After discussing regularly with clients, we’ve discovered that having great SEO on their website is greatly underestimated.
This can be down to many reasons but one thing we notice and hear regularly is “I paid for my website, it looks great… But no one is clicking it. The development team didn’t mention I need SEO.”
So what even is SEO?
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimisation”.
Difficult? No, not really. Time consuming? Yes, absolutely. SEO simply means optimising the website so that search engines will actually understand what your website is and who would want to see it from searches placed.
Fab, so how do you improve SEO?
Find the right keywords
Keywords are a very important in SEO. It is the connection between you and the reader/visitor. By finding the right keyword and then implementing it in the right way, you enable users to search for that specific keyword and find your particular website. Examples of key phrases can be “Pizza restaurant Stockholm”, as it is something a visitor could search for to find a restaurant located in Stockholm.
So can you use any keyword on your website and rank high on Google? Not really! Finding the right keywords is not as easy as it once was. This is because search engines like Google have simply become smarter and with that, the standard for search results ranking has increased drastically. You now have to take your time and analyse keywords to get the result you want.
There are several different tools on the web, such as KWFinder (free account with up to 10 keyword analyses per day for 10 days), Semrush and Ahrefs that show different types of analyses for specific keywords as well as analyses on brands/websites who rank highest on the particular ones.
Take note that the higher the volume (How often it’s searched) of a keyword, the harder it is to rank high on that keyword. Who doesn't want to appear in the search results where there are the most searches?
“Pizza restaurant in Stockholm” has a search volume of about 40,500 a month, which means that it’s a keyword that a lot of people are searching for and will most likely be a keyword with high competition. In other words, difficult to rank high on.
A quick SEO dictionary
DA = Domain Authority = Is a ranking system that says how credible / strong a domain is from a scale of 1-100. The higher the scale, the easier it will be for you to rank high.
PA = Page Authority = Is also a ranking system but unlike DA, PA measures the specific page's credibility / strength.
CF = Citation Flow = Measured value based on how many links point to your website.
TF = Trust Flow = Measured value based on the quality of all links pointing to your website.
Now that we have explained these concepts we can look at the picture below and we can see what for DA, PA, CF and TF these 5 highest ranked pages have for the keyword "Pizza Restaurant Stockholm".
Now by using one of the tools recommended above, you can pretend you own a pizza restaurant in Stockholm (Congrats!) and can compare your site to those ranking on “Pizza Restaurant Stockholm.”
The question is, does your website have to be ability to take their place? Do you have higher credibility / strength on your website within the various categories (mainly DA)? If the answer is yes then you have found a keyword that you can rank high on.
If the answer is no, then find less competing keywords that are more specific to your industry or what you want to convey such as “Pizza restaurant Södermalm Stockholm”.
Ok great, now what? Now that you have found the keyword or phrase that you feel you can compete with, it is time to create a strategy for how to use the keyword in your content. Tips are to create content around the keyword such as 10 Best Restaurants in Stockholm, Best Italian Restaurants in Stockholm, etc.
Keep in mind that nothing is guaranteed, just because you have a high DA and PA does not always mean that Google will choose you over someone else, as content is key and Google has over 200 factors when it comes to ranking. The content of your site has a greater impact than you can actually believe. By writing GOOD content that the READER likes, Google will like it too.
Must one be a Professor of English Literature? Absolutely not, but it is more about the content itself having GREATER value when it is well thought out, quality and properly structured according to target audience.
There are 2 simple ways to think when creating content on a website: Create content that stands out from the crowd and produce something unique or create content that already exists, but make it even better!
To find content that already exists that performs well, you can use Buzzsumo. You type in a keyword or key phrase and they display all the popular posts related to what you are looking for.
REMEMBER: DO NOT COPY ANY WEBSITE CONTENT.
These 2 tips below are directly from Google when it comes to website content:
- You will usually get positive results if you design your site according to the visitor's needs while ensuring that the site is easily accessible to search engines.
- Do not put in lots of unnecessary keywords that are targeted to search engines but that are disruptive or meaningless to users.
An example: “At Honest London we are London’s best creative marketing communications agency, while we are London's best creative marketing communications agency and we have really nice offices in Shoreditch, London. We work with Shopify Developers, Photographers, Writers and Press, basically the best of the best in London, we mainly focus on creative marketing communications in London… ”
Did you notice how annoying the text became? It was annoying to write as well.
Just because we were getting in a tonne of keywords, it made the content worse.
So remember consistent with content: Quality + SEO + Consistency = # 1
Usually you have heard that QUALITY beats QUANTITY, right? Forget it. This isn’t not true in the SEO world, as quantity is just as important.
As McKinsey & Company says, "The three C's of customer satisfaction: Consistency, consistency, consistency".
By adding qualitative texts, you get better SEO, but to stay on the "good side" of Google's SEO rankings and also the visitor's, you can be consistent with the content and try to update regularly.
How can I be consistent with content? A very good way for many companies to do this is to have a blog page that tells you different things relevant to the company's industry.
We are writing about SEO because we are a creative marketing communications agency and have a lot of experience in just that, but if you are a hair salon you can write about the "5 best hair products for men / women". Although the goal is to rank first at the hairdressing salon, you have to build up the brand by an among of other things, creating qualitative content in order to then be able to rank them are more difficult keywords. The goal is to become best friends with Google and that must be built from the ground up. Pretending to be best friends doesn't work in the long run in life and on Google.
User-friendly & Stylish design
One should have a design that is clean and attractive. In other words, a website should be user-friendly with clear navigation to other sub-pages, while being stylish and attractive so that visitors want to stay.
Bit strange that design can affect SEO? We understand, we think so too.
When users visit your website, and you have a nice website, they will of course stay a little longer, possibly clicking around a little on your website, this will cause Google and other search engines to react!
Design statistics:
It takes 0.05 seconds for the visitor to create an idea of the website.
94% of negative reviews that websites receive are design related.
38% of people stop using the website if the content doesn't look good.
75% of consumers judge the company's credibility depending on the website design.
The first impression of the website is 94% design related.
Mobile-friendly
The internet is visited through the computer, so a proper website for the computer screen is enough ... or? We would have said yes if smartphones were new, but now unfortunately it will be a strong no. According to Statista, over 52.2% of all the world's internet users visited the internet through a smartphone in 2018, this is estimated at 2.2 billion users.
Therefore, it is important that a website is mobile-friendly and responsive to devices other than just the computer. Use Google's own mobile customisation test to see if your website is mobile customised, by clicking here.
Build links to the page (Backlinks)
The definition of a backlink is: An internet access pointing a link from another website to your website.
Why is it important if you already have good content on your site?
Google is not a human being, but it was created by humans and their algorithms mean that Google is always trying to find the most popular links with the best reputation and cannot rely solely on content. Because your website has a presence on other pages in the form of links, your website appears to be one of the “cool kids” thus gaining a higher credibility/strength in the eyes of the search engines.
This is precisely why large companies are usually first seen with highly competitive keywords. Since their content is most likely to be of high quality and Google wants to minimise the risk of displaying "bad content" and then select these as top results.
Here are 3 suggestions on what you can do to build backlinks:
Ask customers/companies to write about your services and link to your website (always offer something back)
Write guest posts on other people's websites and link back to yourself.
Find functioning and broken links on other pages and ask to replace them with links from your page that are related to that link's article / page, then you have a post that is better and updated.
Tips to keep in mind: Dofollow vs Nofollow links = Make sure the links pointing to your website are dofollow links and not nofollow.
What are you on about?
Dofollow tells Google that the linked website is credible and nofollow only says that you only want to link to the page but we have no views on the linked page.
Good backlinks vs bad backlinks = Good backlinks are links that are of high quality, i.e. links from credible websites. To see if a website is credible you can use tools such as Moz’s own link explorer.
The Moz results show Page Authority and Domain Authority.
Page Authority shows the strength / credibility of a page on a scale of 0-100. The Domain Authority shows the strength / credibility of a domain as a whole on a scale of 0-100.
What is important to check before you get a link pointing to your website is the domain authority itself as that ranking has a bigger role for how your website will be ranked, but always keep page authority in mind when analysing different websites.
If you get a link pointed to you from a website with very low domain authority, then the link is not very helpful, it can instead be negative and google can remove you from the search result completely.
Spam = "Irrelevant or unwanted messages sent over the Internet usually to a large number of users for the purpose of advertising, spreading malicious content."
Also very important to check on Spam Score, as it shows from a scale of 1% -100% how likely the page is to be a spam page. The higher the percentage, the greater the probability that the page is poor. Therefore, keep in mind that backlinks can hurt you as much as it can benefit you.
Title tag and Meta Descriptions
Title tags for a website are the same as a headline for a news article, and the more accurate that headline is, the easier search engines understand what the page is about. Also try to use primary keywords at the beginning.
A meta description is like the sales pitch for a seller. If it is too short then the buyer (Google) does not understand what you want to get to, it is too long then the buyer (Google) will cancel you with “I do not have time for your sales talk (your meta description).
When writing your meta description, it is recommended to land at 160 characters. One tip is also to make sure you also have the visitor in mind when writing it and not just the search engines.
URL means "Uniform resource locator", a finer word for "link". URL is the link you type or click to get to a website. You should try to have it very short and precise. Try using primary keywords related to the link page.
Summary
As you can see, there are several different ways to easily improve your website's SEO, and it’s not expected to include all the steps right away.
Without trying out different strategies, measure the degree to which your website is ranked and ranked on Google using various tools like Google Analytics and Google search console.
Will it work? Or won't it work? Adjust your methods and repeat the process until you see results. Remember, the goal is to land on Google's first page! Good luck!