Top 10 tips for improving SEO
1. SEO keywords research
Write down 5 to 10 top keywords with long tail keywords that you think people will search for to find your business online then order the 3 to 5 relevant keywords for each page. Use these popular keywords on your website content, blogs and when sharing on social media.
Set up Google My Business profile, this will provide more visibility on Google Local search.
2. Page Titles
Relevant page titles are important for SEO. These page titles are displayed on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and act as micro ads, which encourage visitors to click through to your website. Ensure it contains the most important keywords/phrases first and is unique per page. This will also display when content is shared on social media. Use ideally between 50 to 60 characters including spacing. Bing (Yahoo!) is up to 65, and W3C is up to 64 characters. Character limits are subject to change.
3. Meta Description
Have you optimised your website page descriptions and are they different for every page? This is an important part of the on-page SEO implementation as it will display on search results, same as page title tags. Meta descriptions are not visible on actual websites. Use ideally between 70 to 155 characters including spacing. Character limits are subject to change.
4. Headings (H1, H2, etc.)
Are you using H1, H2 and are they correctly ordered? Correctly defined headings aid web accessibility and are quite important for SEO. H1 should contain primary keywords/phrases researched in point 1, and then subsequently H2 will have secondary keywords and so forth. Use up to 70 characters. Relevant headings also help people using assistive technology.
5. Images and Alt Text
Are all your website image’s height and width defined? Omitting height and width attributes means page text jumps about when images load. Is the image the same size as the actual source file? Minimize the size of the images so your website loads quickly. Do they have meaningful alt text to improve web accessibility and SEO? Alt tags are short for alternative tags. Also, when the Internet is not working properly, sometimes the image won’t load but the alt text will display instead. Ensure all image naming conventions are relevant as this will increase image search results. Restrict the characters to less than 120, including spacing.
6. Internal links/link anchors
Are the links on your pages well-defined? Well-defined links enhances SEO and web accessibility. Ensure you do not use underscores in URLs as Google recognises hyphens as word separators, but underscores are not counted in the same way.
Also, ensure page file names have keywords in relation to the content of the page. Having incorrect URL naming conventions can hinder the performance in SERPs. Links on your pages should be as descriptive as possible, avoid ‘click here’ and ‘find out more’ so the user understands exactly where they are navigating to with the link text alone.
You should cross-link internal pages throughout your website, this can help rank web pages that are less popular, and visitors are more likely to stay on your website longer.
7. Content and User Experience (UX)
Implementing content in a structure that’s comprehensible, and searchable is critical for SEO. Websites that are updated regularly are also crawled by search engines more often. Valuable content and user experience are paramount, therefore it is important to have content posted on your website regularly.
This is a good way to boost your SEO strategy and in turn, attracting relevant visitors. As long as it s quality content, the information is useful and has a significant purpose for the end user, otherwise, it may be considered as spam.
8. Sitemap.xml
It is crucial your website has an XML sitemap as it ensures your website is seen to be as Google-friendly as possible. The sitemap lists all the URLs on a website and allows search engines to crawl websites more intelligently, it also includes additional information such as the latest updates and frequency of changes.
9. Robots.txt
It is important your website has a robots.txt file, this allows you to restrict the access of search engine robots that crawl websites and prevents these robots from accessing particular directories/pages you don’t want them to see.
10. External links/Link building (backlinks)
External linking to a few high authority and trusted websites may give the popularity of their website some significance to your website.
Search engines treat link building as a vote for popularity; It simply means, that if credible websites are linking back, the more importance search engines will associate with your website.
Link building has changed in recent years to the extent that earning quality links has far more value than buying links.
Please note, the SEO above tips are subject to change in the evolving world of the web.
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