How to optimise websites to reach customers
Want your website to show up at the top of search results and drive more traffic, engagement, and sales? We’ve got just the key steps to move forward with SEO.
What we’ll cover
- What is SEO
- Appearance online: Visibility in key search results
- On-Page SEO: Keywords, images and engaging content
- Technical SEO: Speed and mobile optimisation
- Link Building: Best Practices for domain trust
What is SEO:
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is about optimising your website to improve its visibility on search engines like Google. By using techniques such as keyword optimisation, improving site speed, and enhancing user experience, SEO helps your site rank higher in search results.
This is crucial because higher rankings lead to increased visibility, more organic traffic, and ultimately more opportunities to convert visitors into customers. In today’s competitive digital landscape, SEO is essential for staying ahead of the competition and ensuring your business is easily found online.
Domain name and page titles
You only have a few seconds to catch a viewer’s attention in search results, so choosing a domain or title that clearly states your business and what you provide is essential.
A key tip is to add a unique selling point in your title or page description of why customers should choose your product or service.
For example: Business name – Affordable Kitchens designed and fitted
This reaches target customers looking for affordable or low-budget kitchens, and showcases their selling point that they are a full-service company creating and installing kitchens, saving customers time and hassle organising one company to buy from and one to fit their kitchen.
A good title is unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes the contents of the page. You can also include other important information, like the physical location of the business or a specific service or product you’re promoting.
Another example could be: Business name – Farmhouse kitchens in Dorset
Page descriptions
Page descriptions are shown as a snippet sourced from the actual content of the page on your website. Occasionally, the snippet may be sourced from the contents of the meta description tag, which you can you to have complete control over what your page’s description is. A good meta description is short, one or 2 sentences, is unique to one particular page, and includes the key point or message it covers.
Have a look at ours for inspiration
Interested in benefiting from successful SEO strategies or having a website with SEO in mind from the beginning? Get in touch for a free website review and 15-minute chat about how we can help you.
On-Page SEO
Target your audience
One of the best ways to help you reach interested customers is to think about what they might type into Google or other search engines to find your content.
Different people may use different keywords, depending on how much they know about the topic, so make sure to check related words to your business, service or product. A great way to do this is to ask a few people how they would search for what you offer to see their exact search phrases.
It’s best to avoid adding every related word on a page, however, which could make the content repetitive or not engaging. This is because Google is smart and can often figure out what your page, or entire website, is about, even if it doesn’t have the exact words someone types in. Pages which needlessly repeat are more likely to be picked up by Google as spam content and so will lower your ranking in customer searches.
User experience
One of the most important things you can do to help your site rank well in search results is to create content that people want to read and find helpful. This matters more than most other SEO tips as it’s exactly what Google want to rank you for.
Here’s what great content usually looks like:
Easy to Read and Well Organised:
Write like you’re talking to a real person. Make your writing clear and simple. Use short paragraphs, headings, and sections to break things up so it’s not just a huge page of text. Make sure to always check your spelling and grammar!
Original Content:
Don’t just copy what others have written. You have a unique experience in your own industry, so share your own ideas and knowledge. Search engines (and readers!) prefer content that feels fresh and unique.
Updated Information:
Old, outdated info isn’t very helpful. Keep your content up to date. If something is no longer useful, fix it—or remove it.
Helpful and Trustworthy:
Make sure your content really helps your audience. When possible, include a variety of opinions, facts, or real-life experiences so people trust what you’re saying and benefit from advice they might not have known before.
Use a Mix of Words Naturally:
Writing naturally (without repeating the same phrase over and over) helps your page appear in more searches and makes it interesting to read. Different words mean more chances to match different search terms and make it clear what you offer.
Creating content can be hard, so getting inspiration on layouts and text that feels relevant to your target customers, from brands you look up to, is a great start.
In need of professional search engine optimisation, tailored towards your target customers?
We offer:
- Web Design and Development
- Reliable, secure hosting with local support
- Mobile-friendly layouts and SEO optimisation
- Brand development
We’re a local team that’s always just a call away, and we’re truly passionate about helping small businesses thrive. I’d love to offer you a free 15-minute website review, where we can chat about your business goals and explore how we can help you stand out online.
Images and videos
Good images make your content more useful and appealing. Clear, sharp photos help people stay engaged and quickly understand what your page is about. Images, graphics and logos are also great for making your business more memorable.
Place images close to the related text — for example, if you’re running exciting outdoor adventure activities, add a photo of that right next to the text. This helps search engines connect the image with your content, and it helps users get the full picture and build interest in getting in touch.
Don’t Let Ads Get in the Way!
It can be okay to have ads on your website if they help support your content. But make sure they don’t take over the page or block people from reading what they came for. Avoid pop-ups, full-screen ads, or anything that makes it hard to use your site. If your visitors get annoyed or leave quickly, it can hurt how your site performs in search results.
Write Descriptive Alt Text for Images
Search engines, however, need text to explain your images or videos, so adding ALT text is essential.
Alt text is a short description that explains what an image shows and how it relates to your content. It helps search engines understand your images and can improve your SEO. You can add it using the alt tag in HTML, or through your website builder (CMS) when you upload images.
Technical SEO: Speed and mobile optimisation
Mobile first
A key way to improve indexing on Google is by optimising your website for mobile. With Google prioritising mobile-first design and at (64%) of searches done on phones, which is continuing to rise, making your website work in this format is vital.
By designing your site for mobile too, you can improve the website’s navigation and user experience, helping to improve website interactions, reduce bounce rates, drive sales and get better performance in search results.
Make Your Site Fast
Fast-loading pages keep visitors happy and help your site rank better. A quick site reduces bounce rates and keeps people engaged, especially on mobile, where attention spans are shorter.
Easy ways to speed things up:
- Compress images so they load faster without losing quality.
- Reduce code (CSS, JavaScript, HTML) to clean out extra spaces and speed things up.
- Use a CDN, content delivery network (like Cloudflare) to deliver content from servers closer to where your users are based.
These small tech tweaks can make a big difference in mobile SEO performance and can be the deciding factor between continuing on your site or moving to a competitor’s business.
Link Building
What Is Link Building?
Link building means getting other websites to link to your site and creating links within your website. This could be linking to a website that offers a supporting product you don’t offer or adding links to your contact page. These links help search engines (like Google) discover you quicker online and see your content as trustworthy and valuable. When trusted sites link to you, it can boost your rankings in search results. Link building is a key part of what’s called “off-page SEO.”
Get Backlinks from Different Websites
It’s better for your rankings to get links from many different trusted websites than a bunch from just one. When more unique sites link to you, it shows search engines that your content is trusted and valuable. This helps boost your site’s rankings and reach a wider audience.
Link exchanges can be a common occurrence in marketing, but be aware, trading links to sites that don’t provide value to your customers will hurt your website performance if no one uses them.
How to Build Quality Backlinks
Getting good backlinks takes time and a smart plan. Here are some easy ways to start:
- Guest Post: Write articles for other websites in your industry to earn links back to your site.
- Create Great Content: Write helpful, unique content that others will want to share and link to organically.
- Make Useful Guides: Build in-depth how-to guides or resources that others find helpful and want to link to and share with their audience.
- Reach Out to Influencers: Share your content with trusted voices in your field—they might link to it if they find it useful.
Interested in industry advice specific to your business to get in the top of search results to drive more traffic, engagement, and sales?
Get in touch for a chat and a free 15-minute website review, so we can understand your business goals and explore the most cost effective ways to reach them.
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Ready to take the next step in your SEO journey?
- Start with Google Search Console
It’s a free tool that helps you see how your site appears in Google Search and gives you valuable tips to improve it. Learn how to set it up with their free courses and discover which tasks to focus on next.
- Make Your Site Stand Out
Want your pages to pop in search results with things like star ratings or image previews? Structured data can help. Explore Google’s rich results gallery to see what’s possible and how to add these features to your site.
- Stay Consistent with Your SEO
Remember, SEO isn’t a one-time job. It’s something you build over time. Keep learning about long-term strategies, like managing site updates and creating content for different languages if relevant, to keep your site strong and optimised towards target customers.
Get in touch
We’re local, friendly and passionate about helping businesses like yours get seen by the customers you want to reach online. Any questions or pointers for what would help you most, feel free to get in touch.
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