Here are six of the most effective and simple things you can do to increase your relevance and achieve better search results for your website:
1. Create quality content
Websites with little, poor or disparate content are marked down by search engines like Google because they aren’t giving their customers what they want. If your website sells hair products, don’t have blog articles about socks: Stick to your subject matter to become recognized as an authority.
Start with an audit of your current content and be ruthless. Clear the clutter, so everything on your site is relevant and adds value.
2. Optimize keywords
A great way to enhance the performance of the content on your website is to optimize it with strategic keyword selection. Use tools such as Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush (pronounced “sem rush”) to find pools of related keywords that will increase the relevance and strength of your content.
Just remember that when you’re implementing keywords throughout your content, it has to read like natural written language. While getting high levels of keywords into your copy is important, don’t let that impact the quality of your content.
3. Improve website landing speed
Speed is of the essence online. People want information quickly and conveniently, which is why Google made site speed a factor for determining search performance. When someone clicks on a link to your site, the page needs to load in less than three seconds (two for mobile). There are various simple things you can do in your CMS to improve your website’s landing speed:
- Reduce image file sizes.
- Choose a simple, lightweight theme.
- Cut out unnecessary javascript and CSS.
You can test your website speed using online tools like Web Dev, which tells you the desktop and mobile speeds. Pay more attention to the mobile speed, as this is a bigger influence on your search performance.
4. Supercharge your on-page SEO
In your CMS, go through your website and make sure you have suitable titles, meta tags (including image metas) and headers. Use keywords liberally throughout to make them even more powerful.
While you’re at it, also check all the internal links you have across your site. Make sure they all work and are contextually relevant. For example, this is a bad link strategy because “this” tells the reader nothing about where they’ll be taken, whereas you can create a good user experience by hyperlinking relevant words and phrases.
5. Optimize you off-page SEO
Having plenty of inbound links from other, reputable websites increases your SEO. Build relationships with other organizations so that they regularly link to your pages and articles.
You can also use social media to achieve this. Keep your accounts active and regularly posted with interesting content that links back to your site. Build up followers and find partners who will like and repost your content, widen your reach.
Also, create a Google My Business account and keep your profile up to date to enhance local SEO performance. This will boost your performance for searches in the nearby area.
6. Drive your SEO with data
SEO is constantly changing and evolving. It’s important to stay on top of your performance by monitoring it. Collect and analyze data with Google Analytics and Search Console so you can holistically make changes to your website based on the information you gather. The key is to track, learn and adapt using accurate data. At R2i, we help organizations enhance SEO with proven techniques and strategies. Together, we'll create an SEO strategy that empowers your website to perform highly and attract customers.
Contact us today to find out more about how we can help you maximize your website’s SEO.
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About the author: Firas Chouk
I'm Firas Chouk, and am the SEM and SEO Manager at R2integrated, where I bring a decade of experience in developing data-driven marketing campaigns and strategies, successfully managing marketing teams, and monitoring the performance of those campaigns. I'm always looking for new spheres of knowledge and have a lot to offer in terms of experience. If you have something to teach me or a project that needs my help, please get in touch!
