BOOST YOUR WEBSITE’S RANKING

Serif’s Dale Cook provides three top search engine optimisation tips

People can find your website in a variety of ways, but few are more important than being found ‘naturally’ via a search engine. Why? Because using a search engine is the most common way for people to find websites.

Appearing in search results can cost nothing, as opposed to paying to promote your website in print or through online adverts - and the higher you rank in the search engine results, the more traffic you get.

Here are three tips to improve your website’s search engine optimisation (SEO) and boost your ranking:

CHOOSE YOUR KEYWORDS WISELY
It’s important to choose the right keywords for every page on your site. These are words that relate to your field or topic and are likely to be used in searches.

Focus on different keywords for each page. This way each keyword has its own unique value to a particular page, rather than the same set of keywords on every page competing against each other to do the same job, resulting in your SEO being less effective.

Try to place your keywords in the URL, headings, image tags and content, but don’t overdo it. If you cram in too many keywords or repeat the same ones endlessly, it will impact negatively on your search engine ranking and won’t read as well, lessening the quality of your content.

You can enhance your SEO and have great content by striking a good balance.

CREATE A BLOG
A key part of effective SEO is adding new and original content. If a search engine spider checks your site, it will be looking for fresh content or changes to existing content, so it’s important to ensure it gets updated frequently.

A great way to add new content is via a blog because it’s so easy to update regularly and perfect for adding unique content.

And it’s not only search engines that find new content on a blog appealing. Visitors to your site will be craving new information - and your blog is exactly where they’ll find it.

Among this new information there may be links to articles on other websites. And if your content is good enough, those websites might return the favour and link back to your site, improving SEO and generating traffic for you.

USE META DESCRIPTION TAGS
It’s not just the information on your web pages that will affect your search engine optimisation. You can improve SEO by giving the search engine spider a taste of your website before it has even got to your homepage with a meta description tag.

This is the short paragraph that appears in the search engine’s listings and gives a brief overview of your site. It’s also your first opportunity to attract potential visitors, as well as the search engine spider, so it’s important to give an accurate representation of your business and relate to the information on your site.

As with your website’s content, don’t fill the description, which should only be around 30 words, with only keywords in the hope of boosting your SEO. Again, you’ve got to find the right balance between effective keywords and marketing yourself to potential customers.

And just like keywords, be sure to use a different meta description tag for each page of your site so as not to lessen its impact.

There are lots of other ways to improve SEO. It’s one of the broadest topics when talking about websites, and the goalposts are moving all the time.

You’ll see arguments for site maps, link building, analytics and more - they are all valid - but these three tips are a great place for you to start shooting up the rankings and generating traffic on your website.

www.serif.com