SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a variety of techniques used on websites in order to rank higher up on search engines like Google or Bing. Here is a break down of some of these SEO techniques:
1. Metadata
Metadata is basically a short summary of a webpage. This summary is broken down into two parts, meta title and meta description. A meta title is the name of the webpage; you should include your most important keywords within this title. A meta description describes what your webpage contains. Again, you should include important keywords within this section too. Google or other search engines will crawl your metadata to determine when and where to rank your website.
2. Page Speed
The speed at which your website loads is very important to SEO. If a page doesn’t load within a few seconds most people will go elsewhere. Search engines prioritise websites that people actually use. Some things you can do to speed up your website:
- Compress media files (photos and videos)
- Compress HTML & CSS files
- Use a lazy-load feature
3. Competitor Analysis
It’s important to look at the websites that are outperforming you when it comes to SEO. You can see what keywords and phrases their website contains and how many times they use them. In order to start improving and outperforming your competitors you need to match their content’s quality and expand upon it. Your content needs to be more informative and more valuable.
4. Keyword Research
Researching keywords to use on your site is extremely important for SEO and attracting your ideal customer. You can use Google Trends to see which search terms are popular in your industry. It’s best to use a mixture of broad keywords and more specific phrases on your website.
SEO & Website Traffic
The end goal for any business website is to attract users that want to use your services. The state of your website’s SEO can be a direct factor in determining how many people visit your site. The higher you rank, the more clicks you get:
The number 1 result on Google gets 31.7% of all clicks
And only 0.78% of searchers click on something from the second page
