Search engine optimization is one of the best ways to ensure that your site becomes visible on search engines such as Google. However, it requires a delicate balance of quality content versus technical aspects and it’s a lot more involved than just stuffing your blog posts and articles with keywords.
A lot of people think they understand SEO but their concepts are a little skewered, so in this article, we’re going to tell you how to take your SEO more seriously with a few must-know tips.
The customer experience on your website is very important for good SEO
Yes, SEO isn’t always about the content on your website and it’s not just about keywords. Search engines are getting very smart with how they rank your search pages and you need to consider the experience you’re offering your visitors. To keep it simple, here are some of the most important things to remember when optimizing your website experience:
- Your website needs to be fast. This means that when you load your website it has to be snappy, responsive and not have broken links or random images loading all the time. To do this, you should focus on using images that are small in size, remove auto-loading videos and also make sure that your website host isn’t limiting your speeds. By focusing on these factors, you can create a fantastic website that is fast, responsive and loved by all search engines.
- Your website needs to work on mobile. The percentage of mobile internet users has surged to roughly 50%. This means that roughly half of the people on the internet right now are accessing it from a smartphone or tablet device, and you’ll probably have noticed that both screen size and orientation are different on a smart device. This means that you need to modify the website to work on both mobile and desktop in order to provide a seamless experience to both types of users.
- Your website needs to be easy to navigate. If it takes more than 2 clicks (especially on mobile) to reach something specific on your website then something is wrong. You should never have to click too many times because it makes the experience more frustrating for users. Instead, focus on reducing the amount of time it takes to find information on your website and streamline the navigation process.
These are just a few important points that you absolutely need to consider if you’re going to focus on improving your SEO. Without it, you’re going to have a rough time appearing on search engines even if your content is fantastic and well-optimized for search.
The easiest way to test your website is to use it through the eyes of a consumer. Check that your website loads fast, check that you can reach the information you need in just a few clicks and focus on improving the customer experience above all else.
If you’re unsure how to optimize your website then you may need to hire an SEO expert. Whether you hire an SEO agency or build an internal team is entirely down to your circumstances, so make sure you judge it based on how large your website is, how much capital you can invest and also what your future plans for your website are.
It’s not form versus function–it’s both
Another huge mistake that people make is that they’ll often be faced with the decision of making their website incredibly high in quality or have articles filled with information. However, there is a good way to balance everything and you don’t need to give up either form or function if you design your website by focusing on users first.
Remember that your website serves a purpose. Think about what that purpose is and use it as a goal to strive for and to help you make important decisions regarding the design of your site. Is your website an eCommerce platform, or are you using it as a blog to talk about another business? Are you trying to start a news site that offers useful insights into a certain industry, or is it all your personal opinion? There are many different goals and it’s vital that you focus on what your aim is when you decide to optimize your search visibility.
Once you have a goal, you can start to design your website with both form and function in mind. A website can look beautiful and still have all of the relevant information that your customers are looking for. It doesn’t need to be filled from top to bottom with text just to explain something. Instead, you can make smart use of different types of content such as video, audio and even interactive web apps that can help you promote your services and products.
At the end of the day, good SEO isn’t something that is run by numbers but you can always use statistics to help improve your visibility. Don’t just follow statistics such as how many keywords you need on a page or how passive the voice of your text is. If it’s readable, informative and written for humans, then that’s the first step to creating effective SEO. If you fail to write content that appeals to users and only focus on the technical side of SEO, then you’ll just be an annoying website that always appears in searches but never has useful information for its visitors–and that’s not a reputation that you want to have!
Hopefully, this article has given you some helpful SEO advice that will improve your marketing strategy. SEO can be a deceptively simple concept, so don’t let it fool you into thinking that all you need to do is use some fancy SEO optimizer which tells you to stuff your content full of keywords. The reality is that good SEO requires a good copywriter, so if you’re having trouble with writing up good content then investing in an SEO agency or even just a copywriter can do wonders for your company.
