If you run an online business or are in any way connected to being online then search engine optimisation (aka SEO) should not be something that gives you goosebumps. SEO is the first thing to consider when designing a website or creating content for a specific target audience.
Customising your website for SEO is very important if you are serious about promoting your products or services online, or if you rely mainly on organic search you need to keep this in mind. The aim of these treatments is to get your website on the first page of search engine results (SERPs for short).
SEO has a very big impact on how your website is presented in search results and how it is ranked for different keywords. If your website is equipped with a sitemap the results in Google may look like this.
As you can see, instead of a single result, here we have a list of sub-pages, which makes it much easier to navigate the site and more strongly catches the attention of the person who is looking for specific information.
Your website may look great, but without proper SEO optimisation, the design of the site may not matter at all, for a simple reason-nobody will ever find it. In the same way, a site that is well optimised for SEO but that doesn't have quality content won't be valuable to readers.
In such a situation, a user who arrives at our site will, after a short while, press a button to return to the search results. Such entering and immediately leaving the page is called „pogo sticking”. This is a very bad signal for Google. If this process is repeated many times, the page is deemed unworthy of its ranking and is replaced by better quality pages. Google places emphasis on the user finding the desired information as quickly as possible.
Unlike PPC (Pay Per Click), where we pay for every valid click on our website ad, SEO is an organic process. It involves the positioning of likes to our site, as well as within it. It is a free and most natural process, in which we have to face enormous competition for specific keywords.
To get the most out of SEO, it is essential to optimise possibly every aspect of your website. Whether it's on the technical side or the customisable content. Here are some of the best techniques you need to use to improve your site's SEO.
Table of contents
- Create quality content
- Structure of the website
- Website addresses
- Title tag, meta-description and alt attribute
- Internal linking
- Backlinks / external links
- Social Media
- Check your speed
- Create mobile-friendly websites
- Create a sitemap
Create quality content
This is an element of optimisation that we perform on our website. Quality content draws the attention of both the user and the search engine. When positioning a website, content plays an important role in SEO. In fact, this is what Google's semantic search analyses.
Users love content that is specific, in-depth, unique, valuable and fully solves a problem or answers a question. Above all, the content must appeal. Why should I read a passage that says nothing about my problem?
When designing a website or content for it, there are several things to do:
- focus on a single topic. This is to make it easier for the user to find the information they are looking for, as well as to assist search engines in determining the value of your content;
- The content should be of high quality. This is particularly important because it helps:
- keep visitors for longer;
- make it more enjoyable for potential customers to visit your website, and
- urge them to come back for more.
- to know the user's intentions. Why do you create such content? For which searches should it appear? You don't have to limit yourself to just keywords. Add words to the text that are related to the keywords by which you are trying to position the page. Your job is to create content that matches the intent of the searcher, not just to fit in keywords.
- In semantic search, keywords do not matter. It's a process where Google's algorithms try to understand the meaning of the content in a similar way to how the user does. Don't force keywords into your text. Instead, scatter them naturally throughout the text.
- Consistently focus on keywords
SEO-optimised content is the responsibility of the copywriter, or content marketer. In fact, both terms are used interchangeably.
Structure of the website
A neat and well-designed website attracts users and makes them stay with you for longer. Try to understand the aesthetics of good design, which should be clear, intuitive and the content should be up-to-date. It is very common to find pages with entries from, for example, 2017. The structure of the page and its navigation is crucial for SEO, as well as for future users of your site.
Organise your website with internal links to your own pages to make them easier for Google to view and index. Simple navigation and internal site structure will make it easy for users to navigate your site without getting lost. Make everything easily accessible in no more than 3 clicks.
Website addresses
Using a simple address structure for all your pages is well received by search engines and, above all, very much appreciated by users. Friendly URLs (short, descriptive and conveying the meaning of the page), are easy for users to understand. They also help to detect spam in search results.
To make the site SEO compliant:
- Add important keywords to your website address
- Only hyphens should be used in URLs
- Avoid dynamic URLs, use static ones such as:
- domain.co.uk/category/best-dog-foods, or shorter, such as domain.co.uk/positioning-pagesy.
- Try to avoid such addresses as domena.pl/kategoria/?p=03906782
Title tag, meta-description and alt attribute
Rest assured, this article is in Polish. We explain what it's about - the title tag is used to define the title of your website. It describes the content of your website in a few simple words. Users use the title tag to determine whether a page is worth their attention. Search engines also pay attention to it. The better you manage to get the title right (to get more clicks) and create relevant content, the better chance you have of ranking higher in the SERPs.
A meta-description is a short description of your page content. In combination with the page title, it is often used by Google to display the page in search results.
The alt attribute is used to describe unreadable context, such as images. It helps search engine robots understand the meaning of the image and the elements represented in it.
When you deal with these elements, make sure you include your main keywords. This is an additional factor that flows out to SEO.
Internal linking
The essence of search engines is about linking. However, this has changed to include, in addition, other aspects of SEO such as content and semantic search. And changes in Google's search algorithms, always mean changes in SEO methods.
When creating content, it should be normal to add links to related pages. Remember to make linking within your site natural. The page you are linking to should be related to the page you are linking to.
Backlinks / external links
Google loves quality content. Make sure the external sources you link to on your site are informative and have quality content. Don't invest in sponsored links - this can only hurt your SEO in the long run. If you want to gain backlinks, create content that people will want to share by linking to you.
Social Media
The more people find out about your brand, the more traffic you will get to your website. Social media is a great tool for this. Used well, they can help you connect with customers and increase your market reach. However, spreading your brand page that doesn't offer good quality content is detrimental to your SEO. The most important thing is to focus on the best quality content you are going to share (on topics that are engaging, interesting, topical and informative) and then use social media as a marketing strategy to increase visits to your site. Your Social Media may not be active but having it is a must.
Check your speed
Of great importance is how quickly the content on your website loads. Page load speed is a critical ranking factor used by Google to rate a website. Users value sites that load rapidly. Slow loading negatively affects indexation by search engines.
You want to check the speed of your website - select GT Metrix or a tool straight from Google, i.e. Google Insight
Did you know that Google has virtually no services of its own? Most services like Google Analytics or Google Nest are startups bought by google as ready-made solutions to their problems ?
After all, who would want to wait more than eight seconds for a website to load? An express loading page makes a better impression on users, while pages that take a long time to load have a higher rejection rate and negatively affect the page rating.
An SEO-compliant website, in order to increase loading speed, should optimise the following elements:
- Compression - use tools such as Gzip to compress/minimise the size of your CSS, JavaScript and HTML files;
- Limit redirections;
- Optimise photos;
- Avoid JavaScript blocking the loading of the page;
- Make use of the browser cache;
- Reduce server response time;
- Use CDNs such as Cloudflare;
Create mobile-friendly websites
Nowadays, the use of the internet via mobile devices has surpassed that of the computer, and the web design benchmark recommended by Google is responsive design. This is stated in Google's research report highlighting the need to have an SEO-ready mobile website (making it easy to access the site from all devices). The majority of users are using smartphones, so it is important to provide them with the right user experience for your website.
Websites that are poorly optimised for mobile devices can scare away a significant proportion of potential visitors. They also damage your position in search results. Google boosts those pages that are tailored to each device.
Create a sitemapy
The XML map opens up several new possibilities. Firstly, it helps search engines understand the structure of your site as they navigate through it. You can also improve this structure by specifying which sub-pages have a higher priority than others, thus providing more accurate information to search engines. You can achieve this through the tag in the XML file.
The sitemap works for all types of website. It doesn't matter if it is new or old, or if it is full of content and external links.
This was our top 10 things that will improve your website's SEO. SEO is a very broad field and knowing how to achieve high search engine results is very important. Try to find out more about it all the time. Every aspect - big or small - is very important. Changing a small thing can have a big impact on building your brand and improving sales.
If you don't know how to do this, please contact us. we position websites for many years with good results.
