26/02/20 | Digital, SEO

Sean

SEO, PPC, Web

Simple SEO tips that anyone can try

It’s not easy getting your website to appear on the initial pages of Google. It’s an ongoing battle that requires skill, research and tactics to get right.

For small business owner-managers, it’s always advisable to seek professional guidance. SEO (search engine optimization) is an ever-changing practice and Google is constantly updating the way they rank pages. For this reason, it’s unrealistic to keep up with everything you could possibly need to know alongside running your business.

However, it is possible to get the basics right. And there are a few simple things that anyone can do to improve the performance of their website. These basic practices will increase the likelihood of your business ranking within the first results pages.

Here are 5 simple SEO tricks to try with your website:

1. Compress your images on your website

When you arrive at a website, you’re essentially downloading all the information on each page as you land on them. If the pages are full of very large images, your system is having to work much harder to download the information, making the pages load slowly.

47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, so it’s essential that your pages load fast. Pages that load slowly cause visitors to become impatient and leave, sending them back to the results page and into the arms of your competitors. Which you certainly don’t want!

The answer is simply to compress your image files. This is easy enough to do with the right programme. You might not have access to Photoshop, but tools such as TinyPNG and CompressJpeg can make your images smaller for free.

If you want to learn more about website speed, we can recommend this comprehensive guide on how speed affects websites.

2. Start a blog

Google and other search engines love it when websites answer questions clearly and in lots of detail. After all, Google is a product itself. It wants internet users to rely on its search bar to complete all of their searches, so it needs to consistently provide the best answers.

The better your website is at providing clear answers, the better chance it’ll have at being right at the top of the results page when users conduct their search.

Your blog or news section is the ideal place for this information. Keep your blog regularly updated with fresh content that answers the questions of your audience. This will increase the chances of your website bringing in new visitors.

Not only is a blog great for SEO, but it displays your expertise. Your blog is where you engage with visitors, sharing information that makes their lives easier and telling them about your business’s success stories. Post clear, relevant and readable content and new customers will find you.

3. Set up a google mybusiness account

Google has its own tool to help small businesses get started on its search engine platform, called Google MyBusiness.

It’s a tool to manage and adjust how your site will appear in Google search results, Google Maps, Google Knowledge Graph and more. It’s a big factor for local SEO, so if you’re a business serving those immediately around you, it’s a must. It’s easy to set up and makes it much easier for customers to find out information like your location, services and opening times.

Not having this information set up properly is inadvisable. People are increasingly used to seeing immediate results when they search for a business and if your profile looks incomplete or is incorrect, they may just assume you’re not open or not even in business anymore!

4. Set up and maintain social media accounts and allow sharing

Active social media accounts provide customers and potential customers with another way to engage with you online. Consistency is key on social media, so make sure your profiles are complete with your company logo and have the same title and contact information.

Sharing interesting content via your social media accounts gives your company a voice and positions you as experts within your field. Use your social profiles to share content from your website and other websites from your industry – anything that’s useful or interesting to your customers is valid.

How does this help your site perform on Google?

Think of social media shares as referrals to your business.

By pushing out content from your site on different platforms, you’re giving people more chance to share and link to your website content. The more your content is linked to from other websites related to your industry, the better chance your site will have at being ranked higher.

5. Describe what your webpages are about in your page titles and page descriptions

One of the easiest things you can do to make sure your website has the best chance of being ranked highly for your products or services is to make sure each page on your site has a good meta title and meta description.

If your site is one of the many running on WordPress, then there are tools available to make the inputting of these super easy. Yoast is a favourite of WordPress site owners and makes entering titles and descriptions straight forward.

Make sure you’ve got the key words in your titles and descriptions that your customers will use to find you on Google. For example, if you provide forklift driver training in Leeds, then it’s as simple as having “Forklift Driver Training in Leeds” in your title!

We hope you’ve found these simple SEO tips useful. If you’re still having trouble being seen on Google and would like to discuss your SEO strategy with a team of experts, you can get in touch with us on 0113 394 4559 or hello@yourengineroom.com.

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