Settle in for the second half of our article on the top 20 SEO Tips for your site. For more on why these are the top and for the first half of the list, click here.
- Think About How People Will Find You. Successful websites create pages designed to attract potential customers making specific searches for their product or service. Consider brands and items you stock as well as locations you serve and produce content that will bring them in.
- Know How Fast Your Pages Load. As Internet connections have become faster, users have become less tolerant of websites that take time to load. If your page takes more than two seconds to load you will lose a number of visitors before they even see your content. Check page load time here.
- Is Your Site Secure? Perhaps you’ve noticed that some URLs begin with http but others begin with https? The S stands for Secure, and all else being equal, search engines prefer pages that have security to those that don’t. Get your site an SSL certificate from a trusted provider and you’ll soon see an improvement.
- Are you On a Content Delivery Network? Content delivery networks, or CDNs, can improve the security of your website against attacks that could take it temporarily offline, and they’ll also reduce page loading time for many visitors – both of which can really help. We recommend Cloudflare.
- Take the Long View. It’s very tempting to load your metadata with terms you know attract a lot of searches to get more traffic immediately – but if visitors don’t find anything connected to those search terms, they’ll leave immediately and search engines will notice visitors aren’t satisfied. Use appropriate search terms for stronger growth, even if it takes longer.
- Support Your Site with Social Media. Most modern content management systems have plugins for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media platforms which allow you to connect your accounts to your site. Link to new blog posts and other developments on your social media and let visitors to your site see what you’re Tweeting.
- Name Pages Appropriately. A page URL with relevant words will rank higher for searches for “SEO tips” than an identical page with a URL like page1234.html. Keep your URLs relevant, but don’t make them too long or include numbers – these are all negatives!
- Make Sure Your Site Stands Out. One of the best ways to keep visitors looking around your site rather than backing out and checking another search result is to look unique and interesting – and keeping visitors from ‘bouncing’ off your website is important for long-term growth.
- Business Networking Is SEO Too. Linking to a company with which you have shared business interests – and getting them to link back – is good for both of your sites, and can also convert customers of one into customers of both. Consider a ‘blog exchange’ where both sites guest blog on the other’s site.
- What Are Your Competitors Doing? Visiting a rival’s site on a regular basis is a great way to keep your eye on their performance. Keep an eye out to see if their site does anything yours doesn’t that you might want to adopt – and to see what they’re not doing that you can do more of.
There’s a lot to keep in mind when it comes to SEO. These twenty tips give you the basics and a bit more – as well as a way to get ahead of the competition and stay ahead – and following their advice will give you the chance to discover other techniques.
However, at Novi.Digital we have a golden rule that can serve as Tip 0 – the tip that all other tips should flow from.
Don’t let your judgement be clouded by what ‘feels right’. Search Console and Analytics give you access to so much data and there are many ways to find even more. That data is more accurate than any gut feeling and following it will pay dividends time after time.
If you want to know more, or would like to find out how we can help you, don’t hesitate to contact us online, via [email protected], or by phone on 01524 566 736.
We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
