OUR TOP 5 WAYS TO MAKE YOUR WEBSITE SEO FRIENDLY AND GET RANKED HIGHLY ON GOOGLE
One of the first things clients ask us about when designing a website or doing a site refresh, is how to make their website appear in search results and dare I say – get on the 1st page of Google!
Although the answer isn’t quite that simple at all – the truth is that most businesses are leaving lots of money on the table by not optimizing their website and their content for rankings. It’s important to know though, that there is no magic fix – and most of the times, getting to the first page on google can take years and a lot of investment in creating incredibly relevant content that internet users and looking for and that google recognizes YOUR site as the leading source in those topics.
Now, there are simple ways to make your website SEO friendly that do not involve massive investment both money and time – and that truly anybody can do with a little focus and attention to detail.
1. UNDERSTAND YOUR CLIENT’S SEARCH INTENT AND OPTIMIZE YOUR CONTENT WITH KEYWORDS
When you know what struggles your potential clients are facing and the main solutions you offer within your business, then you can effectively target the type of keywords that are needed for your website. These keywords are what your clients are using to search for queries on google and this is what we call search intent.
Your mission is to make a list of keywords (long and short tail) that are highly relevant to your business and to what your customers are searching for online. These keywords should be sprinkled throughout your site’s pages as often as possible.
So for example if you are a corporate photographer offering services in Toronto – then your website should have on every single page within the text bodies the keywords “corporate photographer Toronto” as a basic rule. This will allow google to read your website and bring it up for people searching for this exact keyword match.
2. TITLE TAGS & META DESCRIPTIONS FOR EACH SITE PAGE
The next step we want to look at is your page formatting. For each page on your website (including blog posts) you have the ability to add custom title tags and meta descriptions as well as format your page content to make it easier for Google to decipher what content is on this page. Essentially, all you are doing here is just making is EASIER for Google to read your pages. By writing a clear Title tag and Meta descriptions – as well as adding clear H1 and H2 subheadings in your text body – this greatly increases your chances of having google crawl your site and understand the quality of your content to match up with users looking for answers on the topics you reference in your site pages.
Every website has the ability to do this, for instance if you are using Squarespace or Wix – this sort of data is built in to the dashboard, if you are using WordPress, you would need to add a plugin such as Yoast SEO and same for Shopify – this can be done by utilizing SEO Apps.
3. OPTIMIZE YOUR IMAGES AND SITE SPEED
The next step is to look at the images on your website. Many times the size (weight) of the visual assets on a website is what is slowing it down. And websites that do not load quickly, get marked down by Google. So when optimizing your images, you want to do two things. The first is to ensure that the image weight has been compressed. The standard rule is to have your images below 200kb each and to stick with png or jpg files. This will ensure that your pictures are light, easy to load and will look great on all screens.
The second step is to revisit those keywords we talked about in step 1, and to ensure your images have relevant keywords included in the photo alt text. (This is an image file setting you will have in all websites) In the alt text, we recommend naming your images using the keywords that best fit the content within your image and that particular web page. Doing this will tell Google what this image is about and will help direct users to your content.
4. INCREASE LINKING ON / TO YOUR WEBSITE
Internal links and backlinks can really boost rankings of your website when used correctly! Internal linking (ie: adding links to other pages within the body of your content text) helps Google to better understand your content and also provides an informational hierarchy for your website.
Backlinks are when you have other reputable websites linking to your site content. For instance, when you take a reputable website such as Facebook or Instagram and you have links back to your website content, this tells Google that your site is a reputable source of content too. So the more external (incoming) links you have – the more your site will be recognized to have google quality content and information to refer back to.
5. CREATE CONSISTENT NEW CONTENT – BLOG
And last but not least, having a website that is consistently publishing new fresh quality content utilizing the steps we mentioned above will also greatly improve your chances of ranking higher on search engines. A static website which hasn’t been updated in 2 years with no fresh content is far less likely to be referred by Google than an equivalent site that also has a consistent blog with new quality articles being published every month.
The goal is always to increase your website’s authority on Google, this is what makes you show up in rankings on the 5th or 10th page, vs the 1st. Websites that show up on the 1st page of Google for certain keywords, and those who have followed all the basic steps we just outlined and more.
We do hope these tips helped you to see that SEO is not actually some magic thing that only few people know how to do. In fact it’s actually pretty logical. You simply need to take the time to understand how keywords should be utilized for your site copy, ensure you format your pages correctly, optimize your site images and sitespeed, add links (internal and backlinks) and keep a consistent blog with fresh content every month!
Are you ready to take the first step towards improving SEO on your website? Follow the steps we mentioned and if you need assistance to get these elements complete, our team is always there to support you.
CLICK HERE to connect with us!
The BLOOM Team