines how well your content will rank on the search engine.
5 Tips and Tricks for Your SEO Strategy
- User Experience
Your website is the foundation of your SEO strategy, so it’s paramount that it’s easy to use. Slow load speeds, broken links and complicated website designs are red flags for web crawlers and negatively impact your rankings.
To avoid this, choose a simple and effective website design that is easy to navigate. If you are selling products, add additional navigational aids, like a search bar, filter, or sort button. Compress images before uploading to your site to maintain good load speeds and maximise user experience!
User experience extends to website accessibility. With mobiles being used much more commonly to browse, it’s important that your site can function well from a phone or tablet as well as a desktop.
- Link-building
Link-building is a great way to show search engines that your content is trustworthy. Gaining backlinks from reputable websites can boost your credibility by proxy. It’s a little like recommending a candidate for a job. If a great employee recommends a candidate for an interview, the hiring manager might be more trusting of them. You can use marketing tools like SEMrush or Majestic to check how well-ranked other websites are!
Additionally, linking between your internal site pages helps improve website navigation and it can boost older content. When you link from new to older pages, you drive traffic and show search engines the content still has use and value.
- Strong Content
High-quality content is crucial for a website to rank well. It keeps users on the site for longer and signals to search engines that the information is relevant and useful.
Search engines favour content structured in short paragraphs and sentences with clear headings and subheadings. Some think this is because it improves user experience on smaller screens Others think this is because users skim content more frequently and the smaller paragraphs are easier to navigate.
Try to keep paragraphs around 3 sentences long, with no more than 20 words per sentence.
Last but not least, search engines prefer content from credible authors. For example, Google has a framework called E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) that it uses to gauge whether authors are credible.
Include an author page on your site detailing the expertise of your writers, or build proof of your writer’s expertise with continuous valuable content. Also, avoid using AI-generated content at all costs. Search engines penalise content that is not human-written!
For example, Quadrant2Design, a UK-based exhibition stand design and build contractor has author bios on the bottom of each of their blog pages, detailing the author’s expertise and time in the exhibition industry!
- Keywords
Optimising for specific keywords is a useful way to increase your content performance. Keywords are the backbone of SEO. Use tools like SEMrush or Answer the Public to identify popular search terms related to your content. These tools can save you valuable time and resources. It’s not worth writing about something that no one is searching for!
Your content is most likely to be successful if you focus on long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords usually make up 3 to 5 words. They can relate to specific questions or topics and the content is often easier to rank for.
Integrate these keywords naturally into your content, titles, and meta descriptions and frame blogs or articles around the topic. Avoid keyword stuffing. Search engines pick up on this tactic and penalise the content.
- Title tags and Meta Descriptions
Page titles and meta descriptions are bits of HTML code found on the header of a web page. These bits of code help search engines and users determine the content subject.
Make sure page and SEO titles and meta descriptions are relevant to the content! Alternative text should also be used on images to describe their purpose. Filling in this information properly allows Google to index your work and display it for the correct searches.
To sum up
Developing a strong SEO strategy can significantly enhance your website’s visibility, rankings and traffic. Make sure that your website is accessible and user-friendly, your content is well-written, keyword and SEO optimised and work to build good backlinks. Remember that search engine algorithms change frequently. Stay updated with the latest SEO updates and continue developing your strategy to stay ahead of the competition!
