You’ve created your first website, slapped on your seat belt, and ready to rocket into the digital world.
Or are you?
Well, unless you’ve fully optimised your permalinks and tidied up your title and meta descriptions, you could be missing out on a large chunk of visitors. In our quick checklist, we tick off the boxes to simple SEO benefits you could be missing out on.
What is SEO?
SEO is probably one of the mostly commonly talked about elements of online marketing in the world today. So much so, that some people are actually employed by big firms just to concentrate on this aspect alone. But what is it? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Very simply put, it is the continued practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. Many of the elements of your website work towards increasing your SEO. Successful SEO strategies are the culmination of cleverly crafted campaigns and on-site changes to your website that consider the keywords that generate traffic to your website, how many links you have on your site as well as how unique and relevant your content is. If you want your website to be first on a Google search page, it is your SEO that will get you there.
It is also important to remember that search engine optimisation is an ongoing effort, not something that you should do once and then forget about. Ensure that you regularly through your site reviewing it. Our Technical SEO Audit Checklist is a good place to start and tells you the most important areas to cover when carrying out a technical SEO audit of a site.
The Benefit of Good SEO
When your website is up and running you should immediately stop and search engine optimisation. This will immediately help to increase the visibility of your website online. This means that potential customers will be able to find your website when they search for a specific product or service.
If you focus on good a SEO practices, Google will rank your website well. Google and other search engines have a whole list of ranking factors that take into account, which is why this important to know what you should focus on. If you or completely new website design and having an online presence, you can hire and a SEO consultant to handle optimisation for your website.
The more time you spend on optimising your website, the better search results you will achieve. There are plenty of things that will determine your website position within search engine rankings, so we will be taking a look at a few of the most important factors.
Here’s a quick checklist to help you improve your website’s SEO:
1. Permalinks
Permalinks referred to the permanent links for each website page or blog post. This is the entries that appears at the top of your browser. Permalinks is a great way to improve your SEO as it will contain the keywords or phrase that indicate what the page is about. If you run a WordPress blog, you can choose to Post Name option within your permalink settings. This will help search engines to understand a little better but your post all your webpage is all about.
2. Google Webmaster Tools (Google Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools is a must have for any website owner. You can view your website’s crawl errors and determine if it has a negative impact on your SEO. You can also see your index status, to see how many pages of your website is currently indexed by Google. Make sure that indexing is not blocked, which can be caused by various elements like nofollow attributes, misuse of robots.txt, and more. Google will also send you important messages about issues with your site, which can pay attention to.
3. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is another great way to analyse the traffic sources, among others, of your website. You can see what your current conversion rate is, we your visitors are coming from, how your landing pages are performing, and more. You can set up a list of custom reports to get the metrics you need. It’s a great way to analyse your website traffic and determine where you can improve.
4. On-page SEO
There are a few important on page metrics that you should still pay attention to. First, you should consider your article heading as well as the keywords that you use within your content. This should preferably be in line with your permalinks too, to maximise SEO. Check the links on your website, make sure they are correct and that you are linking to reputable sources.
5. Page Title & Description
Your page title is very important. It should contain one or more keywords that you want to target, and be well-written and explanatory. It will often be the first thing visitors will see when your website comes up in search engine results, so it should be well thought out. Your page description should also give an accurate overview of what your web page is all about. It will give visitors a quick glance as to what they can expect to read or experience. And of course it’s good for search engines as they will find it easy to know what your website or page is all about.
6. Social Media Sharing
Make sure that your content is easily shareable. It’s recommended to have social sharing buttons on all your pages, so that your readers can quickly share something if they find it useful. This can be done in many ways – you can add buttons beneath ever page or post, add them on the side of the page, or even use a floating bar on top of your page. The more your content is shared, the more you will likely build your list of followers on social media.
7. Content
Your content is extremely important. This is what search engines are looking for, especially when it comes to ranking you among your competitors. Not only should your content be unique, but also well-written and authoritative. As a guide, ask yourself the following:
- Do you have your main keywords within your page content?
- Is your page content longer than 500 words?
- Is your content unique?
This should give you a good start to determine whether your content is optimised for SEO. You can work with a professional content provider to ensure that you get the best-written content that is optimised and aimed at boosting your search engine results in a natural way.
We can help
Though a strong starting point, this checklist only considers the primary aspects of SEO. There’s always room for improvement, and that’s where we come in. Our team of experts at The Content Works are old hands at reliable SEO methods and offer an in-depth SEO audit service guaranteed to boost traffic to your site and deliver long-term results. To have a chat about how we can help you with your SEO strategy, drop us a line on 0207 305 55 99 or email hello@thecontentworks.net.