SEO can seem like an extremely daunting, complicated mess of ranking factors and specific guidelines you have to adhere to that can take hours upon hours to get right. We’re here to tell you yes, that is exactly what some of SEO can be.
However, it’s not all about having a deep understanding of how websites work in tandem with search engines to get the most from your site, there are some things that everyone can do to help.
If you are thinking of building a site from scratch, often it’s well worth building your site with SEO in mind as this can have an immediate impact when the site goes live. To find out how we can help build your new site with SEO in mind from the ground up, you can learn more about our web design in Hertfordshire here.
Here are our list of 7 quick, simple things you can do or manage on your site to help with SEO:
1. Addressing anything that slows your site down
Page speed is one of the most important ranking factors on search engines, and one of the most important factors for visitors. Think about it, when you head to a new website and it takes 5, 10, 20 seconds to load do you hang around? No, you normally head back to Google to find the next best solution.
Customers will do exactly the same. Having a slow site can happen for a number of reasons, ranging from the assets on the page to the hosting of your site. Addressing these and maximising what you can for speed, will help your SEO and the users visiting your site. (Source: Neil Patel)
2. Externally linking is good
Whether it’s a partner, a source for a blog article, or an official page of information for your industry sector, simply placing a link to one of these is always good practice. It’s better for the people you’re linking to than yourself granted, but it helps in a similar way to page speed.
It makes your website look authentic to Google, so long as you don’t abuse the technique (or any of the techniques mentioned) then your site will look like a genuine website. Google likes these as it knows how business works – real people buy from real people.
3. Linking internally is also good
More on linking – when you link into your own site it helps Google build up a sitemap and hierarchy for your website. This means once it understands the layout, it can properly distribute page rankings to all of the pages of your site.
Again, these tips aren’t just for fixing your SEO, as having internal links will serve your users well for navigating your site or understanding your purpose.
4. Write unique meta descriptions for each page
This is a fairly simple one but something that can easily be overlooked when creating a website. The meta description is effectively a brief sum-up of what users can expect to see on this specific page.
Time and time again, people just copy and paste these across pages, or don’t even write them! Each page is different, so each meta description should be too. Not to mention that Google (or anyone for that matter) aren’t big fans of duplicate content.
5. Make sure your URL structure is simple
Another one that slightly humanises search engines is making sure that your URL structure is easily readable. Just like us, Google has to read the URLs and if it makes no sense to you, then chances are the search engine in question will also be clueless.
Keep the number of words to a minimum, separate words with a hyphen, and be careful with the use of numbers. Depending on how or where the page is made, some software gives the page an ID number and uses that as the URL, which will mean nothing to you or the search engine! URLs are also case sensitive, so make sure to keep that in mind.
6. Publish relevant, unique and evergreen content
Okay so not quite a “quick tip” but it’s something you can implement relatively fast. Evergreen content can be some of the most important content to certain companies. What is it? Well, it’s content that stands the test of time. For example, a breaking news story will only be relevant for a short period of time, whereas a blog article explaining how cloud hosting for websites works could be relevant today, or in 5 years time, or even 10 years time.
It’s purpose is to continuously bring visitors to your site, introducing them to your brand and getting them started on the customer journey. It shows them that you are knowledgeable in your industry and it should be a solid piece of content you can use over a large period of time, without worrying about having to make something new or refreshing it very often. (Source: Semrush)
7. Continue to learn about SEO
SEO much like the rest of the online world is constantly developing and evolving, so standing still for too long could result in you getting lost in all of the new improvements. There’s so much to learn about SEO, you’ll never run out of things to do. You know the saying, “every day is a school day”.
Our expert team are well versed in everything SEO, and if this is something you need a hand with don’t hesitate to contact us today!
