Search engine optimisation is one of the most important aspects of any website. Studies have shown that over 90% of all internet users, start their online activities from the search engines. Which is why you want to feature prominently in all of them.
However, the major search engines, like Bing, Yahoo and Google, are constantly updating their algorithms, in order to enhance the experience they give to their viewers. That’s why it’s important for webmasters to keep up-to-date with the latest techniques and tips, which they can use, to rank as high as possible in the search engine listings.
The whole process has been made easy for you in this article. Below, you will find a number of tips that you can use, for this year and many years to come, to enhance your sites SEO and rankings in the search engines. This should also, hopefully help you increase your sales and leads.
- Do Good Keyword Research
Who do you intend to market your goods to? What are the kind of search terms would they use to search on the various services and products? This is something you must research.
In order for the user to find your website, you will need to be able to anticipate the kinds of search terms these individuals will be searching on. When creating any website, it’s always best to tailor it to a niche market, as competition is typically much lower. This means, you’ll feature much higher in the rankings which in turn will lead to more sales.
- Make Sure Your Site Is Secure (HTTPS)
Another helpful SEO tip is to ensure that your website is secure. If you still haven’t, then maybe it’s time you transitioned to HTTPS. HTTPS is basically a more secure version of your standard http protocol. HTTPS is http and SSL or Secure Sockets Layer combined, to provide more secure communication of data. HTTPS works by encrypting data for security purposes, this ensures hackers are unable to hijack and read the data. Site visitors can thus rest assured that anything they send to a website will never be compromised.
In addition to improving the security level of your website, HTTPS also has its SEO perks. For one, the major search engines, like Google, prefer HTTPS sites. In fact, Google’s web browser Chrome, now warns end users about non-HTTPS sites, by putting a not secure sign next to their URL. This can have a detrimental effect on the sales of that website, as it drives people away from it. Google has also added HTTPS as one of their many ranking signals, which means, conversion to HTTPS can help improve your rankings. Google wants a safer experience for its users and is willing to do whatever it takes.
Another major benefit of switching your website over to HTTPS is that it gives you much more accurate referral traffic data, when you use Google Analytics. On standard http sites, referral traffic is typically reported as just direct traffic. However, when you switch to HTTPS, the actual domain that the viewer arrived from is made visible. This will help you more accurately determine where all your site traffic is coming from.
- Avoid Flash
There are so many small businesses that opt to run their sites on Flash, as it’s cheaper and easy to use. However, sites that run on Flash, typically rank lower than sites running on the more popular platforms. This is mainly because it’s impossible to link to the individual pages of a Flash website. If you change your site from a Flash based one to a WordPress site, you’ll see a massive jump in search engine traffic.
- Use Unique Titles and Content
You want every page on your site to have unique content and titles, with a new keyword for every page that you create. Think of each page on your site, as a mini-site of itself. It’s important that each page has its own title, as you don’t want two different pages competing on the same search term.
The search engine, ultimately is about ranking individual pages, and not websites, so every page needs to be carefully optimised for a separate keyword, which means you can’t optimise every page for the same keyword(s). If you attempt to rank any one page for a large assortment of keywords, then you’ll only fail to get it to rank for any of them. The search engine will thus, determine where it should rank, which may not be to your liking.
- Monitor Site Progress
One of the best ways to determine whether or not all your SEO efforts is paying off, is to keep track of your sites rankings. There are several services and tools that you can use to do it. Additionally, you should consider keeping an eye on your referrer log, so that you can determine where visitors are most often arriving from, along with the search terms they are using to get there.
- Meta Descriptions
A Meta description is basically a small summarising of your web page. They are what end users will see, before they arrive on your page, making them the representative. Meta descriptions can also be looked at as an additional marketing/advertising space. These descriptions have a word limit, which is around 160 characters, that means, if you exceed this limit, your text will be truncated.
Sometime in the past, around 2009, Google and the various other search engines accounts that Meta descriptions will no longer be a ranking factor for pages. However, they have proven to be one of the most effective ways of increasingly click through rates, and in turn, traffic.
- Take Advantage of CTAs
Going through all the trouble of ranking your pages high in the search engines, accounts for nothing, if the page fails to convert.
You should put as much time and effort into strategically positioning your pages to take advantage of the traffic that comes through the search engines.
I recommend you researched sales funnels, and considered setting one up. Each page gives you the opportunity to convert, so make sure you put CTA in the places where it counts most.
–AUTHOR INFO—
Uchenna Ani-Okoye is a former IT Manager who now runs his own computer support website <a href=”https://www.compuchenna.co.uk/“>https://www.compuchenna.co.uk</a>.
