Whether it’s for your restaurant business or hosting your products, having your website optimised for search engines will help more people find it, increase traffic, and even help convert the visit into a sale.  With all these benefits, basic SEO is just common sense for any small business website.

How do you improve SEO?

There are many factors that can affect your SEO and these can all make or break your website. The best case scenario is having each one of them work together to achieve your goals. While these may seem daunting to do at first, it becomes easier as you slowly work your way up.

1. Quality Content

Content is King! This phrase is nearly as old as a the web and remains true to this day.  It is no surprise that having quality content is top of our list.  Your content is what defines your site. It’s what people are after when they first click on that search result link. Good content simply means that your business pages, blog posts, product pages or any other page found on your site has all the relevant information that a potential visitor would like to see. Format also affects the quality of the post. In a nutshell, your pages should be comprehensive, readable, and interesting.

2. Keywords

Keywords remain one of the factors that affect SEO too. SEO keywords are words or phrases that people often use to search for things in search engines. Imagine yourself looking for something on Google— the words and the phrases you type into the search bar is collected by the tech giant and then analysed along with millions of other searches that are similar to yours. They then come up with a set of keywords for that specific search. That’s the reason why google can come up with a search suggestion before you even finish typing.

When a website uses keywords in its content, it makes it easier for google to put the page on the search results. However, just putting random keywords on a page without it being relevant to the content negatively affects SEO instead.

3. Backlinks, Outbound Links, and Interlinks

Another one of the more important factors that affect SEO are links and they can be three types. These are:

• Backlinks (links TO your website from an external one)
• Outbound links (links to external pages from your page)
• Interlinks (links from one page to another within your own site)

While this bit might be confusing at first, this should not deter you from using links effectively.

Backlinks: Try and get your site linked to from external sites where possible.  Common sources are social media accounts, industry membership / professional bodies and business directories.  Comments on forums and blog posts work well if that is relevant to your business.

Outbound links: Adding external links to an article you wish to publish on a page already affects your SEO score— for as long as the link is relevant and it comes from a reputable source, you should be fine.   WARNING: A quick google will turn up lots of offers from people to do this on your behalf – but there is a real risk they will use unscrupulous methods to do so and attract penalties from Google – which is the exact opposite of what we are trying to achieve.  Take the time to do this yourself or outsource this to a reputable company only.

Interlinks: For those who have blogs or stories in their websites, linking old posts with new ones also improves your score. Existing articles that you have that are relevant to your new posts give your website a boost in credibility and make a better user experience – which adds to visitor time onsite.

4. Mobile Site Optimisation

Because of the trends in mobile technology, Google has made a shift to include mobile versions of websites as a factor for SEO. This means that having your website optimised for viewing on smaller screens helps google recommend your site to potential visitors. The key here is that Google wants their users to experience only the best. Whether they be on a desktop or mobile phone, website visitors should be able to access the best content optimised for the device that they are currently using.

As a small business, competition for media mileage and exposure is tough but it doesn’t have to remain that way. The use of mobile phones to access websites have grown in recent years and developing a mobile version of your site is an investment that will not only help your business but improve SEO as well.

5. Fast Web-page Loading Times

It’s not new that loading times affect user experience when visiting a webpage. Kissmetrics has illustrated that websites that load longer are often abandoned by visitors. 25% of users abandon a site at 4 seconds and abandonment increases with each passing second. For businesses, this could be devastating because of two things: you lose potential customers and your site won’t be optimised for search engine results.

6. It’s All In The Tags

Tags come in various forms – header tags, title tags and meta tags, Of these,  Header tags and title tags are relevant.

To differentiate, title tags are html tags that give the user a brief description of what the webpage is about. Header tags are html tags that differentiate content through headings and levels. While gone are the days where header and title tags were very strong factors for improving SEO, having relevant title tags and effectively using header tags in posts still have a place. Title and header tags improve click rates while highlighting the relevance of your page.

7. HTTPS Encryption and Security

In this article, we included the importance of HTTPs in SEO ranking. Google’s stance on using HTTPs has been firm over the years. With its browser (and other majors ones) flagging websites not using HTTPs as unsafe, a conversion should be due. Businesses, in particular, benefit from using the more secure HTTPs as it protects customer’s information from being used elsewhere. Your customers will thank you for using a more secure connection for their payments and transfers.

8. Social Media Sharing  

People are social creatures whether it be in real life or online. We love our social networks and the existence of many platforms to maintain our social connections is a testament that we will be this way for many eons to come. It would be common sense by now to use social media to share your interests or your business. Building a good social following and an online presence improves SEO. And while there is an ongoing debate about backlinks from social media platforms, engagement means more people visiting your site. That is always a good thing– especially for a small business.

Wrapping Things Up

The world of SEO is ever changing with new algorithms and procedures to further improve user experience when searching for products and content on the internet. Though it may seem like there is no end to keeping up with the trends, there will always be factors that matter most. By investing in any of the above, you’ll work your way up. Optimising your site to improve discoverability through SEO doesn’t have to be hard and you don’t have to do it all by yourself. Find yourself a good team to help you improve your site’s SEO.

If you have any enquiries about how you can start improving your website for SEO, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’d be glad to help you.