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SEO and How to Optimise it for your Business 

SEO and How to Optimise it for your Business 

by | Nov 25, 2021 | Digital Marketing

Let me guess, you want your website to be easily found by customers and don’t want to spend time creating a stunning website if no one can see it, we get it! Have you heard of SEO and how to optimise it for your business?

With the seemingly infinite amount of content on the internet, it can be overwhelming knowing how to start. I mean, what is SEO anyway?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the way you can help customers to find your site through search engines. By improving and optimising your SEO you can drive more traffic to your website and therefore generate more sales. 

1. Use the right keywords 

Firstly, you need to know what your customers are searching for. Are your customers more likely to use formal or informal word/phrases? You need your website to use the same language as your potential searchers. 

Use keyword search tools to research what keywords to use for your business (check out our favourite here). If you input one keyword, keyword tools can show you the amount the term is searched, its SEO difficulty and a list of other similar keywords.  

The information you find can be used to create keywords lists. If you are promoting different products and services, then you can create a list for each to optimise each page most effectively. 

Common mistakes: 

  • Only doing keyword research once 
  • Targeting keywords that are too competitive 
  • Forgetting to update and expand your keyword list. 

Once you have found your keywords, you need to know where to use them: 

  • Title 
  • URL 
  • Throughout the page text 
  • Image alt text 

Link building is when you acquire hyperlinks to your website from other websites. A hyperlink is a word, image or phrase that you click on to travel to a different section of the current document or to a new document.  

Increasing your link building between websites is a great way to build web authority and increase your chances of ranking higher. 

Gaining links organically is ideal, you can encourage this by making your website link-worthy with useful information and interesting products/services which could be featured in a blog.  

You can also build links to your site by asking website owners to carry your link on their site in exchange for you to do the same. Remember, quality over quantity. Links from reputable directories, website and educational websites will be more useful than links from untrustworthy blogs and sketchy websites. 

3. Ensure your website is user-friendly 

Making your website user-friendly will, of course, help your users have the best experience possible but it will also improve your SEO and Google Rankings. 

Site speed is confirmed to affect your SEO, just imagine the impact it could have on your user’s experience! With the majority of websites available with no load time, if your website is slow then it can cause users to bounce out. User behaviour on your site sends signals to search engines which then can impact your ranking. 

Google wants its users to be happy and understand that load speed can have a major impact on user satisfaction. Google’s method to ranking includes using Core Web Vitals; these assess your websites loading time, visual stability and interactivity and the results of this influence your ranking. 

The faster your site speed, the higher your ranking. Simple. 

4. Look at your content length 

How long your content is can affect your SEO and your ranking. Blog posts should contain at least 300 words in order to rank well on search engines but research shows that the ideal length for a blog post is 1,600 words.  

You may be wondering; how do I know how long MY content should be? An easy way to do this is to Google your main keyword and look at the top 10 results on Google. Do these contain more than 1,600 words? If they do then yours should too, if not then look at the average length of other similar high-ranking content. 

Don’t forget, quality over quantity! 

5. Optimise your on-page SEO 

On-page SEO is the way in which you optimise your website content for search engines. Some examples of on-page SEO are headings, slugs, meta descriptions and internal links. 

Here are some top tips to get you started with optimising your on-page SEO: 

  • Meta descriptions: A meta description is the small chunk of text that appears below your page title on a search result. Make sure these are concise, accurate and relevant to your content. 
  • Headings: DON’T use misleading titles. Click-bait titles may give you more initial clicks but will lead to a high bounce-rate when your content is not what is expected. Use H1 headings for your main title to help Google understand your content. 
  • Slugs: No not those slimy things in your garden! A slug is part of your URL that identifies a particular page on your website. Try to include your keywords in your slug and keep it short and sweet! People check to slug to ensure the content is what they are looking for. 

Off-page SEO and technical SEO are also important to consider on your website…luckily for you, we have our very own guide to all things SEO! Check it out here.  

If you want your SEO optimised but you are still unsure how, or maybe you simply don’t have the time, get in touch now! Here at Creative in Time we have a team of SEO experts just waiting to help you. Click here to book a discovery call now. 

A Beginners Guide to SEO

A Beginners Guide to SEO

by | Jul 27, 2021 | Digital Marketing

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the way in which you increase your website’s visibility and chances of being found in search engines.

SEO drives organic traffic onto your website. A recent study found that 28.5% of people click through on the first organic search result demonstrating that people trust an organic result more than a paid advertisement.  Therefore, the higher you rank, the more organic traffic you should receive.

In our guide we aim to show you what SEO is and how to utilise SEO strategies in your website.

How Search Engines Work

To understand SEO, you need to understand the basics of a search engine.

Firstly, search engines are machines which scour the internet for content to determine which is most relevant to your search.

To scour the internet, search engines work through a three-step process:

  1. Crawling: They look through the internet for content and read the text/code from each URL. They do this to discover new and fresh pages with updates, images and videos. The exact amount that Google crawls a day is unknown but can be estimated at 45,000 pages a second.
  2. Indexing: Google then files the findings of their crawling into an organised index to be displayed to searchers on a search page. Check how your site pages are indexed by heading to Google and typing “site:yourdomain.com” into the search bar.
  3. Ranking: The final step is ordering organic content on a search page from most to least relevant in relation to the original search query.

Did you know there are three types of SEO?

On-page SEO

On-page SEO are activities on your website that help search engines to understand & rank your content e.g., keywords, image optimisation, content quality, and title tags.

Without On-page SEO you miss out on opportunities to rank for search enquiries related to your business. SEO is one of the most popular and cost-effective digital marketing strategies

Here are our top tips for optimising your webpage!

  • Title: The reader will see your title before they even reach your page. Create interesting and stand out titles to catch the reader’s attention. Use KEYWORDS to help the search engine understand your content.
  • Meta descriptions: This is the small piece of text below your page title on a search result. REMEMBER to always add these and edit these to be concise and useful.
  • Headings: Make sure to use the correct headings, they should match the search page title. People will stop reading if they are not relevant or informative.
  • Share-worthy content: Make content that people will want to share and link to. Add all the keywords that are relevant, make sure that you completely answer the question asked.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is any SEO strategies that occur outside of your website. These could be link building, social media, reviews, and more.

It is important to monitor off-page SEO as you will potentially rank higher than a competitor if your off-page SEO is higher. It is a factor in determining how valuable your page is to a search question, a website with no off-page SEO is unlikely to be found.

We have compiled some easy tips to get you started with your off-page SEO:

  • Links: Ensure that you have no broken links. You can build links to your website by guest posting on authoritative sites and submitting work to high-quality directories.
  • Social media: Build connections with influencers and create unique content to form a positive social media presence. REMEMBER to keep your audience in mind and ensure your content is compatible.
  • Content: Make quality content to make it easier to get backlinks to your site. Long-lasting, quality backlinks are very useful to off-page SEO.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to the parts of your website that are not content such as behind the scenes elements that are not visible to the public (yes, these do matter!), e.g., indexation, site speed, and accessibility.

These activities directly impact the indexing and crawling of your site by search engines. By making your website as search engine friendly as you can, you ensure that it can easily index your pages, and make it readily available to searchers.

This can seem intimidating to a beginner, but here are a few simple steps to start:

  • Make sure your website is mobile-friendly (check now by clicking here) to ensure your page can be accessed from anywhere, by anyone.
  • Check how quickly your website loads (check now by clicking here), the faster your website loads, the more pages are indexed and the higher it will rank. Site speed is a very important ranking factor for Google.

SEO can be daunting when starting out, if you are feeling lost or feel like your business could use support, click here to book a discovery call with CREATIVE in TiME, our marketing business would love to help!