7 SEO Tips to Benefit Any Business

Content is King

It’s no secret that creating epic content is one of the most important SEO marketing factors when it comes to boosting your visibility. Quality content attracts, engages and keeps people on your website. But that’s not the only reason you want to have your site packed full of quality content. Here are some more reasons for you to consider investing in epic content.

• Google algorithms focus on content quality when ranking your pages more so than they have ever done in the past.
• Long-form (quality) content will do you more favours gaining more visibility on Google than short-form. SO create detailed, informative and relatable content that actually helps your visitors.
• Google wants you to write for its searchers, not for Google itself. So keyword stuffing, and the old school SEO tactics don’t work the way they once did. Now Google pays attention to user behaviour as an indicator of the quality of your content. 
• Content is more than words. Consider implementing high-quality photos, infographics and videos throughout your pages too.

Create a clear site structure

This is the number one most important place to start when considering your websites SEO strategy. If you skip this step, your SEO will suffer! Your site structure directly affects the user experience, the user experience effects user behaviour and we all know that user behaviour affects how Google ranks you.

It’s important to create a site matrix and a logical hierarchy that includes

• Pages
• Links
• Menu Navigation
• Categories and Subcategories
• Site-Wide Linking
• Headers, Subheaders and Body organisation.

Like humans, crawlers and robots love hierarchy and logical user navigation. By creating a clear site structure and map, Google can easily understand your website content and purpose of each page then rank each page accordingly.

Not only that, the clear site structure will allow users to easily navigate throughout your site and find what they’re looking for quicker leading to a lower bounce rate and more conversions.

Google My Business & Search Console

Both Google my business and Google search console are FREE google applications and for that reason alone you should definitely be utilising both. Google my business, helps you be found on a local level and in this way can drive more website AND foot traffic to your physical business. When it comes to Google My business, just like your actual website SEO, including important keywords and search phrases in your GMB listing will be incredibly beneficial to your SEO efforts. 

Google Search Console helps your SEO efforts as it helps monitor your website's functionality. Using a collection of reports and tools it helps to quickly identify and rectify errors in order to optimise your search engine rankings.

Monitor Changes

This is an overarching requirement. Whether you create a site structure, compress images, improve content, create better internal links - the single most beneficial thing you can is to record all the changes to allow you to track, monitor and improve upon your SEO efforts. 

Where do you start? First, you should invest in some professional help for your SEO strategy if you haven’t already. But if your current budget doesn’t allow for it and you want to optimise yourself, then follow the below steps.

Step 1: You need to determine the metric you’re wanting to track, and there could be a few. Sign-Ups, Phone Calls, Lead Form Enquiries, Sales, Keyword Rank etc.

Step 2: Sign Up to the most appropriate analytics tools to help you track your SEO progress and see how you’re ranking on Google

Step 3: Implement changes, one at a time, and keep a record of those changes

Step 4: Continue implementing changes over time and be patient.

Step 5: When you can afford it, invest in an SEO Service provider.

Quality Link Building

Quality Link Building of internal and external links is not only crucial but an ongoing process. It never ends, it’s an SEO task that needs to be developed and built upon on a weekly basis. SEO is not a ‘one-time optimisation’ thing, it takes constant work to not only get you on page one of Google, but keep you there.

Internal linking will help to create a more clear site structure and every new piece of content, including blogs, should be linked to another appropriate page within your website. If it’s a core page it should be linked to your main navigation, otherwise, it becomes orphaned content.

Which is not only a sad thing for a web page to be, but it means Google probably won't be able to crawl it and associate it with your site. And we want Google to crawl it.

Additionally, building high-quality backlinks can’t be overlooked, in fact they’re more important than ever before. Backlinking is to Google what reviews are to humans. If we go to a website, and we see hundreds of credible, 5-star reviews, we instantaneously trust that business. Similarly, if Google sees that a substantial amount of high-quality backlinks are all linking to your site, you’ll be ranked higher according to the quality of links.

Slow Page Speed

Delete or compress everything that slows down your page load speed. Attracting customers to your website is half the battle, the other half is keeping them there. Using Google Analytics to track your bounce rate will help you quickly spot when things such as page speed could be an issue. Google algorithm also focuses strongly on your site speed when it ranks your websites.

The better the page speed, the better the ranking. But it’s not just Google you should care about. Customers HATE slow loading websites too. Traffic decreased to a website by 20% with every half a second delay! If that’s not enough to convince you to optimise your page speed, then I don’t know what is. 

Some things you can do to quickly improve your page speed is:

1. Cache your browser
2. Remove any outdated or unused plugins
3. Update your plugins
4. Check your hosting
5. Get rid of superfluous CSS elements
6. Fix broken code & links
7. Say goodbye to JavaScript
8. Compress Images

Mobile First, Desktop Second

In 2018, Google did something wild and altered it’s algorithm to take a mobile-first indexing approach. So what the hell does that mean? It means that you better believe your website is optimised for mobile-first and desktop second.

Everything you do from website design, page design, content creation and navigation now needs to be mobile-responsive at the least, and mobile-first at best.

It’s safe to say that optimising your website for search engines is no easy task. There is a multitude of factors that not only need to be considered and optimised but also updated regularly. Not to mention that the majority of these tasks require web development and SEO professionals. 

If you want to take SEO seriously and give your business the best chance at having a thriving online presence, we suggest investing in an SEO service provider like Dilate Digital.

We’ve helped hundreds of businesses over the years and our formula is easy to apply and proven to gain results. Call us today to discuss your goals.