There’s no question that getting a new site live and into the search index is a daunting task. And what if you don’t know the search engine optimisation (SEO) tips and tricks that will get your site to the top? Not understanding the best SEO practices can leave your site in the dark which means no one will know you even exist. No clicks, no visitors, no sales.
What are search engines looking for?
Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing want to direct users to websites and content that are relevant to what they’re searching for. But how is relevancy determined?
There are four main elements that search engines look at when determining which site is more relevant and should show up higher in search engine results pages (SERPs):
Content: Is the content relevant to what the user is searching for?
Performance: Does the site load fast and does it work properly?
Authority: Is the content useful enough to link to or do other authoritative sites use that website as a reference or cite the information that’s available?
User experience: How does the site look and behave? Is it easy to navigate around? Does it look safe? Does it have a high bounce rate?
These are the most important elements you need to focus on when optimising your site. Here are the vital SEO steps you need to follow to make sure your site has what search engines are looking for.
Step 1: Choose a great domain name
Choose the best possible domain name for your site. When selecting this important piece of digital real estate, think about:
Spelling: If your company name can be easily misspelled, then it can be easily missed too. While many people will look online and probably find you if your SEO is right, many others will find out about you through word of mouth so if your domain name sounds a bit too much like something else, they could end up missing you. So make sure your domain name is short, easy to spell and easy to remember.
Branding potential. It’s easier to build credibility and links to branded domains as people will take a yourcompany.uk more seriously than keyword-keyword.uk which looks spammy and isn’t fooling anyone. A branded domain can help build trust online and also increase the value of your content.
Keywords. Having keywords you’re trying to rank for in your domain isn’t as important as it used to be. So while it can’t hurt to register a domain with a keyword in it, you shouldn’t stress over it.
Step 2: Research the right keywords
Before you start adding content to your new site, you need to do a proper keyword research to find out which words your audience is using when they’re searching for your products or services.
Before you get started with your keyword research, ask yourself:
What is your page about? Is it about a product or service you’re selling, like water heaters or burst pipe repair? Or a useful how-to guide on how to fix a garbage disposal unit. When you know what will be the main topic and what information you’ll include, you’ll have an easier time determining the type of keywords you’ll need to target on that page.
What is the main intent of the page? What are your main goals for this page? Is it to sell a product or a service, or is it to provide more information that can help visitors make an educated decision? By figuring out the main intent for a page you’ll be able to focus on more relevant keywords, rather than generic ones.
Now, let’s take a simple example to show you how you can perform your keyword research.
Say you’re selling water heater repair services. Use this as the starting point of your research. So, add the “water heater repair” to various keyword research tools to get more suggestions on what word and phrase variations people are using to search for these services.
Step 3: Craft your content
High quality content is the cornerstone of your interactions with customers and how sites achieve top rankings. By content we’re referring to anything you publish on your site that educates, attracts and delights customers, such as:
Web page content
Blog posts
Ebooks, white papers, and reports
Brochures, tips sheets, and frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Sales pages
Videos
Pictures, infographics and more
Now that you have a better idea of what users are searching for to find a page like yours, you need to start writing your content and optimise it. Search engines will crawl your website and try to figure out what it’s about and then decide what queries each of your web pages should rank for.
Make sure you write for your visitors first, and then for search engines. Your content needs to be fresh and enticing, otherwise you won’t stand a chance converting visitors into customers. Don’t ever sacrifice the usefulness and persuasiveness of your content for SEO-friendly content.
When writing your content for both users and search engines, pay extra attention to:
Titles. Write catchy titles that grab your visitors’ attention.
Keywords. Focus more on adding relevant and useful information that will bring people to your site. Also, combine relevant keywords together and focus on adding varied forms of keywords rather than adding as many keywords as you can.
Topics. Every page needs to focus on a unique topic. At the same time, make sure you don’t optimise more than one page for the same product or intent as this not only causes confusion but you’ll have two pages competing for the same keywords. You don’t want to be your own competitor, do you?
Quality. Your content needs to be unique and purposeful. The reason people come to your site is because they’re searching for information, for a solution to a problem so make sure you can provide it to them so they don’t go elsewhere.
Freshness. Add new content on a regular basis. You can create a blog where you constantly share information your visitors might find useful, or you can share ebooks or whitepapers.
Length. We recommend having more than 500 words on a page. But the idea is this: your content should be long enough to answer visitors’ questions about your product or service.
Our Search Engine Optimiser tool can save you lots of time on research. It will show you the type of keywords that users search for on search engines so you know what to focus your page on.
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