SEO checklist: The SEO practices every business needs to consider.
The majority of website traffic is generated through search engines and whilst PPC and other forms of advertising can drive traffic to your website, the organic search results (earned through effective SEO rather than paid for) are by far the most credible and the ones that receive the most click throughs.
The purpose of search engines is to provide answers. They crawl through all available online content and through a process called indexing, they catalogue the information they have discovered and store it in such a way that when a user performs a search, the search engine can provide the most relevant answer to the query – which is where page ranking comes into play.
In this blog post we provide you with a checklist of the key SEO practices every business needs to consider to ensure that they’re visible and can be found online.
This research is essential for understanding what your target audience is actually searching for and for allowing you to optimise your website’s content both for the user and search engines. A strategic and well thought out approach to keyword research is essential for maximum value of output.
The main drive behind a searchers query is known as ‘user intent’ and crafting content that addresses what a searcher is looking for is extremely important to search engines. So much so that it is now one of the main factors for effective SEO and quickly taking over form single keywords as a primary ranking factor.
Optimising your website for crawling (how search engines discover your web pages) and indexing (how your content is stored and organised) is crucial as it will ensure your pages are not being blocked and that they can actually be found in search engines.
The time that it takes for a webpage to load is known as Page Load Speed and it is affected by many factors including file size and image compression. Users want to find the answers to their queries as fast as possible therefore a slow loading website can negatively impact your Google rankings.
More than 50% of internet users now surf the net on mobile devices including smartphones and tablets. Your website should be fully responsive. That means it should adapt responsively to display your content flawlessly on all devices. Search engines actually favour responsive over non responsive sites.
As well as engaging, well written content featuring the right keyword phrases, it is crucial that on page optimisation is carried out to ensure Title Tags, Header Tags, Meta Descriptions, Url Slugs, Image ALT Tags and Filenames are all being employed correctly.
Website content should be of high quality, engaging and relevant. It’s not good practice to stuff your content with keywords, or superficial information, in fact this can be detrimental to your SEO efforts. Instead your content should of value and purposeful to satisfy the users intent, i.e. what someone really wants from the search they have just carried out.
When your website is easily readable it means that the content is simpler to digest and more understandable for your target audience. Websites with a high readability score will also be favoured by search engines making it more likely for your website to rank higher.
Inbound links from another website to yours act in a similar way to real life referrals based on your business’ reputation. However it’s not ok to just pay for lots of random and unrelated links, in fact search engines like Google take a very dim view of this. In contracts links earned from authoritative websites are better for your ranking as this indicates that you’re a trusted source.
Are you ready to be found?
Developing an SEO strategy and implementing it effectively will have a big impact on how visible your business is online. Ready to be found? At black&blanco, we can help you get started on your SEO journey!
Our SEO experts will carry out extensive keyword research to identify the most relevant and profitable keywords for your business. They’ll then perform a full website and SEO audit to identify any technical, performance, and content issues that need to be addressed.
Our web developers will implement the fixes and carry out optimisation of your website’s meta tags, headers, content, images, and any other elements needed to ensure your customers can find your products and services online.
We will regularly create compelling SEO content to captivate and engage your audiences, and keep them coming back from more! Plus, with our monthly seo management packages, we will keep on top of the changing trends and continually refine your SEO strategy too.
So, what are you waiting for? Let’s work together to get your business seen!
