Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an integral part of any web content. Content that performs well in SEO receives more web traffic, therefore bringing about more leads and sales. Without effective SEO, it becomes all too easy for a brand to be dismissed or even utterly lost in the depths of search engine result pages (SERPs).
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an integral part of any web content. Content that performs well in SEO receives more web traffic, therefore bringing about more leads and sales. Without effective SEO, it becomes all too easy for a brand to be dismissed or even utterly lost in the depths of search engine result pages (SERPs).
That being said, SEO can be a daunting and complex process if you do not know where to begin. Here are five ways to start SEO.
HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. It secures the connection to the visited website and is visible when you look at the address bar, to the left of the URL. If the lock there is closed, that means that the connection is secure.
If the lock is open, it indicates that the connection is not secure. This vulnerability opens the site to hacker attacks and data sent to the site could be intercepted. What a huge red flag! Passwords and emails could be easily stolen if there is no HTTPS to encrypt the connection between the browser and the site.
Since 2018, Google has marked websites without HTTPS as “not secure” in an alarming shade of red. The presence of HTTPS also gives websites a slight ranking boost in SEO. It is best to switch over to HTTPS as soon as possible in order to gain user trust and maintain user privacy.
A site that takes longer than two seconds to load is typically too slow. A site that takes more than three seconds loses half of its visitors solely due to the sluggish loading. We live in a time where many people are used to incredibly fast loading times. If your site is even a second slower, frequent web users will notice the latency. Most importantly, site speed is a crucial component of how your website is ranked by Google.
The higher the site speed, the better the site performance. Website speed optimisation is invaluable when it comes to keeping potential customers on your page. A slow site means lost conversions and lower revenue.
The easiest way to perform website speed optimisation is to compress or resize your images. Many tools exist to optimise image size, including free ones. If there are unnecessary images on your website, it can also be a good idea to remove them in order to improve loading speeds. Finding the right balance between perfect high resolution images with a slow loading time and pixelated images with next to no loading time is an art when it comes to your loading speed.
Custom fonts can help a site score more personality points, but they also weigh down on site speed. A majority of the visitors to a site will prefer to have quick site performance over stylish fonts. Trim down the number of custom fonts and you can easily reduce loading times.
Minification refers to the process of reducing the size of each file and the total number of files. The more files you have for your site, the more requests need to be processed upon user visits. Minifying your files reduces redundancy in data without hurting the files themselves. This can involve cleaning up the javascript code. You may only want to load a certain piece of code when it’s needed, make the javascript load faster by utilising push and preloading scripts that are crucial, and even eliminate what is known as dead code.
Good mobile optimisation means that no matter what size a screen is, your website will be presented clearly. Smartphone, tablet, laptop–visitors using all sorts of devices will visit your site, so your content needs to be accessible to all of them.
Google is currently prioritising the mobile user experience, which means that it is critical for your brand to optimise for mobile as well. Mobile accessibility is an immense part of website SEO. Without it, many visitors to a website will abandon the site halfway through. Upgrade your site to a mobile-friendly version and you can retain and convert significantly more visitors than before.
When you think of Facebook, your mind automatically draws on the association of the little white F against a background of blue.
Favicon is a mixture of ‘favourite’ and ‘icon’. A favicon is a 16x16 (or 32x32) pixel icon representing your brand. It appears on browser tabs, bookmarks, search ads, search history, as well as search results. They can considerably boost a brand’s ease of identification due to how often a user may see favicons.
Not only are favicons great for branding and professionalism, but they also indirectly help with SEO. Favicons improve the usability of a site, which correlates to higher search engine rankings.
Content is the meat of SEO. It allows search engines to read your website via web crawlers, which mimic user behaviour. Content that contains effective keyword optimisation related to your content topic can help augment your site’s writing.
Well-written, keyword-optimised content increases web traffic through SEO and also engages the reader to stay on your site.
Content can come in many forms of text: articles, blog posts, press releases. Whatever content is relevant to your brand should be supported by proper keyword research. This can enable search engine web crawlers to find your content more easily and raise your web traffic significantly.
Producing content or keywords that you ‘think’ will work may seem like an easy task. Picking the first keyword that comes to mind may seem like the obvious place to start. However, this can be to the detriment of your business’s short and long term results online if you don’t nail this.The foundational groundwork for SEO is decisive and without the guidance of an expert with an extensive understanding of both how SEO works and your business’s goals and needs, your business may never see the light of the first page. The takeaway is that it’s imperative to do extensive and granular keyword research, as well as, competitor analysis and market analysis on what keywords you ‘know’ are going to be a best fit for your business.
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No matter how much effort you put into charming customers with your product pages and demos, a single negative customer review can chase them off. Meanwhile, if they see heaps of positive words for your company, they’ll feel much more confident about your brand. Read on here to find out more.
Finding and utilising the best SEO practises for your website is complicated, especially for businesses going online for the first time. If you’re struggling with SEO and you don’t know where to begin, take a look at six major factors that influence SEO rankings.
