Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll no doubt have heard about SEO – and how using it to your advantage can help boost your website’s search ranking exponentially.
Also known as Search Engine Optimisation, SEO is a digital strategy that helps improve your search engine rankings by maximising your website’s visibility in search engine results pages.
If you’re curious to start dabbling in SEO, you’ll likely have some questions. Questions like: “What website elements matter most for SEO?” and “How can I use SEO to improve my site’s current ranking?”
Stay with us for the answers to these questions and more, as we explore the basics of getting your site ranking on search engines.
1. Build Yourself an SEO-Friendly Site
When we first start building our website, one key element we sometimes forget to consider is the importance of making our site as “SEO-friendly” as possible. However, this is quite possibly the most critical part of a website build. After all, what’s the point of curating a fancy, whizz-bang user experience – complete with impressive animations, compelling video and audio content, and other interactive bells and whistles – if people can’t even find your site?
No, crucially, website owners also need to engage in technical SEO. That is to say, we need our websites to meet the tech-based requirements search engines love to display in their most highly ranked results. So, what are some of the technical characteristics search engines prefer? These considerations include your site’s page loading speed, as well as your website’s layout (or site ‘architecture’), internal navigation and linking, and also, your website’s security.
If your site meets the preferred technical specifications, search engines are more likely to favour it, and – the end goal – rank it above your less technically sound competitors. This, in turn, helps more online users see your site, as it will be ranked higher in the list of results displayed when potential site visitors input their search terms into search engines like Google.
2. Enlist Link Building Professionals
So you’ve heard of SEO, but have you heard of link building? Arguably a lesser-known strategy, link building is fast becoming one of the most effective ways to get your site to rank.
If you’re unsure where to start, partnering with link building agencies to obtain backlinks can help boost your website’s search ranking. But how does link building work? One of the main elements that causes search engines like Google to rank a particular site higher than others is how credible or authoritative that site appears. In this sense, if you’ve got other sites citing your site as a credible resource, Google will naturally assume your site has valuable things to say.
Curating a portfolio of quality backlinks that point to your website (quality is key here: you don’t want just any random site linking to your page), boosts your site’s authority in the eyes of Google – meaning your website will be treated more favourably as a valuable resource that deserves to be ranked above others.
3. Do Your On-Page Keyword Research
You’ve done the background work, utilising technical SEO and link building techniques to get search engines like Google to favour your site. But let’s not forget one of the simplest ways to get your site to rank: keywords. Yes – putting effort into your keywords and on-page SEO is just as important as link building to boost your site’s search engine rankings.
How do you maximise your on-page content to ensure it’s keyword-relevant enough to get search engines like Google to rank it for specific search queries? You need to be putting the right keywords into your content. If you want to rank as a locally-based e-commerce store where cosmetics enthusiasts can buy makeup online in Australia, for instance, include keywords that are relevant to this particular search query. Creating website content that contains specific questions, such as “Where can I buy makeup online in Australia?” or “ What is the best Australian online makeup store?” can help push your site to the top of search engine results when users input these types of questions into their searches.
The moral of the story? Don’t forget your keywords. Including niche-specific keywords in your website content not only helps relevant users find your site in search engine results, but it also ensures your site shows up in the top results when users search for those particular keywords.
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In today’s day and age, building an attractive website is simply not enough to get online users to visit it. We also need to implement an SEO strategy.
Admittedly, SEO can be intimidating to the uninitiated, which is why it’s best left to experts. This is especially true of emerging strategies such as link building – a technique that’s rapidly growing in popularity due to its effectiveness.
Just as important as building a portfolio of quality backlinks, however, is ensuring your on-page content contains niche-relevant keywords. Keyword strategy, coupled with technical SEO and link building, will optimise your site to rank as highly as it possibly can in search engine results pages – the ultimate goal of SEO.
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