SEO strategies to improve ranking
You’ve launched your website and you’re now a part of the digital highway. Yet, as you may know, launching your website is merely the starting point on your journey to stand out amidst the ever-evolving online marketplace. Beyond the launch, the challenge then becomes the pursuit to be seen. This is where search engine optimisation (SEO) comes in to act as an ally for your online business. With the high street experiencing dwindling foot traffic, the allure of being a hidden gem has lost its appeal.
So, imagine SEO as the cardinal points on a map, leading potential customers directly to your digital door step. And without this navigational aid, no matter how impressive your products or branding might be, they will remain invisible to those who are actively seeking them out.
Before we get into the nitty gritty of optimising your website, you’ll need to check whether your website has been indexed by Google. You can find out this information by typing the following in your Google search bar: site:yourwebsitedomain
If indexed, the search results should pull up pages from your website. However, if this is not the case, you’ll need to register your website with Google Search Console. As well as submitting your website to be indexed by Google, you’ll need to submit a sitemap. If you use a content management system like Squarespace, Wordpress, Wix, or Shopify you should be able to generate one automatically. For instance, if you use Squarespace, simply type /sitemap.xml at the end of your website url to find your sitemap.
Now, let’s get to it.
If you’ve ever gone down the rabbit hole of search engine optimisation, you’ll know that keywords are the superheroes of the digital highway, and you’re gonna need them on your side.
Keywords
At the core of SEO is the pivotal concept of keywords- these are the essential words and phrases that potential customers type into the search engine when hunting for answers. By aligning the contents of your website with these words and phrases you will organically boost your website's visibility in the search engine results page (SERPS).
Therefore, you need to know without a question who your potential customers are, what problems they want to solve and the language they use to communicate their needs. For instance, if you sell natural deodorants, your potential customer may search using phrases like “natural deodorants that work”, “non-toxic deodorants”, or “does natural deodorant stop sweating”. To find relevant phrases for your business you can take advantage of Google’s autocomplete feature. Start by typing in keywords that relate to your product/service, and see what phrases are suggested. To accompany these phrases you can find more at the bottom on the page under ‘related searches’.
Another strategy is to leverage Google Trends. It’s a free tool that allows you to explore the popularity of keywords, covering keyword frequency, regions they are being used in, related topics and related queries. Beyond what Google has to offer, you can use other tools to discover organic and relevant keywords on platforms like TikTok, online forums, Amazon, Instagram or Youtube’s own autocomplete feature. If you would like to gain deeper insights there are SEO tools like Moz, Ahrefs or Semrush.
Once you’ve conducted your keyword research, you can begin working on incorporating them into your website content. You can do this in a number of ways, but here are 6 of the most used:
Actionable or informative articles
Product title and descriptions
URL structures (e.g www.domain.com/non-toxic-deodorants)
Category page title or their descriptions
Image description, which can include product images, banners or infographics
Keywords in your FAQs help page
Beyond keywords, there is also technical SEO. For any business, large or small, technical optimisation ensures that search engines can index, crawl and understand your websites content - allowing better user experience and search visibility.
Mobile Friendly Design
Mobile responsiveness plays an important role because it provides an optimal browsing experience. Google began prioritising mobile responsive websites in 2015. Subsequently, in 2020, a further update confirmed their commitment to a mobile-first approach by adopting mobile-first indexing across the entire web. If you use a content management system (CMS), your website most likely adheres to Google’s mobile first requirements, but if not, you’ll need to speak with your website developer to ensure that your website is optimised for mobile browsing.
Page Speed
Whilst keywords aren’t directly involved, page speed does impact how the search engine ranks your website. To improve your overall website speed you can begin by simply optimising your images, enabling browser caching and if possible streamlining code.
Schema Markup
Schema markup is a form of structured data that can be added to your website HTML code to assist search engines in providing relevant results to potential customers. It’s a useful way to facilitate meaning and communication between various elements on your website to the search engine. You can add schema markup to your HTML code using the Schema vocabulary. After adding the code to your website, you can test its validity using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
Search engine optimisation is the cornerstone for any website's ability to function amidst a competitive online marketplace. Although we have only just touched the surface of what’s possible with SEO, this serves as a valuable springboard to begin improving your online presence. After implementing all of the above steps, remember to monitor and analyse any changes, whilst staying up to speed with industry dynamics. The online landscape and the requirements to remain visible is ever-changing so don’t get left behind.
