One of the most important things your website needs is a good relationship with Google. Not only will this bring more enquiries to your website, it will ensure that visitors and potential customers always have a way of finding you on the web. The important thing to remember is that optimising your website for Google isn't a dark art, it's incredibly easy once you understand how Google and your website work together. A combination of our step by step guide and regular updates to your site will make sure that you give yourself the best chance in the Google search results. SEO Guide It's important to understand that Google takes time to index and promote your new website changes. SEO is all about patience and perseverance. Read our SEO Guide above for more information on how Google works and what you can do to get on that top results page.
Keep on top of your Google Analytics service that we set up when your site went live. Use it to keep track of your site's performance, what pages are working, what could be improved, where your clients are located etc.
Write some copy that includes some keywords that you'd like your desired search engine to crawl your site for, make it sound natural and fluid. Keywords are locations, services, products that are relevant to you.
Have your page descriptions include that Keyword copy and be under 250 characters. Describe who you are, what you do and where you're based so Google can promote you on any result.
Website SEO crawlers love to see Social Media added to your site, adding a Facebook or X widget or links via buttons or icosn can be a great way to point people to your Social Media pages and improve your SEO.
Make sure your page aliases are suitable as Google loves to read them as a way of understanding what your page is about. For example, domain.co.uk/websites could be improved by being domain.co.uk/website-design-chichester.
View your XML sitemap through your Webmaster tools to see how your site is laid out and prioritised.
Adding inter-page links onto your site to make it easy to navigate and coherent can help improve your SEO, for example, a "Contact Us" button on each page. Google loves to follow text links to relevant pages inside your site.
Make sure each image has an alt tag that is relevant to the image and describes in in 3 words or less. Alt tags describe the image so Google and any visually impaired visitors can read it.
Videos are great for the user, but not Google. Longer load times will hurt you in Google. Google prefers simple websites with fast loading, small sized images with super simple navigation for the user.
Adding your location across the site will help Google understand where you're located and improve your rankings in those areas.
Make sure all links on your website via buttons and clickable text inserts are up to date and work. Otherwise, Google may think you don't pay attention to your site and potentially harm your rankings in Google.
Make sure the headings of your pages are relevant to the content within them. Titling a page, with the use o sub titles is great for the user, but Google also uses them to understand what your page is trying to say.
Blogs are great, but keep it current. Posts should stay live for 1-2 years, before being unpublished and replaced with current content. Rule to go by; only keep blog posts that are still relevant to your business today.
Reciprocal linking is when two different sites agree to link to each other, this can boost the SEO of both sites. Be careful though, this only works if the site linking to/from you is reputable and legitimate.
Make sure your Website Title is your business name or extremely relevant. This is what Google promotes on the first line in any Google result.
Keep an eye on your key searches, such as 'Web Designer Chichester', and then see if a month later you are moving up or down the search results.
Make sure there are no spelling or grammatical errors on your site. Simple errors are automatically picked up when your site is indexed by Google, so attention to detail is key.
Google likes fast loading websites, so batches o images, transitioning on the page will slow things down. Simpler the better!
Websites need to be updated, so include dynamic pages such as 'latest news', 'recent projects' or 'testimonials' to make futures updates easy.
Have you optimised all these areas of your website? If not we're here to help so please get in touch for a free SEO consultation & training session. Alternatively we can optimise your website for you with our SEO Boost Service. SEO Boost Service
If getting your site listed with the search engines or improving your site's rankings is important to you then our Search Engine Guide will be essential reading. Using a case study of an existing website we explain the core elements of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and demonstrate how you can achieve good results by making simple changes to your website. We explain the critical guidelines of SEO, how to create or define your keywords and site description, how you go about getting your site listed or indexed by the search engines, the importance of linking and much more. Each section of our SEO guide gives real examples and includes some screenshots to make the process as easy as possible for you.
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There's a lot more to SEO than most people have an understanding of and if you want your SEO to be the best it can be, it's worth getting an SEO professional to do this for you. We've learned the hard way that you get what you pay for within the SEO & marketing industry. Our recommended SEO professional has an excellent track record with ourselves and a number of our clients and always offers a free consultation before starting any work.
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