10 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving website rankings on the search engine results page.

Search engine traffic is vital to any website. Without it, most marketing goals won’t be achieved. SEO can be divided into two main strategies:

  1. On-page optimisation refers to all changes that can be made within your website to improve its position in the search rankings, i.e. updating of content or code.
  2. Off-page optimisation refers to page ranking factors that occur from your website, like backlinks, and takes into account the exposure it gets for activities like PR and social media.

In this article, we’ll discuss our Top 10 Tips and Techniques to ensure you’re following the best SEO practices.

Let’s get started!

1. Build a great website

The first step to good SEO performance is a user-friendly website that is visually appealing, easy to navigate and where key information is easily accessible. Ensure that your page speed is optimised, that content is free from spelling errors and that all your links are working correctly. 

TW Tip: Accessibility Apps like Little Forest will spot areas of improvement across all of your pages and ensure good governance on your website.

2. Keywords

Do your keyword research at the start of the project. It is a vital component of SEO, and time should be taken to do it properly. Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest is a great (free) tool for quickly amassing a decent-sized list of potential keywords. 

TW TipResearch your competitor’s keywords to uncover the keywords that are driving traffic to their website. 

3. Content

In the world of SEO, Content is King! Keep it original, and remember that while keywords are needed, you should write content with people in mind. Make it readable, enjoyable and memorable!

TW TipIf you are the one doing the writing, we suggest installing Grammarly. This app is an excellent writing assistant that ensures your content is error-free and contains no plagiarism.

4. Backlinks

Backlinks are especially valuable for SEO because they represent a “vote of confidence” from one site to another. In essence, backlinks to your website are a signal to search engines that others vouch for your content.

TW Tip: Let the author of the backlink in your article know that you have included their content and ask whether they would consider sharing it on their platforms. Flattery gets you everywhere!

5. Analytics

Make sure you have added and set up the analytics code so you can properly analyse your website and track your marketing efforts, content and performance goals. 

TW Tip: Learn more about Google Analytics here

6. Image optimisation

Optimising your images creates many advantages such as better user experience, faster page loading times, and additional ranking opportunities. Optimisation methods include reducing image size, selecting the right format, and customising image file names. 

We recommend visiting Google Image Best Practices to ensure you’re checking all the boxes.

TW Tip: The Squoosh App is a fantastic tool to reduce image size.

7. Search Engine Friendly URL’s

SEO friendly URLs are URLs designed to meet the needs of users and searchers. Specifically, URLs optimised for SEO tend to be short and keyword-rich.

TW Tip: Put the most relevant keywords at the beginning of the URL.

8. Meta tags 

Meta tags are snippets of text that describe a page’s content. They only appear in the source code and not on the page itself. Meta tags could be defined as content descriptors that help tell search engines what a web page is about.

TW Tip: If you want to check the Meta tags for any page, just right-click anywhere on the page and select “View Page Source”.

9. Add a sitemap

sitemap is a file where you provide information about the pages and the relationships between them. Search engines like Google read this file to more intelligently crawl your site. 

A sitemap also tells Google which pages and files you think are essential in your site.

TW Tip: Learn to build and submit a sitemap here.

10. Social Media

Adding social media buttons to your content will encourage people to share your content on their social media platforms. When your content gets shared, more people are likely to see and link to it. As we established earlier in the article, links are a hugely important SEO ranking factor.

TW Tip: Don’t Spam on your social media channels. The idea is to interact with your followers and have them read your content, not annoy them!

Conclusion

SEO has many elements to consider and can seem a bit intimidating at times. It requires patience and may take a few months to see the desired results. The key is covering the basics and to keep adapting your strategy to achieve long-term success.

Do you need help with your SEO? 

Tenacity Works can assist you with the relevant services required to optimise and increase your search engine rankings. 

Photo by Christopher Gower on Unsplash

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