For many businesses, they treat their website like their shop window… and why shouldn’t you? Having a fantastic looking website is one thing but how can we ensure that it is found by potential customers while they are searching online.
If you are just starting out your journey into the forest of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) it can be hard to know where to start with its heavily worded jargon and indecipherable acronyms.
We have put this guide together to provide you with a good foundation, as well as to different resources that go into a little more depth in each of the topic areas.
Understand what your target audience is searching for and choose your keywords and phrases accordingly
Having good quality content on your site that people are going to enjoy reading is going to pay dividends for you in the long run and can also encourage people to link to it. One way to proactively get more links to your site is to reach out to other brands and sites to encourage them to do so.
You need to focus on the kind of questions and phrases your audience will search. For example, what choice of words do they use when they want to buy certain products? Also, some keywords are more competitive than others and often competitors will be using them too?
Build an active social media presence
Social media is growing by the day and has to be taken seriously when it comes to your business. Social Channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all have a positive impact on SEO. Publishing your content on social media will also get your content in front of more people which will hopefully encourage them to click through to your site.
Build good quality links to key pages on your site
Having fantastic quality content on your website will, of course, encourage people to link to it. You can bolster this by proactively reaching out to other brands and sites to encourage them to link to your site.
Writing content that can be placed on third-party websites can also be a fantastic way to secure good quality links. Make sure you monitor these backlinks and reject any that are of particularly low quality as these can damage your link profile in the long run.
Make your website mobile-friendly!
I can’t emphasize the importance of this enough and having a website that is mobile device friendly and which works well in terms of SEO. Marketers have been speaking for many years of the continuing rise of the mobile being used to access the web. The mobile now accounts for 61% of time spent online in the UK.
Google prioritises mobile-friendly sites in the SERPs, and for good reason; the user experience is much better for those browsing on their phones.
As a user yourself, you’ll understand how frustrating it is when you land on a site that isn’t responsive, you’ll probably get so frustrated that you’ll end up leaving… This, of course, is something that we DON’T want to happen!
Want some more advice for SEO? Head over to Nettonic for more information!
