Our Top SEO Tips For Beginners
SEO is an absolute minefield. Algorithms are continually changing, so much so, that it is sometimes hard for the SEO professionals to keep up.
However, with lockdown looming, we understand that a lot of business owners will want to use this time to try and improve their site’s SEO themselves.
So, if you fancy trying your hand at SEO during the lockdown, here are our top SEO tips to help you rise up the ranks with ease…
Install Google Analytics
This is the very first thing you must do if you want any chance of improving your SEO.
Although installing Google Analytics, this will have no direct impact on your SEO perse; it will provide you with invaluable insights into how people are finding your site and what they do once they are on it. With insights like these, you can tailor your website and make it more accommodating to users, which WILL improve your SEO.
Audit Your Site
This is the second thing you must do after installing Google Analytics.
A site audit will reveal any issues on your website that might be negatively affecting your SEO from an on-page, off-page, or a technical standpoint.
In addition to this, an SEO audit will also reveal your website’s strengths, so you will know what you are doing right, too.
Fix Technical SEO Issues Highlighted by the Site Audit
Pretty much any issues the site audit highlights, go ahead and fix them. This includes broken links, meta description issues and things that are slowing your website down like plugins that need updating.
Ensure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly
This is a very step to improving your SEO, especially in 2020.
We use our phones for everything these days, including surfing the web.
Think about how many times you search for something online… Now think about how much of that online activity is done on your phone.
It’s a lot; we know it’s a lot because we do it too.
Having a mobile-friendly site means that it is accessible and works well on a mobile device, just as it would on a desktop.
Claim Your FREE Google My Business Listing
We can’t stress this enough. This is a FREE local advertising profile for your business which can help you rank highly for local searches.
Don’t Spam Your Site With Keywords
Spamming your pages with the keywords you know people search for, will likely see you penalised. This is a black-hat technique that no longer works.
Instead, opt for long-form content, distributing the relevant keywords evenly, in a natural manner.
Write for Humans First, Search Engines Second
It’s tempting to do the opposite, we know, but you need to remember that it’s the humans that are reading your content that are important.
Write content that is actually helpful to people and serves a purpose, rather than producing spammy content to try and climb the ranks.
When you write for humans, you are providing valuable and helpful content, which is more likely to be shared and used.
Speed Test
Almost 50% of people expect a website to load in two seconds or less, and your website is no exception to this.
Common things that will slow your website down include plugins that aren’t being used, too many unoptimised images, or plugins that need updating.
The combination of running a speed test and an audit will help you to identify if your website is slow and why it is slow, so that you can go ahead and fix anything that is slowing it down.
Research Relevant Keywords with the Right Tools
Use Google’s Keyword Planner to identify high ranking, relevant keywords that you can use in your content throughout your site, which will increase your chances of appearing in searches.
Blog Regularly
Blogging is a great way to provide search engines with fresh, relevant content regularly.
Every time you add a new blog post to your website, you are telling the search engine bots to return to your website and crawl your content, which is a new opportunity to appear in search rankings.
Update Your Website’s Content Regularly
Regularly check over your website’s content and update anything that is no longer relevant, with fresh content. Updating your website’s content is essential as it offers the same opportunity and benefits that blogging does.
Each time you update content on your website, you are telling search engine bots to come back and crawl that content.
Anchor Text
This is the clickable text in a hyperlink. The keywords in anchor text are one of the many signals search engines bots use to identify the content on your web page, so it is crucial that they are optimised, correct and always relevant.
Share Your Blogs Elsewhere
Share your blogs on your social media channels and on your Google My Business page to increase inbound activity.
Use Short, Descriptive URLs
Short URL’s are better for SEO than longer ones. When creating your URL’s, try to stay below 80 characters; otherwise, it’s likely to harm your rankings.
Optimise Your Title Tags
A title tag is an HTML element that specifies the title of a web page which is essential for usability, SEO, and social sharing as it tells readers what to expect from your content.
A well-optimised title tag is one that is clear, concise and includes relevant keywords.
Image Alt Tags
This is what tells the search engines what your images consist of; it’s also what will be displayed in place of an image if it cannot be loaded.
These are important because they provide better image descriptions to search engine bots, helping them to index an image correctly.
Improve Your Backlink Profile
Search engine bots use backlinks from existing webpages to discover new ones. Once they have found new webpages, they can then crawl them, which results in faster indexing.
Ways to improve your backlink profile include:
• Guest blogging
• Outreach (asking people to link back to your site)
• Creating shareable content
• Commenting on other blogs and joining in on professional conversations on other sites
• Building up your internal links
SSL Certificate
Have you ever gone onto a website, where you were issued with a warning from Google telling you the site is not secure? This is because they didn’t have an SSL certificate.
Although having an SSL certificate is not essential, the warning of an unsecured site can be off-putting or worrying, leading to people abandoning the site, impacting bounce rates which can affect SEO.
For this reason, we believe that having an SSL certificate is essential, whether you process sensitive information or not.
Installing an SSL certificate on your site is something you can do quickly and easily, and it can really impact how you rank in search results.
Create compelling and informative and optimised meta descriptions
The end goal, with any content, is to get people to click.
How do you do that?
You make the descriptions informative yet compelling. Show people what your content is about, without giving too much away.
Conclusion
Although these are our ‘quick’ tips, it’s important to remember that there is no quick fix in SEO.
SEO takes time and patience (and usually a lot of it).
You will seldom see instant results from carrying out SEO tasks.
In addition to this, it is also important to remember that SEO never stops. You have to keep working at it to maintain your spot.
Are you ready to get started with these SEO tips for beginners?
If you’re still hesitant (or even feel overwhelmed), our team of search specialists can help you work on your SEO so that you can start climbing the rankings.
Get in touch with us today.
