SEO or Search Engine Optimisation can seem like an item for the too hard basket.
A lot of people tend to look at it and get overwhelmed by all the elements and techniques required to get you ranking higher on Google and improving your website’s traffic.
It is important to recognise two factors about SEO before you dismiss it.
Before we get into some of the nitty gritty, let’s first address some of the benefits of SEO and why it might be important for your website and your business as a whole.
WHY SEO IS IMPORTANT:
Organic traffic is responsible for more traffic than all other sources of online traffic combined. This is the traffic that will be available from search engines versus social media platforms. That being the case SEO is important because it is about optimising or boosting elements on a website that make it visible to search engines. Doing this boosting helps your organic search results. This means that SEO will lead to a boost in your site’s visibility and your site’s activity.
SEO will also lead to more consistent traffic on your website. Rarely in the case of social media and any email marketing will traffic do more than initial spike? Typically through social media, fresh content is created, an initial boost to your site will occur, but then it will fade. With email marketing, an email will be read, or placed in spam, or even be ignored. If you use SEO correctly, you could find yourself on the top search position on Google guaranteeing much more consistent traffic and hits to your website.
SEO will also get you free engagement. Paid ads will show up on the first page of Google and you will typically spend a certain amount per click you get. If you are ranking well organically you will not need to pay for that click to your site. The time and effort investing into SEO will be a much better long term solution to your website’s longevity, than most PPC campaigns, which are really great for launches, or specific campaigns, but not an economic option for long term search engine rankings.
HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL WITH SEO
Now that we have covered why SEO is so important, now let’s look at setting up your website properly to maximise your chances of building off of it with more SEO down the road.
It can be tempting, when you are new to , to overwhelm all aspects of your website with your relevant keywords. To make it very clear, you don’t have to have keywords in your domain. It is best to just create a domain that is short and memorable, doesn’t have hyphens, and is just the name of the business.
For example, if you are a deli in , Melbourne, called Debs Deli, a bad domain would be something like ‘melbournedelicollingwood.com’ where a perfectly good domain would just be simply ‘debsdeli.com.au’
Next is your top-level domain. This refers to the .com or .org at the end of a URL.
Google’s own John Mueller says your top-level domain makes no difference to your SEO. Typically .com is most trusted by most people, whereas others like .info or .biz which are often associated with dodgier websites.
Typically, people will not code their website from start to finish. The common move is to use website platforms.
There are two types:
Hosted Platforms and Self-Hosted Platforms
A hosted platform refers to all-in-one services, where hosting, designs, and ease of editing can be done with the same service.
A Self Hosted Platform allows you to manage, create and edit your content without coding. However the difference will be you needing to host and install the website yourself.
Most SEO experts and website professionals will recommend using a self-hosted platform as they are open source, customisable with a big community of support, and there are literally millions of ready-made plugins that help with your ideal website’s functionality, along with many SEO plugins that will help your site be ready for any more SEO implementations down the road.
Google wants to provide the best pages to their users and will favour those that leaves a positive experience to them.
Some ways to ensure that users have a good experience is:
USING HTTPS – this ensures that a user’s personal data is not at risk as it will get encrypted.
GOOD DESIGN – Making sure that your website’s design is clean and easy to navigate will be the most important aspect for users, as there is nothing worse than getting lost and confused on a site.
RESPONSIVE – Making sure that your site is optimised for as many devices is super important, and making sure that the mobile view of your site is functional and effective is imperative in Google’s perspective as more people browse on their phones rather than desktops nowadays.
GOOD FONT – Make sure that your font is readable across all devices, and the font is large enough to read between devices.
FAST LOAD TIME – Typically people will bounce after 4 seconds of waiting for a website to load, making sure that you have good hosting, and your site is optimised is going to impact your load speeds are.
Consider a mind map when looking at your website. Having a structured/tiered system, you will find that navigation can become a breeze for users.
Your home page should have access to all top level internal pages, like the about page, a services page and a blog page, then within those pages you can go deeper.
Having tiers and a clear system is perfect for most users. And the clear site structure helps your SEO too.
SUM UP
Setting your site up for SEO success requires some good fundamental knowledge. Having a clear picture of the benefits of SEO will show you why you need to have knowledge about it.
Once that is established be sure to set up a clear and simple domain, use a self-hosted platform and install relevant SEO plugins. After which it is important to give users a positive experience throughout your site by giving them an easy, safe, and informative site to navigate through.
If you need help from an SEO company, be sure to send Castle Jackson an email, or give us a call today!
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