search engine optimization

6 SEO tips for website ranking

Last updated on July 30th, 2022 at 01:57 pm

Introduction

SEO, search engine optimisation, is the process of optimising a website so that it appears higher in the results when people type in specific keywords.Introduction

Here are 6 SEO tips to help you optimise your website and drive more traffic.

1. Choosing Keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your site using search engines.

When identifying keywords, think about what words users will enter into their browser to find websites such as yours and select words and phrases from the content of your website that someone is most likely to use when searching for your online business or website.

Optimising your website for these keywords will help you to rank well in the search results for those terms.

It often helps to include your location in your keywords.

There are a number of free tools available for discovering keywords.

keyword seo


2. Meta descriptions and titles

meta titles and descriptions

Meta tags are snippets of code that help describe the content on your site to search engines.

They make it easier for search engines to determine what your content is about and can have a considerable impact on your SEO and ranking.

Search engines tend to use these meta titles and descriptions in search results to let searchers know what a page is about before they click on it.

Make sure you include your keywords in both your meta description and meta title tags.

Optimise each page of your site separately for its own unique keywords, using different titles and descriptions.

3. Quality Content

Google has stated that relevant content is among its top three ranking factors.

It is important to understand your audience so that you can use their language and provide them with the information that they are actually looking for.

Be sure to make your content easy to read by using images, video clips, titles, white space, short paragraphs, easy navigation links and so on.

Search engines have always prioritised text, images, and news, but now maps, social results, and all sorts of snippet boxes can show up on the first page for any given search. In particular, a video is an extremely effective tool.

content marketing

When a user lands on your page Google pays attention to whether they stay around and visit other pages on your site or whether they quickly bounce back to the search results.

How people interact with your site and the amount of time they spend on your site – known as dwell time – this is an important indicator to Google regarding whether the user found what they were looking for.

Make sure that users do not have to scroll down in order to see the main content of your page – your most important information should be immediately visible when a user opens the page. The more interesting that area is, the longer readers will stay on your webpage, which is good for rankings.

Top Tips for writing effective content

  • Write for humans first, not search engines
  • Do not force keywords where they don’t belong
  • Make sure the “above the fold” (initially visible) area of your pages is compelling and clutter free
  • Use simple language to make your content easier to read

4. Optimising your images for SEO

Image optimisation for SEO

Optimising images is an SEO technique that people use to send search engines important relevancy signals through image filenames, alt text, title, description and caption.

Search engines can’t “see” images the same way humans can, but they use an image’s alt text to help understand what an image is about. 

Alt text can improve accessibility for people with poor vision who are using screen readers.

Take the time to change the name of images from a generic name like “IMG12345” to something accurate and descriptive, such as “banana-cake-recipe”.

5. Technical SEO issues

Website Speed

speed

Make sure your website loads quickly. Large images will slow down your site and having a slow loading site can decrease your Google rankings.

You only have a short time to grab users’ attention and if your site takes too long to load, they will leave.

Search engines will prioritise websites that load quickly and crawl them more thoroughly and consistently than slower ones. Both Google and Bing use page loading speed as a ranking factor.

Google rewards websites that load quickly, especially in mobile search results.

Mobile Usability

Check if your website displays well on mobile, otherwise it may be excluded from mobile search results.

The number of searches using a mobile device is increasing, and Google displays the mobile-friendly results first.

Website Security

It helps your SEO to have a SSL secure certificate https:// which will mean that browsers display a green secure padlock icon next to your website name. Search engines may penalise websites without it and having one will help prevent hackers from attacking your site.

secure website url

Sitemap

An XML sitemap helps search engines index and understand your pages easier and more thoroughly, improving visibility.

sitemap

Page name URLs

Your page names should make sense to humans and give them a good sense of where in your website they have landed. You should also separate words with hyphens and remove extra words (like “a” and “the”) in the page part of the URL slug.

Duplicate content

Make sure that you don’t have 2 websites – www and non-www version. Decide which you want to use and redirect the other to it. In other words, if you prefer to use the http://www.domain.com version, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.

Broken links

Broken links cause frustration and ultimately hurt your website. Search engines and users are unable to access your site’s content if you have URLs that return errors

broken links

6. Links to your website

When building links, quality is more important than quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do more for you than a number of poor quality links. Too many low quality backlinks can negatively affect your rankings.

seo links

Try to write high quality content that is linkable and shareable.

Summary

Search engines like Google want to show users the best result for a given keyword – if your page provides users with a comprehensive answer to what they are looking for they will want to rank your page high up on the first page of their search results.

Optimise your website for relevant and targeted keywords.

Google rewards websites that are optimised, well-composed, and feature unique, meaningful content.

By optimising your website and making your content more search engine friendly you can significantly improve your chances of achieving higher rankings.

I hope you found this article useful. Walker Websites is based in Highams Park, East London. Why not get in touch to see how we can help with your SEO needs? Call now – 0777 169 1194.

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