Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - The 5 things you need to know now
Search Engine Optimisation (better known as SEO) can be overwhelming for small and big business alike. But there are very real and undeniable benefits to having a smart site and there are some simple steps you can take to boost your sites rankings.
SEO has been around for a long time and if you have a website, you no doubt have thought about how you can get higher rankings on Google or other search engines.
A lot about SEO has changed since its inception though. SEO used to be something that was easily manipulated by spamming various links and stuffing your website with keywords. Now it has become a much more sophisticated system that is near impossible to trick.
Digital marketers focus on Google’s key criteria for website ranking when designing our SEO strategies as they hold the majority share of search traffic (over 77%). Although Google uses hundreds of different factors in its ranking system for your website, I have outlined 5 of the most influential ones and how you can achieve these for yourself.
1. Get mobile ready
Figures from Cisco show that mobile data traffic increased 63% in 2016 and has grown 18-fold over the past 5 years. Given these numbers you can see how important it is to make sure your website can be easily accessed and navigated from smart phones and tablets. Additionally, Google has announced that websites that are not optimised for mobile will result in lower rankings.
If your website has not been optimised for mobile, this is something you need to do urgently.
2. Leverage your social media
Social media is a great way to start conversations with your target audience and create ongoing relationships. However it also shows Google search that there is real people operating your business who are serving real, engaged customers.
More importantly when you generate content that compels people to share and talk about you on social networks, you show Google (and your audience) that you’re in demand and relevant to your industry.
3. Perfect your copy
Targeted copy that reaches your intended audience is not only a good public relations strategy, it can make a massive difference to your google rating.
To make sure you are using the language your audience uses when searching for your business, try visiting google.com and start typing your product and service descriptors into the search field. Using googles autofill function we can see the most commonly used keyword strings and apply these to your copy to achieve a dominant position in the rankings.
4. Start Blogging
Content is King! Content is the dominating factor for appearing in search results more frequently. Posting relevant content on a frequent basis that your target market finds useful encourages new and repeat visitors to your site and signals to Google that your site is live and active. Adding additional pages to your site turns it into a library of useful information that will continue to serve your website as long as it remains active.
The frequency of key words within your blog post will also increase your rankings with keyword strings you didn’t even think of!
5. Remember your websites purpose
The more you learn about SEO easier it becomes to get increasingly caught up in the technicalities of it and forget why you created your website in the first place. While it is important to prioritise the technical requirements of SEO opportunities for greater rankings, getting caught up in the literal hundreds of increasingly technical requirements can defuse your message and purpose. It is equally important to remember the overriding factor that is providing value to people that come across your website.
In the end SEO is very important for great google ratings, but providing great products and services and having a great communications and customer service is just as important. The resulting positive sentiment towards you will be splashed on social networks and review sites making it easier for Google to bump you up the rankings results.