Search engine optimisation may seem a bit scary initially, but trust us, it’s only the jargon that’s a bit overwhelming. When you take away the fancy wording and hone in on what Search Engine Optimisation actually is, you’ll realise you can start cracking on with it yourself! To start with, SEO comes down to knowing your customer and using quite a bit of common sense. In digital marketing, truly knowing your customers is vital and that’s no different when it comes to SEO. We want to give you a basic understanding of the 5 key ingredients to cooking up a website brimming with optimised content!
1 | Research, research, research. Keywords, keywords, keywords.
So, first thing’s first. You need to know your customers. You need to know what they’re searching for and how they’re searching for it. You need to understand the language that they’re using and where they’re looking for you. It’s important to collate all of this information in a clear format and understand when and where your keywords should be used. This will come in very handy!
n.b. Don’t just assume you already know your customers! This is the most common mistake. Take a look at your analytics and see who’s browsing your site, ask around and approach this with an open mind.
2 | Titles and Descriptions
The next step is to use what you’ve learnt previously to ensure all of your page titles are optimised using your keywords and you have incorporated these into your meta descriptions too. All of this will help to ‘label’ your content so that search engines have a better chance of finding you.
3 | Content is key(words)
Similarly to your titles and descriptions, you need to ensure your content includes plenty of keywords, directing it towards search engines. Content should be optimised in few ways:
•Headers
•Body Text
•Images
•URL Slug
Just remember not to keyword stuff! That’s when you’re stuffing so many similar keywords into your content to a point where it is no longer legible or naturally flowing. This can be detrimental to your search ranking and it’s likely any user who reads it will just turn away.
4 | Your website isn’t the be all and end all
Although your website plays a huge part in your overall SEO, it’s important not to forget about the rest of your online presence. Social media and citations on listings are also important and search engines regard these websites highly. Remember to keep everything up to date, consistent and as optimised as possible.
5 | Linkbuilding Gives you power
A good way to think about links is like votes. Links act as pointers to your website, leading search engines to believe you are trustworthy and indicating legitimacy. Links from higher ranking websites should in turn increase your visibility, but make sure that the links are relevant and trustworthy themselves!