Ten things to consider for improved website SEO
‘Google Rankings’, ‘SEO’, ‘Meta Descriptions’.
Fifteen years ago your average human would’ve though you were talking gibberish. Now in the present digital age, the effective SEO of a website can sometimes be the difference between the success and failure of a business.
The Win web development team decided to pull together a post compiling of a few useful SEO tips in order for you to maximise your website or blogs potential.
Title tag
- The max length of a title tag should be no more than 50-60 characters if you don’t want any of your title to be cut of by search engines.
- Each page title tag should be unique for best SEO optimisation.
- Make sure to include any keywords as close to the start of the title as possible.
- The title tag should match the first header title within the page. E.g. if you’re writing a blog post such as this one with the title “Ten areas to consider…” make sure that your title tag matches like so “winmarketing.co.uk/ten-areas-to-consider…”
Page URL
- Make sure that your URL includes relevant keywords, using hyphens to separate words.
- Make sure that the URL also matches the title of the page, as long as it’s not too long.
Image ALT tag
- Use keywords when describing your image, giving all images appropriate ALT tags. This is so that search engines such as Google understands what the image is displaying, therefore making sure that the search results are more relevant.
Image file name
- Similar to ALT tags, make sure images are saved under a relevant file name, which mentions relatable keywords.
- The file size of your image is also important as search engines now consider site-loading speed when ranking websites. Therefore make your images as small a size as possible, without sacrificing quality too much.
Front-page keyword density
- Make sure that the content within your page is keyword dense! Google ‘spiders’ crawl through pages, returning those with relevant content within their text.
- However don’t over saturate your page with the same keywords or with too many keywords, as this is seen as bad practise from Google’s perspective and could affect your rankings.
- Moreover, make sure that your page still flows whilst reading it, as too many keywords in unnatural places makes for hard viewing.
Meta description
- Meta descriptions don’t massively affect SE rankings however they do affect click through rates from search engine results.
- A Meta description needs to be short and concise but also descriptive, engaging the viewer enough for them to click through to your page. It should include keywords, as these will be highlighted in bold within the description.
- Think of it as a tweet describing your page!
Make sure content is good enough to drive social shares + plus repeat visits!
- You could have the best SEO in the world however if your content is sub standard, people will always bounce straight off your page once they’ve landed there.
Make content easy to share – Visible share buttons E.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc
- You have to make the sharing process as easy as possible for your audience. They may like your site/page/blog etc. however if they can’t easily and instantly share, then they will quickly become de-motivated. You have to do 99% of the work on behalf of the sharer.
- Social links also help your Google rankings
Include synonyms for keywords?
- Google has a ‘synonyms team’ that are responsible for ensuring that the search engine understands that terms such as ‘cob’, ‘sandwich’, ‘bap’ and ‘roll’ are all interchangeable.
- Therefore it is important that you naturally include both keywords and their synonyms within your website if you wish to enhance your SEO
- It must be stressed that this keyword and synonym population of your website must come across as natural and not artificial or stilted. If it does, Google could identify it as spam, thus harming your search rankings.
Make sure pages are mobile compatible
- Google rankings are affected by your sites mobile compatibility.
- In July, Google announced that they will start showing warnings on their search results if you will struggle to view a website on a mobile device. Therefore the increasing need for mobile compatibility is paramount.
- Before you invest in improving your sites compatibility, you should test your site on as many different mobile devices as possible! Visit your site/page/blog and interact as naturally as possible with it, therefore mimicking a potential user’s experience. Get your friends and colleagues to also navigate your site via mobile so you can gain different user experiences, thus seeing where your mobile strengths and weaknesses are. It would also be advisable to test out competitor websites to evaluate them on their mobile compatibility.
As with anything new, it takes time to see results. Just because you went to the gym once does not mean that you’ll wake up looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Similarly, because you took steps to improve your sites SEO, doesn’t mean that you’ll suddenly be top of Google’s rankings. It is said that it takes around three months to see the results of a new SEO strategy. Therefore, keep consistent with your efforts and you’ll soon be climbing up the rankings quicker than the Beatles climbed the charts back in the early sixties!
I hope you learned something new from this blog post! If you or your company needs help in regards to improving your websites SEO, don’t hesitate in contacting the Win Marketing team on 01509 265890.
‘Google Rankings’, ‘SEO’, ‘Meta Descriptions’.
Fifteen years ago your average human would’ve though you were talking gibberish. Now in the present digital age, the effective SEO of a website can sometimes be the difference between the success and failure of a business.
The Win web development team decided to pull together a post compiling of a few useful SEO tips in order for you to maximise your website or blogs potential.
Title tag
- The max length of a title tag should be no more than 50-60 characters if you don’t want any of your title to be cut of by search engines.
- Each page title tag should be unique for best SEO optimisation.
- Make sure to include any keywords as close to the start of the title as possible.
- The title tag should match the first header title within the page. E.g. if you’re writing a blog post such as this one with the title “Ten areas to consider…” make sure that your title tag matches like so “winmarketing.co.uk/ten-areas-to-consider…”
Page URL
- Make sure that your URL includes relevant keywords, using hyphens to separate words.
- Make sure that the URL also matches the title of the page, as long as it’s not too long.
Image ALT tag
- Use keywords when describing your image, giving all images appropriate ALT tags. This is so that search engines such as Google understands what the image is displaying, therefore making sure that the search results are more relevant.
Image file name
- Similar to ALT tags, make sure images are saved under a relevant file name, which mentions relatable keywords.
- The file size of your image is also important as search engines now consider site-loading speed when ranking websites. Therefore make your images as small a size as possible, without sacrificing quality too much.
Front-page keyword density
- Make sure that the content within your page is keyword dense! Google ‘spiders’ crawl through pages, returning those with relevant content within their text.
- However don’t over saturate your page with the same keywords or with too many keywords, as this is seen as bad practise from Google’s perspective and could affect your rankings.
- Moreover, make sure that your page still flows whilst reading it, as too many keywords in unnatural places makes for hard viewing.
Meta description
- Meta descriptions don’t massively affect SE rankings however they do affect click through rates from search engine results.
- A Meta description needs to be short and concise but also descriptive, engaging the viewer enough for them to click through to your page. It should include keywords, as these will be highlighted in bold within the description.
- Think of it as a tweet describing your page!
Make sure content is good enough to drive social shares + plus repeat visits!
- You could have the best SEO in the world however if your content is sub standard, people will always bounce straight off your page once they’ve landed there.
Make content easy to share – Visible share buttons E.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc
- You have to make the sharing process as easy as possible for your audience. They may like your site/page/blog etc. however if they can’t easily and instantly share, then they will quickly become de-motivated. You have to do 99% of the work on behalf of the sharer.
- Social links also help your Google rankings
Include synonyms for keywords?
- Google has a ‘synonyms team’ that are responsible for ensuring that the search engine understands that terms such as ‘cob’, ‘sandwich’, ‘bap’ and ‘roll’ are all interchangeable.
- Therefore it is important that you naturally include both keywords and their synonyms within your website if you wish to enhance your SEO
- It must be stressed that this keyword and synonym population of your website must come across as natural and not artificial or stilted. If it does, Google could identify it as spam, thus harming your search rankings.
Make sure pages are mobile compatible
- Google rankings are affected by your sites mobile compatibility.
- In July, Google announced that they will start showing warnings on their search results if you will struggle to view a website on a mobile device. Therefore the increasing need for mobile compatibility is paramount.
- Before you invest in improving your sites compatibility, you should test your site on as many different mobile devices as possible! Visit your site/page/blog and interact as naturally as possible with it, therefore mimicking a potential user’s experience. Get your friends and colleagues to also navigate your site via mobile so you can gain different user experiences, thus seeing where your mobile strengths and weaknesses are. It would also be advisable to test out competitor websites to evaluate them on their mobile compatibility.
As with anything new, it takes time to see results. Just because you went to the gym once does not mean that you’ll wake up looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Similarly, because you took steps to improve your sites SEO, doesn’t mean that you’ll suddenly be top of Google’s rankings. It is said that it takes around three months to see the results of a new SEO strategy. Therefore, keep consistent with your efforts and you’ll soon be climbing up the rankings quicker than the Beatles climbed the charts back in the early sixties!
I hope you learned something new from this blog post! If you or your company needs help in regards to improving your websites SEO, don’t hesitate in contacting the Win Marketing team on 01509 265890.
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