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A quick beginner’s guide to optimising your website rankings

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a way to improve your website’s rankings on search results, as major search engines such as Google have a ranking for websites which determines which comes up first during keyword searches.

While it is tempting to put up flimsy content with just a bunch of keywords strung together, it is essential to make sure key words are well-integrated within your site. Here we list a few simple guidelines to make your website SEO-friendly!

1. Relevant content
Website content is the primary factor in search engine result rankings. Simply put, quality content will help your site climb higher on search engines, as websites are ‘rewarded’ for their quality content via its ranking. The relevance of content is evaluated not just on page content, but also its headers, page titles, formatted texts, website links and importantly its URL. For a website to be ranked high, it must have a good balance of all these, which affect website rankings in various proportions.

Some points to take note of:

• Header: Put a heading above thematically similar paragraphs, and always insert keywords close to the beginning text, as Google determines what your entire content is all about based on the header.
• Use a static URL rather than dynamic; and use dashes and not underscores to separate the words in your URL. This allows search crawlers to index your website link faster and understand the url better too.

  https://www.2ezasia.com/services/e-commerce-web-design/

• Use a title tag. Title tags are important for SEO as they show up on search engines and appears when a link from your website is shared on social media or external websites. However, you will ant to avoid avoid keyword stuffing just to appeal to robots and algorithms, but craft relevant titles for your readers instead.
  

2. Well-executed website structure
A good website structure is another sure way to fire up your website’s SEO ranking. Put thought into your website’s ‘skeletal structure’ by paying attention to where each piece of content should be categorised under, and group articles (content and industry-relevant keywords) topically. To ensure your website architecture is conducive to your SEO goals, you could map all pages and content out on paper before, so that everything falls into a logical order with varying levels of importance.

Some points to take note of:

• Allow users to access any page on your site within four clicks at most, so that users can find the content that they want as quickly and easily as possible. This also makes your web content easier to crawl so search engines can grasp what your website is about, allowing your content to rank higher when relevant keywords are searched.

3. Keyword research
It might be tempting to skip keyword research but we can’t overstate how much of a difference it makes! So before you go headlong into writing and publishing piece after piece, do your due diligence by studying your audience and figuring out the key words they are likely to search for. Marketing terms commonly used in the industry might be different from the words consumers search for when they are planning for an occasion or shopping for a particular product, so make a list of terms they are likely to use and develop your keyword strategy from there.
If your website is new to the Google rankings game, it will be wiser and more efficient to aim for less competitive keywords, by penning posts or articles with a more niche topic that is related to your business or expertise.

Some points to take note of:

• Avoid having ‘duplicate’ articles with the same keyword. Having multiple articles that target for the same search term is not recommended, as you would be essentially would be competing with yourself, since Google (and other popular search engines) is forced to figure out which page to display to viewers. One of your pages will convert better than the rest, which inevitably means the rest would be ranked lower than they should! You might lose leads from visitors who land on a weaker page that is not as relevant content-wise, when you should really have them take action on a more substantial page.

4. Website’s link popularity
The popularity of a website reflects its relevance for specific keyword searches – as seen from its traffic levels. In fact, when links to another website appear on your site, this becomes a vote of trust of sorts for that referenced site, increasing the site’s standing in terms of keyword relevance. This makes it important for you to set up redirect links whenever you move or rename any URLs, so Google’s bits can ‘capture’ them.
It pays to take the effort to regularly update new content onto the site, be it a new blog article, press release or client testimonial – as valuable content and frequent updates can help your site rank better.

Conclusion
The above list is by no means an exhaustive list on the dos and don’ts of SEO optimisation. SEO is a process that does not happen overnight, but takes time to see results. With the right advice and tools, you can develop an effective SEO strategy, sidestep key pitfalls and gain better recognition from key search engines. Here, our IT experts have the experience of working with clients to kickstart their SEO optimisation journey and drive conversion, as their business grows and evolves over time.

Hit us up for a friendly chat to learn more about the insights we can offer!