Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is more than just a tagline. It’s a set of practices you can follow to improve the visibility of your website in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Best practices should be followed by everyone, whether you’re running a blog, ecommerce store, or local brick and mortar store.
In today’s post, we’re going to cover the most essential best practices to follow for every page on your site.
1. Add Your Main Keyword Early On In Your Content
By putting your main keyword in the first line of your article (or in the first few sentences if you’re writing an eCommerce page), you’re telling Google that this is a valuable piece of content that people should read. Going into the first few sentences of your blog post will help give it more juice in search engines, which can produce more traffic and leads for your business.
This is a strategy that has worked well for me, and why I think it could work for you too. You can’t really overemphasize the importance of getting your keywords early in your content. Why? Because as soon as people see your article, they’re going to be eager to read more about it. That means they’re going to click through to your website (and likely buy something from you). This is good for both you and search engine optimization (SEO).
Your first step in creating content for your blog should be to figure out what your main keyword is. This will let you know what the blog is going to be about before you write a line of text. Once you have this figured out, add it to a list along with other possible keywords and a short description of what the content is about. This is called “keyword research.” Now you can do some keyword research online to figure out what the general ranges are for each term. Then take notes on how often those terms appear in Google searches for different types of content (accepting payment via Google Adwords is generally a good idea). You should end up with a list of topics that are very close together.
2.Use https
Using https is one way to improve your SEO. It stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (https) is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) with the Secure Socket Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. That’s a bit technical, lol… and it’s a method of signaling to websites that you have no problems with their security and don’t want them to reveal your personal information. This may not be something you think about a lot when you consider encryption and safety of data, but it’s an important part of the web for keeping personal info private when we don’t want it out there.
You can tell if your site is already using HTTPS by checking the loading bar in your browser.
If there’s a lock icon before the URL, then you’re good.
If not, you need to install an SSL certificate.
Lots of web hosts offer these in their packages. If yours doesn’t, you can pick one up for free from LetsEncrypt.
The good news is that switching to HTTPS is a one-time job.
3.Write Unique Titles, Descriptions and Content
As a blogger or website owner you’re always on the lookout for ways to improve your online visibility. One of the easiest ways is to make sure you are using unique and descriptive titles, descriptions, and content. When people search for something on Google, they want to come across as someone who is knowledgeable about the topic they’re looking about. Body copy can often do wonders for whether someone clicks through to your website or not.
As a blogger or website owner, it’s important that your online content is visible and well-written. If you title, description, and body copy is filled with useful information, people will click through to your website.
4.Optimize Your Title Tag for SEO
Your title tag is the first thing users see on your website. It’s the first thing people see when they search for something on Google or Bing, and it’s important to get it right. The words in your title tag affect how people perceive your website. As such, they’re crucial to optimize for keywords related to your industry and location. With that said, let’s dive into how to optimize your title tag for SEO in 2021 and beyond!
Well, search engines pay close attention to the terms that you use in your title tag. This is why you want your keyword in your page title.
Every post on your blog has a title tag. The title tag tells Google which page (or pages) the content on your blog comes from. If your title tags are not optimized, then all sorts of issues can occur with SERP optimization including, but not limited to: ranking your content higher in the search engine results page (SERP), not showing up in the first page of SERPs, and essentially blocking your visitors from getting to your website. Blog Titles seem very important to readers – after all, they can Jump Into Your Content! So, make sure you get them right!
5.Remove anything that slows down site speed.
In 2010, Google listed website loading speed as one of the all-important ranking factors.
This means that if your pages are slow, you’re fighting a losing battle for top organic listings, regardless of the quality of your content or your professional website design.
Get rid of non-essential elements that slow down your site. If you’re a WordPress user, consider deactivating plugins you don’t actually need.
Also, declutter your sidebar and put only essential widgets there.
You can get a rough sense of how your pages perform using Google’s Pagespeed Insights tool.
Just plug in a URL, and you’ll see a score between 0–100, followed by improvement advice from Google themselves.
For a detailed analysis of how your website loads, check: https://www.webpagetest.org/
Either way, here are a few ways you can improve your site’s loading speed.
- Compress Images: This is a big one. Images tend to make up the bulk of a page’s size (in terms of KB). Which is why I recommend using a tool like Kraken.io to shrink your image sizes.
- Use Lightweight Themes: Bulky WordPress themes can slow things down. So if your theme isn’t optimized for speed, consider switching to one that is.
- Use Lazy Loading: Lazy loading images can boost your site’s loading speed by 50% or more. The downside is that images show up as users scroll down the page, which isn’t great for UX. So it’s a tradeoff.
- Use a CDN: CDNs serve images and other media on your site on servers that are close to your users.
6.Optimize Images for SEO
SEO is all about getting more visitors to a website. Images play a big part in getting people to click through to other pages, so it’s important to optimize them for search engine visibility.
Google recently reported that properly-optimized images can help your pages rank higher in Google web search.
Just do these 2 simple things to optimize your images:
- Name your image files with meaningful descriptions. Instead of saving, say an image of a Toyota Hilux as Image 88 or something fun like DCIM2021071300, just write a description like Toyota Hilux.
2.Use Image Alt Text:
Google has said that they largely rely on alt text to understand images.
It takes a few extra seconds to write alt text for each image but it’s worth it.
7.Build Backlinks To Your Website
A recent study by SEMrush found that backlinks were strongly correlated with higher Google rankings.
Search engine optimization involves a lot of carefully designed backlinks that point to your website. The more links pointing to your site, the more likely people are to Google search you and return to your page. Check the backlinks that point to social media sites like Facebook , Twitter, Youtube and other local listing websites.
It’s no secret that Google loves content. And with social media platforms being such powerful engines of traffic, having a strong online presence is essential to ensuring your brand is found by readers worldwide. Adding backlinks to your website is also one of the simpler ways you can help promote yours – as long as you know how to use them!
8. Improve the User Experience of your website.
There are simple things you can do to improve the user experience of your website. It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out with blogging or just looking to grow your existing site, these things can really help. You can get better links on your blog from search engines if you create an awesome user experience (UX) page. A great UX page includes all the important information for the user including direct contact options for service issues, purchase options, social media links, and more. Get creative and make sure every element on your site has a purpose and benefit for the user. Some benefits may include cleaner reading due to less scrolling, more user-friendly download options, and more.
When designing your website, focus on making it easy for users to get to know you. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket by putting all of your energy into one design. Make several designs, test them and pick the ones that get your visitors the most conversions and keep them there. The most important assets on your website are trust and credibility. If people can’t trust you and/or see you as credible, they’ll never engage with you or take any action on your website.
If your bounce rate is higher, this tells Google that your result didn’t give that searcher what they were looking for.
And your search engine rankings can start to dip.
9.Have web analytics in place.
After defining your search engine optimization goals clearly, you need software to track what’s working and what’s not.
Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other private web analytics software solutions can help you track your success.
Tools like Crazy Egg also show you where your site visitors are clicking and how they navigate away from your site
10. Target keywords in your area of specialty.
In general, people will want to find your blog when they search for something in particular. They enter a query into Google, Bing or whatever search engine they prefer and when the results come up, they pick one and click on it. Most notably, you want to be on the first page of results …
Competitive keywords are often dominated by large brands with insane backlink profiles and deep pockets.
Just take a look at the number of referring domains to the pages ranking for “best credit card”:
The results are dominated by big players like NerdWallet, Credit Karma, and CreditCards.com, and the average number of referring domains (backlinks from unique websites) to the top five results is over 300.
Ranking for this keyword in the short-to-medium term would be impossible for 99% of people.
That’s why it pays to go after keywords in your wheelhouse.
In this case, that might be something like “best credit cards for lounge access”:
While the search volume and organic traffic potential are much lower than for a competitive keyword like “best credit cards,” there are fewer big brands to compete with, and you won’t need as many backlinks to rank.
How can you find easier topics to go after?
Go to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, search for a broad topic, then check the “Phrase match” report. Next, filter for keywords with a low Keyword Difficulty score—under 20 is a good starting point.
If the suggestions aren’t that relevant, use the Include filter to narrow things down. For example, let’s filter our list to include only keywords with the word “best.”
You can then check the SERP to assess difficulty and competitiveness further.
Best SEO Practises Conclusion
Now that you’ve learned some great strategies for excelling at search engine optimization, it’s time to start applying these techniques to your blog or website. Make sure to use the tips and tools featured on this site to help ensure your web pages get maximum visibility on search engines like Google.
If you’d like help with your SEO, reach out to my team.
Which other search engine optimization tips or techniques do you think are most crucial for improving search rankings? Are there any SEO tips that have worked against you?