Almost 3 out of every 4 searches start on Google, and the first 5 results that show up on Google get 67% of all clicks. So you can see why SEO is such an important topic. So here are some quick wins you can easily achieve to boost your SEO.
Update your content regularly
Having a blog is an essential tool to drive more traffic to your website organically. You’ll find many websites and companies have blog pages. This isn’t just to share interesting information about their business and their business industry, it’s a key marketing strategy.
Ensuring you publish ever-green content is important, so it continues to stay relevant. Even when someone comes across your blog 1 or 2 years from now, it still needs to be relevant. Plus, creating new fresh content on a regular basis is important. This could be once per week, every other week, once per month, or every other month. Whatever schedule best works for you – just make sure you’re getting new content on your website on a regular basis.
By publishing new content regularly Google will determine that your website is active and is more likely to show your content to people.
Set up Google Analytics
You need to have an idea of how your website is doing right now, to know where you need to improve. If you do anything, connecting your website to Google Analytics or another website stats analytics software is essential.
Google Analytics does require a little technical know-how, but the more time you spend working with it the more your understanding will grow. It shows you key stats such as how long people are spending on a page, and what channels your traffic is coming from (e.g. Google searches or social media).
The purpose of your website will determine which stats are important to you. Are you trying to attract visitors to a specific page or landing page, are you wanting to understand how many sales you’re making if you sell a product?
Having a relevant software and streamlined approach to tracking your website analytics is essential.
Check out competitors
Every business has competitors, and therefore so does every website. It will also have content competitors (people and businesses who may be producing the same type of blog content as you, but aren’t necessarily your direct competitor in the business field).
Spend some time doing an audit of your competitors and content competitors. Review what type of content they’re creating and what topics they are producing content around. If there’s a particular topic you want to write about, Google it and see what the top search results are. These will be the results that are doing the most things right.
Use more interesting Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are a simple but highly effective way to improve your SEO. Meta descriptions are the small paragraphs of text that appear below a page’s title in search results. Therefore it’s important yours is compelling.
While they do not count as ranking factors, they do influence click-through rates. Spend some time reviewing your meta descriptions on your past content as well as moving forward. They are essentially an advert of your page. To get started, I recommend using Search Console for descriptions Google thinks could do with improvements.
Encourage customer reviews
Improving your SEO is all about showing Google that your website is trustworthy and offers valuable content to visitors. Encourage customers to leave reviews about your business in places like TripAdvisor and especially on Google.
You could offer an incentive, reward or discount to customers who leave reviews. Beware of fake reviews as these are an obvious no-no. If Google suspects you’re spamming fake reviews it could have a negative effect on your rankings.
Have a speedy website
If your website is slow, Google will give it a low ranking in search results. Would you expect to wait more than 1-3 seconds for a website to load when you click on it? Of course not, and Google knows this.
So how can you speed up your website? The key thing is to review your media. This includes your image file formats (JPG is ideal for websites compared to PNG). Many large image file formats will result in your website being slow. Not just images but any downloadable files, lead magnets or e-books. Have you optimised these file formats?
Conclusion
Improving your SEO doesn’t have to consume all your time and energy. But too often, we make it more difficult than it needs to be. Focus on these quick and easy tips – optimise your best content, use Google Analytics, decrease your bounce rate. And another important tip – ensure your website is fully mobile-optimised!
