Improve your website SEO using these 6 optimisation techniques

Let’s start with a question: do you know where your website traffic is coming from?

If you have business cards or social media sites, chances are you’ve already hyperlinked to your website and can easily direct traffic to your website from there.

But what if someone sees your business name or logo displayed somewhere, and wants to search for your business online?

If people search for your products and services via Google or other search engines, then search engine optimisation needs to be on your list of priorities for your website in 2022.

So what is SEO and how do you use it?

What is SEO?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of tailoring your website to better target and drive traffic to a website from a search engine’s organic rankings.

In essence, it is the practice of improving your website’s organic ranking (i.e. not achieved through paid advertising) in search results.

SEO can be achieved through a myriad of methods, such as creating high quality content around effective keywords, backlinking, and improving your page’s loading speed.

In this article, I’ll take you through 6 simple optimisation techniques you can improve upon your website's SEO:

1. Use effective keywords

2. Build backlinks

3. Use unique titles, descriptions and content

4. Use unique images and alt-text

5. Improve your page loading time

6. Optimise your page for mobile devices

1. Use effective keywords

Keywords play a major role in optimising your website for search engines. You want to include keywords that are relevant to your content that people are likely to search for.

But do so with tact. Too many keywords will flag your website with Google and it will negatively affect your ranking. Clickbait sites are typically flagged for this reason.

Keywords should feel natural in a sentence and not stick out. Include your keywords in your page titles, headers, captions, and even in image captions.

Consider using long-tail keywords, which are words that can be found on either side of your main keyword.

For example, if you were searching for a new desk chair, you might type in “best desk chair to work from home” or “ergonomic desk chair”. The words surrounding the bold keyword are your long-tail keywords.

2. Build backlinks

Backlinks are links from one website to a page on another one (also known as inbound links).

Search engines use these backlinks as a kind of “voting” mechanism for specific pages, helping those linked pages get higher organic rankings.

Backlinks are important as they tell search engines that the content on the linked page is valuable, credible and deserving of higher ranking in search results. I.e. the more backlinks (votes), the higher your site will rank in Google.

If you want people to link to your website, they need something worth linking to (known as linkable assets).

Essentially – create amazing content that people will want to share in their own blogs or on their websites. This can be a blog post, video, survey, quiz, photo, infographic – basically anything people deem worthwhile. Backlinko calls these pieces of content “linkbait”.

3. Use unique titles, descriptions and content

Google only shows the first 65 characters of your page title. If your title is more than 65 characters, it will be cut off in search results.

Keep your titles short and front-load them with keywords. Keep it clear, predictable and not too clickbaity (remember Google will rank you lower if you’re flagged as clickbait). People should know what to expect to read.

Avoid rehashing your content or creating duplicate or near duplicate versions of your content across your site. This rule applies to all written content on your website, including title tags, meta descriptions, landing pages, image alt-text and category pages.

Essentially – all pages on your website should have 100% unique copy.

This is easy to follow if you have a small blog and a handful of pages on your site. But if you’re an eCommerce site with loads of products, it can be difficult and labour intensive to create unique content for each page – but it’s certainly worth it.

4. Use unique images and alt-text

Visual content is far more appealing and attractive than non-visual content.

Your visual content could include pictures, diagrams, memes, infographics, screenshots, or slide decks.

Some concepts are really hard to explain, but when put into an interesting visualisation, it’s easier to understand (and easier for people to backlink to your site if they like your visual).

Using unique images can help your page rank higher than using stock photos or backlinking a visual from another site. It also provides you the opportunity to secure backlinks for your original, compelling content.

For all of your images and visual content on your website, make sure to add your keywords to the alt-text. Google relies on alt-text to understand images on your website.

Alt-text was originally created for visually impaired persons. It offers the added ability to increase your search ranking by using descriptive words to let search engines know what your visual content contains.

5. Improve your page loading speed

Your page loading speed is a critical factor for your SEO, according to Google’s new Core Web Vitals (CWVs), a set of user-focused metrics designed to improve user experience.

Google has advanced the search algorithm to analyse small details on your website, including your content loading speed.

Simply put: if your page speed is too slow, it will harm your rankings.

Known as the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), this core web vital is measuring how long it takes for the main content on each page to download and be interacted with. In order to meet Google’s user experience standards, an individual page needs to load in under 2.5 seconds.

You can improve your page’s loading time in several ways:

• Compress hi-res images for optimal web use. Large images increase page loading speeds.

• Eliminate unnecessary plugins. Too many on your site slows it down.

• Reduce your redirects. Every time a page redirects somewhere else, it prolongs the HTTP request and impacts your loading time. You can avoid creating unnecessary redirects when building internal menus and links.

• Enable browser caching. This allows the browser to store information, such as images and JavaScript, so it doesn’t have to reload the entire page every time a user revisits the site.

6. Optimise your page for mobile devices

Over 60% of Google searches come from mobile devices. More people are viewing your website on their mobile devices than laptops and desktop computers.

Google recognises that more users are viewing sites on mobile devices, and as such ranks sites accordingly. In fact, when checking your Core Website Vitals via Google Search Console, mobile results appear first for this reason.

Your website needs to be optimised for mobile users – there’s no other way around it.

Ensure you’re using a responsive website theme or check your design layout before publishing to ensure the user experience isn’t diminished by a non-responsive layout.

Need help improving your SEO?

If you’re still at a loss on how to optimise your website for search engines, we offer a range of marketing services to improve your marketability, content strategy and online SEO.

Visit the Modek Media services page for a range of our services, or get in touch for a free quote.