SEO is the optimisation of your site or content in order to improve its chances of being visible to your target audience. Utilising SEO on your website results in better rankings within search results on search engine pages (SEP).
SEO doesn’t just ensure your main landing page appears in results, it can be any page of your website that relates to what a searcher is looking for.
How SEO Works
Crawl: Google, for example, use bots that “crawl” web pages across the internet collecting information from each site. Search engines determine the value of keywords and search for these within web pages. Once they’ve collected the required information from each page, they can then index these pages.
Index: An index is a database that is used by search engines which allows users of the search engine to see pages relevant to their searches. If a search engine was unable to find your page, and therefore unable to index it, then your page will not be visible in searches. It is not only the URL that is indexed, images, text, coding etc. are all added to the index.
Algorithm: Search engine algorithms are the method in which information is ranked for importance and value. Search engines generally do not only use one algorithm but rather a series of multiple algorithms.
"Google ranking systems are designed to do just that: sort through hundreds of billions of webpages in our Search index to find the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second, and present them in a way that helps you find what you’re looking for."
Algorithms look for information such as:
Key words
Relevant Material
Ease of usability
Quality of sources
Location
The importance or weighting of the factor is determined by the query of the searchers.
How to Improve your SEO
Website: DESIGN
Your website needs to be able to load content quickly and not be hindered by issues such as unused Javascript. We recommend using Google PageSpeed which will assess the speed of your website and will provide recommended problem areas.
The pathways that a visitor will follow on your website need to be easy to use. This ease of pathway will result in a better user experience (UX) and help in increasing conversion rates.
Search Engine: RELEVANCE
Use targeted keywords throughout your content, but avoid keyword stuffing. You will need to find the right balance of keywords/phrases. Think about your target audience: What are they searching for? What problem will you solve for them? What information are you providing? Considering these questions will guide you to your customers’ word choices regarding their queries and searching. Your buyer personnel and competitor research will help inform your answers to the questions above.
You want your audience to not only access your page, but to stay on it for as long as needed. For this to happen, ensure that your content is not only readable, but relevant to your target audience. When visitors remain on your page it tells the search engine’s algorithm that your page is relevant to the searched query.
Technical: GUIDANCE
Including a sitemap within a website is one of the most undervalued aspects of improving your SEO. Having a sitemap for your website can aid in guiding not only visitors, but search engines to your most useful and relevant content.
When adding content to your site, be sure to include internal links. Linking your pages to one another informs search engines on the structure of your website. When content involves a higher volume of links it tells search engines that the page is of value. This is the case for the inclusion of both internal and external links.
Free Resource
Want to learn more? Our free resource checklist provides the basic SEO aspects that your content and website should be implementing. Click here for a FREE SEO Resource from Connolly Media & Marketing
There’s lots of useful information and guidance for improving SEO for your website and social content. We’ve put together some further resources that we recommend:
Further Resources:
Our Digital Marketing, The Fundamentals podcast series provides valuable insight into all things digital marketing. Click the image below to listen!
