Climbing through Google’s search pages is a sure-fire way to enhance the prospects of your business. An improved search engine performance will see a far higher volume of online traffic arriving at your website, which will boost the brand’s visibility to new consumers.
The benefits of being on Google’s first page are clear, but getting there isn’t easy. Below you will find our four key pointers to help improve your website’s search engine performance.
- Content is king – people spend a lot of time searching the Internet for information and knowledge – especially in a professional context. If your website is one of the millions of sites that offers neither of these to its visitors, then it won’t be holding people’s attention for too long. Creating regular, well-written copy for your website will ensure that your business becomes synonymous with insights that could, with time, potentially position it as a thought-leader. Amplifying this content through social channels will enhance its reach – if it’s that good people will share it!
- Know your keywords – you may have invested a lot into an all-singing, all-dancing website that runs smoothly and looks the part. Unfortunately, however, Google doesn’t care about any of this, and it won’t allow your site to climb its pages without effective SEO use. Collate a list of keywords relating to your business and its products/services, and then work to ensure that these words are naturally integrated into your website copy. Using keywords AND their variances will ensure the best SEO performance.
- User experience is paramount – a site that isn’t user friendly will not win over many fans, nor will it go down well with search engines. The key tip to remember is not to make anything look too forced. Over-crowding a webpage with too many links is visually dissatisfying, and will leave the visitor confused over where to click next. Simplicity is what you should be aiming for. It’s also crucial that you ensure the link text is unique and as relevant to the other copy as possible. Avoid “click here” or “see here” at all costs!
- Don’t forget image descriptions – without going into detail on the importance of images in your website, it would be fair to say that many businesses are still forgetting to add descriptions to their images. Google will analyse a site’s images to generate an understanding of its overall purpose, so go back to your keywords from tip two and apply these to your images, alongside a succinct and brief description for each. This will also result in an improved image search performance, which is a great – but often underestimated – means to drive new traffic to your website.
These four tips won’t get you to Google’s first page overnight, but they will ensure that you’re on your way. Applying these principles to your existing online materials, and all that you upload in the future, will guarantee an approved SEO performance that will boost your business.
