SEO or search engine optimisation has been a blessing for business owners over the last decade. With proper optimisation, even new businesses and new websites can hold their own against the top names in their respective industries. While amazing, SEO isn’t without its challenges, so here are 4 major factors in improving your SEO.
Optimising your website to rank higher in search engines is easier said than done. There’s a reason why we offer our expertise to those who are still fairly new to understanding the gist and importance of SEO. Before we talk about the important steps you can take to improve your ranking, let’s first define what SEO is.
SEO Defined
SEO determines how high your website or your links place on search engine results pages or SERPs when people make certain queries. For many business owners, the goal isn’t to just hit the first page of Google, Bing, and others. It’s to reach one of the top three spots on the first page.
Businesses that can leverage SEO and its benefits increase sales and revenue effectively.
Achieving this tough but very possible task is easy so long as you know what you are doing. However, with SEO being as dynamic as it is when it comes to its algorithm, keeping up with times can be quite challenging. There’s a reason why SEO companies like us at Constant Clicks provide the services we have.
And that’s to help all types of businesses stay competitive online.
4 Major Factors in Improving Your SEO
Here are the 4 actionable steps that you need to take fast to make significant changes to your SEO.
1. Content Is Still King
The term phrase “content is king” has been thrown around in the SEO community for years now. To this day, the phrase still holds as the content you create will mostly dictate how well you rank on search engines.
However, let’s define what good content for SEO is.
It used to be that content needs to be optimised with keywords. For the most part, this made blog posts and other forms of content sound too robotic or made for selling. However, things have changed heavily. Now, Google values building not just backlinks, but also websites that build valuable content.
The goal of Google is to develop a valuable experience for its users. As the top search engine in the world, they want to ensure that their users are getting the most out of their queries online.
Backlinking with Good Domain Authority
One way to do this is by linking to websites that provide relevant content. Of course, that also means linking to websites that have good domain authority. You’d want your content to be established as a trusted name and that means providing accurate information.
Long-tail Keywords
A big mistake you can make when optimising your content is to be too worried about keywords. The new trend is to write for humans first and then for search engines second.
For this, you might want to consider long-tail keywords. Think about what users are most likely to search. If a user is searching for a veterinarian in Perth, consider sneaking in “where can I find veterinarians in Perth?” instead of “Perth veterinarians.” People are going to be asking questions on Google and your goal is to provide the answers for them.
2. Improve Website Performance
Recent studies reveal that a majority of users leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Let that sink in. Now, open your website. Is it loading at that speed? If not, then you could be putting a major handicap on your SEO. These days, the user’s experience is more valuable than ever.
A slow page doesn’t just hurt your SEO, it also puts your content and your products at a huge disadvantage over competitors. How can you hope to make decent sales and engagements when people won’t even stay to view your page?
Check Your Backend Code
Optimising your website’s performance can be done in various ways. The first thing you’d want to do is to check if your website’s backend code is organized well. In many cases, codes are not properly compressed which forces pages to load more assets than normal.
Reduce Your Media Presentation
You should also consider dialling down on the media that’s presented on your page. Only put what’s necessary including photos of your products and possibly even videos showcasing them. In the case of videos, it will be less problematic for your website if you embed a YouTube video instead of uploading the video directly on your website.
Monitor Your Mobile Interface
Don’t forget to monitor how your website loads on mobile devices as well. Creating a mobile version of your website is a good idea to ensure that your platform loads well regardless of the device people are using.
Shift to Cloud Hosting
Last but not the least, you should begin reconsidering your web host. As your website grows, you are bound to get more traffic daily. If shared hosting worked before, it might no longer be effective now with the influx of visitors that you’re getting.
If that’s the case, then shifting towards cloud hosting or getting a dedicated server is your best bet at improving speed and preventing downtimes. These forms of hosting are more costly than shared hosting but the benefits behind using them are nothing short of priceless when it comes to SEO.
That being said, you should always monitor the performance of your website. Aside from loading quickly, you should also make sure that all assets and pages are loading properly. Providing a good user experience will benefit your website handsomely in the long run in terms of SEO.
3. Stay Active On Social Media
Facebook, Instagram, and all other social media platforms offer a lot of opportunities for SEO building.
Before you even think about improving your SEO, check if you’ve set up a business page on all of these platforms first. Make sure that all contact information and addresses on these platforms are congruent with one another. This will help Google find authentic businesses in such a dense space as the internet.
Establish Authority on Social Media
That being said, you need to be just as active with posting content on your social media platforms as you are on your website. Every content that you post on your website should be shared on your social media platforms as well.
This is an important practice as you are tapping into more people by making your content available elsewhere. Of course, doing so helps establish your authority on social media as well.
When posting your content on social media, your goal is no longer to generate more clicks. It’s to get more productive actions from your followers such as having the post shared. Doing so means expanding the reach of your content.
A lot of new businesses bank on social media to start getting more engagements online. While this isn’t a bad idea, it would be wiser to leverage the advantages of both SEO and social media for optimum growth.
4. Enhance Website Security
Google also values websites that provide visitors with more security. In 2014, Google made HTTPS or SSL Security one of the ranking factors for SEO. Though years old, this is still one of the most vital changes you need to make for your website.
There are two primary ways you can ensure your website’s security.
Security Plug-ins
One is to install security plug-ins from the backend of your website. Platforms like WordPress give you access to an array of security problems that address most security vulnerabilities on websites. The last thing you’d want on your website is a malware attack. It’s not just you that’s affected by this, even your site visitors are going to suffer from it as well.
Constant Update
Another simple way to enhance security is to constantly update your website. There’s a reason why web development platforms are always pushing out new updates, and that’s because they want to block any vulnerabilities as fast as they can.
SEO can completely change the way your business operates. However, if you don’t do things properly, the effort and funds you put into optimising your website will be put to waste. Many factors affect SEO and these change regularly.
A security breach is often considered a death sentence in the online world. Not only is your SEO going to be affected heavily, but your reputation as a business is also going to suffer as well. It takes a lot of time to recover your losses from a security breach. In most cases, recovery is even out of the question already.
Constant Clicks provides quality SEO services around Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, Perth & Melbourne. Don’t be afraid to come to us for help as there is a reason why we’re considered one of the best when it comes to optimisation.
There’s no magic to increasing your website’s ranking on Google. Even new businesses and websites can go toe-to-toe with the top names using proper SEO. With our help and our focus on improving these four factors above and more, you’ll start making a name for your business online in no time.
