3 SEO tips to help your website rank better

So you’ve built a website but you’re not sure if it’s ranking in the search engines? Or is your website pretty slow to load and it’s getting frustrating? Or maybe you are thinking of having a website built and want to be less clueless about SEO?

No worries, I’ve got you covered here with these essential SEO basics.

Get your website found by Google

SEO (Search Engine Optimization), is essentially the practice of increasing the number and quality of visitors to your website through search engine results. To break this down simply, search engines consist of three parts:

1. Crawlers (also called spiders, bots). These look for content, headings and links to find out what a page is about. This is why keywords are important.
2. Index. After the crawlers have done their work, the pages on a website are then indexed.
3. Algorithm. This then turns the index contents into search results!

Many small business owners have heard of SEO, but they don’t necessarily always know what exactly is involved or how to implement the basics themselves.

Do you want your website having a better chance of being found by search engines? Then you need to get to grip with these SEO basics. There is no point having a website your ideal clients can’t find or get frustrated using, so read on to find out how to avoid that.

Tip #1: Have a keyword strategy

First things first: SEO is a long-term game, it’s forever evolving. Google is also getting more clever all the time in how it scans content on websites.

You will likely find yourself tweaking your website copy on-going (I know I do!). It’s really important to get your message right and SEO-rich copy is often the most neglected aspect on a small business website. If you’re not very confident with writing, then I’d definitely recommend hiring a copywriter to help you.

If you are comfortable with putting your copy together, then you need to do some keyword research before you start. Writing web copy isn’t just writing about your company and what you offer. You have to consider who you’re writing for. These will be:

• Your ideal clients

and

• Search engines

This is where keyword research comes into play. What are your clients typing in to search engines to find your products and services? Have a look at your competition too, see what kind of words and phrases they are using on their websites.

Google hates ‘keyword stuffing’, so a rule of thumb is to pick one relevant keyword per page or blog post. Less is definitely more when it comes to keyword placement.

Small business websites generally should adopt a ‘long tail’ keyword strategy to gain SEO authority and then move up the ranks to more competitive terms.

There tends to be less competition for long tail keywords, so the conversion rate is higher. Examples of the types of keywords are:

Head keyword eg. ‘graphic designer’.

Mid tail keyword – more specific, less competitive e.g. ‘hiring a graphic designer’

Long tail keyword – even more specific, even less competitive e.g. ‘how to find and hire a graphic designer in Devon’.

Putting your keywords in the right places, such as headings and page descriptions, is also important for SEO.

Tip #2: Optimize your images

Images bring websites to life. Without images a website would be a bit, well, boring right? Using images also allows your visitors better understand your blog posts and overall message. Images also:

• Contribute to SEO as they entice people to click
• Can be important for branding strategy (people will recognise a specific style)

Nobody wants to land on a slow website. Especially if they’re on 4G!

When people are browsing for information, they want to access it quickly. If your website is slow to load, search engines won’t like it and it will just send people packing, probably to your competitors!

You’re probably thinking, so how do I optimise my images then? Two ways to do this are by:

• Adding an image alt attibute. This helps visitors by adding a descriptive text if they can’t see the image. WordPress makes this really simple to do when you upload your images to the Media library. You can and should also name your images with a short description in their file names (this helps screen readers get an idea of what the page is about and also helps when images haven’t loaded up).
• Re-sizing images for faster loading. Never upload an image at it’s original large size as your website speed will be massively affected. You can use Photoshop to re-size images or one of the many free tools out there.

Tip #3: Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

The accessability of mobile phones means that most of us are accessing the internet through them on a daily basis. This means having a website which looks good on multiple devices is essential. There is no point having a website your ideal clients can’t use or view properly!

According to Google Analytics, on average 60% of visitors to my website access it via mobile phone. That’s a fair amount! I’ve worked with platforms like WordPress, Webflow and  and fortunately they make it easy to ensure your website is accessible on different devices.

Before you go live with a new website, remember to check how it looks on your own phone and a tablet if you can. If your website looks bad those devices, it’s going to put off a lot of potential customers.

How about a FREE website audit?

Often, knowing what to do to improve your website and actually getting it implemented can be hard for busy business owners. How does a FREE website audit with 3-5 actionable points sound? Get your free audit and improve that website fast.