Unfortunately it takes a lot more than having a stylish, professional website to get your business noticed online. In order to drive traffic to your website you need to market it effectively and work on improving its search engine optimisation. In this article we will talk you through the top five things you can do to ensure your website performs well in searches.
Our SEO checklist will help you improve your website and enable it to perform better in search rankings.
1. Keyword rich content
It is essential that your website content is unique, relevant and written to a high standard. You should perform keyword research to determine what words and phrases people are searching for in relation to the products you sell of services you offer. Your website content should address these keyword searches, optimising words and phrases naturally within your text. The more relevant your content is to a particular search and the more knowledgeable you appear on a subject, the more likely a search engine is to rank your website favourably.
2. Optimised Title tags
Title tags form part of your website’s Meta tags and are written into your websites code. Their purpose is to inform search engines what your page is about. In order to do this you will need to include the relevant keywords that you want your website to target within your title tags. When writing your website’s title tags it is important to write them as if a human was reading them, or they may end up appearing spam-like. Title tags should be no more than sixty seven characters long including spaces.
3. Optimised Meta descriptions
Although Meta descriptions do not directly affect your website’s SEO they can have a significant impact on the number of people clicking on your website. Meta descriptions appear next to the title of your web pages when they appear in search results. The more enticing your Meta descriptions are, the more likely users will be to click on your link. It is important that you create unique descriptions for each page and ensure that they are under one hundred and fifty six characters long, or the search engine may cut them off ambiguously.
3. Image names and descriptions
Images are often used on websites for aesthetical purposes, but they can also have an impact on your website’s SEO. It is essential to name your images appropriately and provide accurate alt tags as this helps search engines to easily identify the subject matter of an image. Rather than leaving an image titled something like ‘image001’ give it a name that tells the search engine what can be seen or what is going on in the image.
5. URL structuring
If you know about SEO, then you will know that poor URL structuring can cause problems for websites. In worse case scenarios it can prevent web pages from showing up in search engine results, making them difficult for users to discover. Well-structured URLs will feature keywords related to a business and the products it sells or services it provides. By including keywords within your URLs, search engines find it easier to determine the subject matter of a particular page.
Before you launch your new website, be sure to spend time going through out checklist to confirm that you have ticked off all the SEO essentials.
Conclusion
Although there are many different things you can do to improve your website’s search engine optimisation, the five points listed above are essential for getting your new business website off to a good start. By spending time ensuring that your content is of a high quality and that you have structured your URLs, meta tags and descriptions appropriately, you will reap the benefits when search engines begin ranking your website and driving traffic your way. Although SEO can seem complicated, it is worth spending time getting to grips with it, in order to improve your website and experience the benefits.
Image credits: SEOPlanter & stevendepolo
Final SEO Checklist Tip
For more essential SEO on-page tips be sure to check out this fantastic white board Friday from Moz.
