Search Engine Optimisation is now a widely recognised tool for increasing your company website’s search ranking in Google and essentially making you more visible to those searching for your services. SEO relies on specialist information to create a detailed strategy, although there are things that you can do that are simple and function as key parts of your SEO strategy.

#1 Keywords and relevant information

The foundation of SEO is your on-page content. This should be written well, clearly and in a relevant way. It should include keywords, which are words or phrases that your audience are searching for and you want to rank for in search results. These keywords should be chosen wisely depending on what your target audience are looking for, but also depending on how competitive the phrases are.

Use keywords in relevant places and write targeted content, instead of putting keywords in amongst a huge volume of text that makes no sense. To give you a rough idea, around 3-5% of your content should be made up of keywords. Including keywords in your headers, and within the alt text of your images – this is a clever way to increase your keyword count.

#2 Meta-data within your site

SEO is not just about what’s visible on the pages of your site, it’s also about what is in the background – or your “meta-data”. You can customise the title tags of your site to include keywords that you want to rank for in Google, and essentially Google will recognise the relevance of this additional information, which will help your site to rank more highly in organic search results. This is the same for meta-descriptions, which, along with the meta-title, is what visitors will see in Google when they search for those terms. It provides a title and a short summary of the page, so visitors can decide whether the page is relevant to click through to.

#3 Redirects for a new site

One of the most important things to do when you create a new website is to ensure that any old URLs are redirected to the relevant pages on your new site. Some may be carried over, and some may no longer be used, so these links should be directed to different pages in order to preserve the links. Failure to do this will mean losing all of the SEO that has previously been on the old links. It also makes sense to preserve the links in case visitors come across old links posted on your social media profiles for example.

#4 Carefully placed external links

Linking is still an effective way to boost your SEO, but Google has clamped down on mass link building from spam sites. Instead, you should be building links from industry-relevant sites, and these should be genuine. Sharing links to your site, including product/services pages, or blogs, across your social media profiles, is a great way to build more genuine links which are likely to be clicked on by your followers.

#5 Optimisation for mobile

A growing number of search engine users are now visiting from mobiles or tablets across the world. This is something that Google has recognised, and therefore sites that are optimised to scale for mobile users will rank more highly in Google compared to competitors’ sites which are not. This can include things like scalable images, as well as a structure that will align according to the size of the device – no more zooming in on large paragraphs of tiny text!

SEO is a complex strategy, even if you have taken care of the 5 things within this blog. SEO experts will have up-to-date knowledge about all of the latest Google algorithm updates, including the most recent, Google Possum. SEO is changing all the time, so get in touch with Iconic Digital to find out about optimising your site.