Search engine optimisation (SEO) plays a crucial role in determining how visible your website is on search engine results pages (SERPs). By optimising your content and following best practices, you can significantly improve your organic rankings on SERPs which will drive an increased amount of traffic to your website.
Here are 10 actionable SEO tips to help you to achieve just that:
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Produce original, quality content
For your website to rank highly on SERPs, the content that you are producing needs to be original as search engines will analyse whether it is unique or not. These search engines will rank your website based on how trustworthy and unique your content is.
You should also create valuable, relevant and high-quality content that addresses your audience’s needs and queries. Not only does engaging content keep visitors on your website for longer, but it encourages them to share it which improves your content’s reach.
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Conduct keyword research
Thorough keyword research should be conducted to identify words and phrases that your potential audience is searching for. These keywords should then be naturally integrated throughout your content, but especially in your title, meta description and headings. There are many keyword research tools available to use for this.
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Regularly update content
Search engines favour websites that consistently provide relevant and current information so your website should be kept up to date. Keeping your content fresh means that search engines will have to index your website more frequently which will lead to more opportunities to rank higher in SERPs.
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Make linking a habit
Both internal and external links are crucial elements when striving to improve SEO on your website.
Internal linking acts as a tour guide for users and search engines to navigate around your website more easily. In particular, it helps search engines to understand your content’s hierarchy and relevance which helps it to rank higher on SERPs.
External linking is used to link to other websites which have relevant, quality content on the topic that you are writing about. Including external links in your content helps search engines to determine the usefulness of your pages which assists in where to rank your content on SERPs.
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Optimise on-page elements
On-page elements such as meta descriptions and meta titles should be a focus point for your SEO strategy. These elements inform search engines about how you provide value to your website visitors. Crafting compelling meta elements that accurately represent your content and encourage users to click through will improve your organic SERP rankings.
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Ensure your website is responsive
In this ever-advancing technology era, visitors can access your website on a range of devices, including mobile phones. Therefore, it is important to ensure that your website is responsive and mobile-friendly to provide a seamless user experience. Notably, Google places a particular emphasis on mobile-first indexing. This means that websites that do not leverage responsive design will be ranked lower on SERPs.
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Utilise graphics
Incorporating captivating, high-quality visuals into your website can massively enhance user engagement and drive traffic to your website. Search engines recognise this creative content and rank the pages higher on SERPs.
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Improve site speed
Pages that load slowly can lead to higher bounce rates and therefore, lower rankings on SERPs. If you find that your page is loading too slowly, it will be beneficial to identify the page elements that are causing this slow loading speed and remove/modify them. Making sure to optimise images and minimise HTTP requests can also help to improve website speed.
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Use short but descriptive page URLs
Clear URLs aid search engines in understanding what your page is about and also give a more user-friendly appearance on SERPs. This means that more users are likely to visit your website, improving its rankings and search engines are able to scan it more easily. An effective URL should be concise (approximately 60 characters), easy to read and should include your keyword.
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Monitor and analyse
It is advantageous to regularly track the activity on your website through analytical tools such as Google Analytics. This will give your valuable information about your site’s performance and where it may need some improvement. Analytical tools allow you to analyse data on organic traffic, click-through rates and user behaviour to identify areas that may be causing your SEO to falter.
Implementing these 10 SEO tips will send you well on your way to improving your organic rankings and driving more targeted traffic to your website. SEO is an ongoing process and adapting your SEO strategy accordingly to emerging SEO trends will help you to continue reaping the benefits of increased search engine visibility.