If you’ve got a website, you’ve probably heard the term SEO before. But what is SEO?
In this post we will explain what SEO is, why it’s important for your website and reveal some of our top tips for successful SEO.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO) is an overarching term used to describe the various tasks involved in getting your website noticed by search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Why is SEO so important?
As you can imagine, the internet is a very busy place. Saturated by hundreds of thousands of websites offering various different services, products and resources, it can be difficult to ensure that your website is seen by your target audience. Having a comprehensive SEO strategy can increase the chances of your website being displayed closer to the top of search engine results, and therefore much more likely to be viewed by potential customers.
How can I make sure my website has good SEO?
SEO typically encompasses an array of different practices ranging from analysing your copy to optimising your website, monitoring analytics and tracking user behaviours. It is an ongoing process which often takes time to show results.
There are a number of different areas of your website you can focus on to start establishing effective SEO practices. To help you get started, we’ve created Studio Seventeen’s Top Tips For SEO.
Top Tips For SEO:
Ensure Your Website Is Accessible
Accessible websites prioritise the user’s experience and include features or elements that enable those with additional needs to access the website and its content with minimal adaptations. With the release of the Web Accessibility Guidelines, search engines are also beginning to prioritise websites that are accessible to all users on a range of different devices. Ensuring your website is as accessible as possible will only benefit your SEO efforts.
Target Relevant Keywords
In SEO, your Keywords will often be words or short phrases that you want to associate with your business, to help users find your website. An easy way to identify keywords is to think about what you would like users to type into a search engine when looking for your website. For example, if you sold rare plants in Nottingham, you may want users to find your website by typing words or phrases like ‘rare plants Nottingham’, ‘buy rare plants’ or ‘rare plants east midlands’ into a search engine. These would be the keywords that you want to target for your business.
Now that you have identified your target keywords, you need to make sure that these words or phrases appear on your website. You should aim to place them in your website copy as many times as possible, but make sure to place the keywords only where they’re relevant on your website, to avoid it coming across as spam. Search engines will only take keywords into account if they’re relevant to the rest of your website copy – so make sure it’s all relevant to your business.
Generate High-Quality Copy
One of the most important things you can do for SEO is to ensure that your website has a healthy amount of high-quality copy. Most search engines possess intelligent algorithms that can evaluate a website’s authority (how important or relevant it is) by analysing the copy. If you don’t have enough text on your website, or your text doesn’t effectively demonstrate your knowledge of a subject, a search engine might hesitate to show your website to a user because it doesn’t believe you are offering useful information.
Ensuring that your website copy is high quality, rich in information and over 300 words long on each page is an effective way to establish good SEO practices.
Optimise Assets & Include ALT Tags
Another way you can improve your website’s SEO is to optimise all of your assets. If your website has any pictures, videos or additional content, make sure that this is optimised for web format. Optimising assets for web reduces them in size which, in turn, reduces how ‘heavy’ your website is. Fast websites that load quickly and correctly will almost always be prioritised by search engines, as they avoid users becoming frustrated and closing the browser.
When uploading assets to your website, you should always make sure that they have an appropriate ALT Tag. ALT Tags, also known as alternative text, is text that describes the purpose or function of an asset. These are particularly important for individuals who use assistive technology (such as screen readers) when viewing websites, to ensure that they do not miss any important information. Adding ALT Tags to your assets boosts your website’s accessibility, which in turn boosts your SEO score.
Ensure your Website is Secure and Stable
When you own a website, there are a number of different things to stay on top of, including your website’s security and stability. Search engines take website security seriously, and often prioritise a secure (but slightly less relevant) website over a relevant (but insecure) website when deciding what to show to the user. One way to increase the chances of your website being shown to users is to ensure it is always maintained, up to date and has a valid SSL certificate.
Another area that will impact how search engines view your website is how stable it is. If your website is hosted on an unstable server, which regularly struggles to connect or crashes often, search engines may refrain from showing your website to users. Ensuring your website is hosted on a stable, reliable server will help you avoid any unnecessary website downtime. Using a green hosting provider to host your website could even boost your website’s position in search results, as some search engines favour websites that are powered by renewable and sustainable sources of energy.
SEO plays a crucial role in ensuring that your website is visible and accessible to your target audience. By following Studio Seventeen’s top tips for SEO, you can begin to improve your website’s SEO performance. Remember, SEO is an ongoing process that requires time, effort, and regular maintenance.
