If you run a small business, the chances are that you have a website and that you are familiar with the importance of Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. It is the process by which you can boost the position of your site on Google search lists, and as such is crucial for gaining exposure and business online.
It is not however, a simple or straight forward thing to stay on top of as Google continually tweak their method of providing search results. Those tweaks are to improve the results displayed to searchers and to guard against sites using cheats or shortcuts to better their rankings. What that means for you is that your business needs to continually keep SEO in mind to avoid falling behind your competitors, and the following useful tips will help you to stay ahead of the curve.
Improve User Experience
Google’s SEO tweaks are always targeted at improving the quality of the results for searchers. That’s why sites with strings of random words and phrases, and those with largely irrelevant articles or nonsense posts no longer cut it for SEO purposes.
It is crucial then, to consider user experience most highly when producing and editing the content on your website. That means ensuring high quality content that is actually informative and useful to the reader and not just chock full of keywords or phrases. What’s more, Google also consider speed and ease of navigation when compiling search results and that means that a lean and simple to use website will also stand you in good stead.
Optimise your Site for Mobile
More and more web searches are now being made through smartphones and that trend is only likely to accelerate. Google then, will also likely continue to tweak their ranking process to take that mobile device usage into account.
As such, sites that load slowly on mobile devices or are clumsy and tough to navigate on smaller screens are set to continue tumbling down Google’s search rankings. It could be well worth your while therefore, to assess the mobile performance of your website and to consider making some simple but beneficial changes. Most notably, you could think about developing a mobile app or switching your content to Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which load on average around four times faster than optimised web pages.
Make Smart Alterations
As well as improving the quality of your general site content and the performance of your site across all devices, there are a number of other smart alterations that you can make to immediately improve your SEO performance.
‘HTTPS’ sites for example, rank more highly than sites which aren’t secured in this fashion. Getting SSL certified therefore, can have SEO benefits as well as the obvious and significant cyber-security advantages. Alongside that alteration, you could also consider making changes to improve the geotargeting of your site. Mobile searches after all, favour local businesses, so having mentions of local areas within your content and listing your site in online directories is smart practice SEO-wise.
Take heed of those hints and tips and the SEO rating of your site should improve no end. If you need more help and guidance as to successful IT management however, EC-MSP are ready and willing to help with everything that your company could possibly require.
