Having a great looking website is one thing, but if it isn’t optimized for search engines, then you won’t be getting many visitors, and it could be a wasted investment. Every business owner or marketing professional should have at least a basic knowledge of SEO. Even if it is just to hold the agency who is doing your SEO work to account. Getting to grips with the basics isn’t difficult and doesn’t require any in-depth knowledge.
SEO Tips for Keywords
Keywords are an incredibly important part of search engine optimization. They essentially help to tell the search engines what the pages on your website are about. Keywords can be both generic such as ‘website design’ or specific to a phrase or region like ‘bespoke WordPress website design’. Generic keywords will have a high number of searches and they are very hard to rank for. You could also say that people searching for these terms are unqualified leads. More specific phrases are generally easier to rank for and because they are more exact, denoting a more qualified customer who is ready to purchase.
Meta Headings, Meta Descriptions and Tags
As well as inserting keywords in the content on the website or product pages they will also need to be included in the meta headings, meta descriptions, and tags on a website. Ideally, the keywords are placed at the beginning of these elements so that when people are scrolling through the search results, the keywords they have searched for are immediately visible on your search result. Running tests on headings and descriptions can help to increase the click-through rate to your website. A simple headline with a compelling description is likely to have the best results.
Page Speed
The content on the page is one piece of a larger SEO jigsaw that you need to be thinking about on your website. How fast your page loads is a crucial factor that you or your web agency should be thinking about and reporting on regularly. A slow-loading page will cause people to leave your website straight away, so any work you have done on the site is effectively useless if it takes a long time to load.
Mobile Friendliness
A factor that can have a big impact on your rankings in the search engines is whether or not your website is responsive, and if it works well on a tablet and mobile. More people search the web using mobile devices than PC’s, so Google has started to prioritize websites that work on mobile over those that don’t. If your website does not currently work on mobile you are probably missing out on a lot of traffic and potential sales. Therefore, you should look to improve your website with a website design Birmingham company that will aim to build a website that has mobile-friendliness at the forefront.
Security
Website security is a very big factor that can influence your search engine rankings. At the very least, your website should have an SSL certificate which stops people from being able to view what your website users are viewing. It will also encrypt data that users share with the site providing a good level of security, especially for eCommerce websites.
