SEO is a complicated and sometimes daunting marketing topic for business owners or marketing teams. If you are a business owner or overseeing SEO, our goal to break it down and make it more manageable. We recently wrote about the Five Tips to SEO Keyword Research, today we will review the five key areas needed for optimal SEO returns from your company website.
1 – Website Code
The code used to develop your website is critical to SEO success. This is what Google indexes and uses to rank your website in search results. You don’t have to be a developer to understand the most important SEO components of website code.
The two primary pieces of SEO code are the URL and the title tags. These are the two most important ranking factors of SEO in Google. Your title tags should be concise, around 50-60 characters, and utilize relevant keywords. They describe your website pages to Google and also display as the headline of your search results.
Here is an example below.
For example, the reason Intuitive Websites is first in a Google Search for Intuitive Websites is because our title tag, company name and URL exactly match the search phrase Intuitive Websites. All things being equal, there are other areas separating you from competitors but this is where your SEO process must start.
SEO Coding – Meta Descriptions, Headers and Tagging
This text is only visible in search results and provides a summary of each webpage. It’s important to your website because your meta description attracts website users to click on your website based on the content displaying in the search results. This is your chance to motivate users to click on the links displayed in a Google search result.
Headers or H1/2/3 tags help break up your content and allows you to organize your sections. This also drives SEO results through higher search rankings. Your users don’t want to read through large blocks of text and neither do search engines!
Tagging any graphic, image or video is also key to search engine success. This ensures your images and videos will display correctly for your keyword search, which is increasingly important as almost a quarter of searches now involve images or video instead of text.
2 – Website Content and Blogs
Regular blog and content updates are crucial to your website’s exposure in Google and other search engines. Your content has to have a theme relevant to the searches, utilize optimal keywords, and answer questions your readers need answered. Keep in mind your ideal audience, content length, and keeping your voice on brand.
Do you have questions on content? Check out all of our free resources at Intuitive Websites.
3 – Links from Popular Websites
Websites with other highly popular websites linking to them get better relevancy in Google rankings. However, Google is very careful to make sure websites are using valid, quality links so they aren’t sending users to spam websites and compromising their reputation. Not only do you want to have internal links within your website offering your users valuable content, but you also want valuable external links linking back to your website. These links show Google your website is an authority. Links showing this online authority to Google will improve your search ranking results.
4 – Google Guidelines and the Search Console
Google ranks websites higher when they utilize the Google Search Console. Google does this to avoid spam websites showing up in their search results. The Google Search Console is your best communication method with Google. It shows Google your company website is legitimate and not a spammer. You must be listed and actively monitoring the Google Search Console to maximize your SEO results.
Here are a few of the latest updates to the Google Search Console.
5 – Adwords, A Key Component in Google
If you don’t run actual ads and only use Google Adwords for access to the keyword tool, it is worth the effort and time.
The keyword tool provides relevant keywords your potential clients are using to find companies like yours.
We are going to come back and talk more about Adwords in future blog posts, but for now, suffice to say you must have the tool active as a key SEO resource. Even a very focused campaign of only $50 per month can improve your digital marketing results.
Website Page Load Speed
A final note on website page speed – Google requires websites to load quickly, this keeps users coming back and happy with their search engine. You want to make sure your website pages are loading quickly on laptops, desktops and mobile devices.
Research has shown if your website pages take longer than five seconds to load, your bounce rate rises by as much as 90%, so keep it quick!
Keep in mind, Google is looking for excellent results in their search engine. They want users to be extremely happy with their search engine so they can run ads and continue to grow their company.
Your website must be very relevant to the search and also be very engaging.
Double check with your SEO manager and have them give you an overview of what they are doing for each of these topics above.
If you want more information on your website’s effectiveness and SEO, contact Intuitive Websites for a free consultation. We are experts in SEO! If you are interested in how Intuitive Websites can help you, contact our team today.
