Visibility is key in today’s digital landscape. The more your business is seen amongst the sea of other competitive businesses, the better your chances. One of the main components in ensuring visibility digitally is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). To master the basics of SEO you don’t need to be a technical wizard, there are just a few points you need to understand well to get started. So, check out the guide below and you will be well on your way to increased visibility online.
What is SEO and Why is it Important?
SEO refers to the process of improving the user experience, site performance, and authority of your website. This is so search engines will deem you worthy and push it further up in the listings when a search is carried out that relates to a product or service that you offer. Appearing on the first page of search results is the main aim of good SEO and with new websites being built every second, competition is high but most important is your potential customer’s experience in finding exactly what they want, quickly.
SEO brings traffic to your website organically without the cost of paid ads or search, and unlike the continuous one-off payments for this type of marketing, SEO will pay off time and again, making your investment priceless.
The Basics for SEO Success
Ensuring you have a strong domain name that is straightforward and related to your business is a good place to start, also the extension of your domain name is important, such as .com, .co or .net. Look into your hosting website too and ensure that it has good security and a fast loading page to improve user experience and help your site rank higher. It’s also important to ensure the structure of your website makes sense as this helps search engines find and index your site pages and ensure that visitors can find what they need quickly.
- Research your Keywords.
Keywords are the terms and phrases that users type into search engines when looking for information. Researching keywords helps to identify what potential customers are searching for online, improving audience targeting and visibility. Once you have them, integrate them wherever possible including website content, titles, headings, meta descriptions, and body text. It is easy however to get carried away and make your content too keyword-heavy, so always keep your user intent in mind.
- Create Interesting Content.
The more high-quality, interesting, and relevant content you can create, the better your chances of ranking higher in search results. Content is one of the biggest drivers of organic traffic to your website and where a big chunk of your keywords sit, so create regularly, keep it relevant, clear and concise, and end with a call to action, such as a link to a product or service.
- Prioritise User Experience (UX)
User experience means creating your website with the user in mind, making it easy to navigate. Ensure that your site speed is fast, you have simple navigation, and clear calls to action to engage your visitors and ensure they stay on your site for longer. Prioritising UX also helps search engines crawl your site and rank you based on the information you provide.
- Don’t Forget Mobile Experience.
56% of online searches come from a mobile and the good news is it doesn’t take a lot of SEO knowledge to make your site mobile compatible. Ensure you have larger buttons for easier navigation and make sure your content is scannable on a smaller screen, also streamlining forms and checkout processes can help too.
- Meta Descriptions and Title Tags.
These tell search engines what your website is about, so ensuring they are accurate can improve your rankings and drive more traffic. Meta descriptions and title tags help to quickly attract and engage your audience, guiding them from the search engine results pages (SERPs) to your website. It helps to place keywords close to the beginning of your meta descriptions and title tags and keep them focused and concise.
- Links, Links, Links.
Backlinks play a pivotal role in SEO and are viewed as a vote of confidence in your site’s credibility and relevance. Focusing on acquiring backlinks from relevant and reputable websites can future-proof your SEO as well as ensuring that your content quality is high, contributing to other website articles or blog posts, linking to other relevant content, collaborating with other businesses, and also simply just asking for a website to link you.
- Monitor Performance.
Monitoring your SEO enables you to make data-driven decisions to continue to improve it and boost your rankings. Regularly monitoring your SEO using tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console enables you to track your website’s performance, including traffic trends, keyword rankings, and user behaviour.
How a Digital Marketing Agency can Help you Up your SEO Game
If you are just starting out in the world of SEO and would like help from a reputable digital marketing agency, then contact Run2 today. We deliver the best SEO Manchester has to offer, with over 20 years of experience in highly competitive sectors. So, if you want to thrive long-term, contact us today to see how we can help you.