5 things to do to your website today to get better search engine rankings
30th July 2012
In the ever-changing online world, keeping up with Google is the a key way to ensure your own success. It’s the most popular search engine, and appearing high in rankings for relevant search terms can lead to better traffic from organic searches. Here are five things you can do today to your website to improve your SEO and get better search engine rankings:
1. Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions
The meta title and meta description don’t appear on your webpage, but exist behind the scenes to tell Google what your page is about. Google uses this information to form search results. Do any search on Google and you’ll see a bold title followed by a short description for each result – these are the meta title and meta description.
Add keywords to these, but make them read well in English. Try and put your most important keywords first, and make sure they’re relevant and explain what the page is about. Don’t make them too long – 60 characters for the title and 160 for the description is enough. You can add more, but they won’t always appear in Google’s results. Each page should have a different title and description, explaining what people can find there.
2. Headings and Alt Tags
Clear headings, including H1 and H2 heading tags, let visitors and Google’s crawlers see what a page is about. Use them to effectively split your page into sections. Add alt tags to images, because Google can’t see the pictures. Use them to briefly describe what the image is of – they’re also useful if images fail to load, because site visitors can get an idea of what should be in their place.
3. Keyword-Rich Copy
Your site should include relevant, easy-to-understand copy that contains plenty of high quality keywords, but speaks well to a human audience. Google is constantly changing its algorithm to ensure quality, so don’t keyword-stuff your article. Use a liberal but subtle amount of relevant keywords, different on each page, without going overboard.
4. Get a Blog
Add a blog to your website. If you’ve already got one, add new content. Blogs are the easiest way to add new information to your website – and Google loves new information. Blogs often rank highly because they’re dynamic – use them to target long-tail searches, which are very specific searches, rather than general ones.
5. Create Great Content
Backlinks (links to your site from other sites) tell Google that you’ve been considered a reliable source of useful, informative or fun information. They work as a recommendation. It’s possible to generate your own backlinks however if you create great content that people will choose to link to the backlinks will take care of themselves. Infographics, white papers, guides, eBooks, videos, images and informative blog posts are all things other people will want to share on their own websites and on social media sites.
Little changes can help to boost your website’s search engine ranking, but remember that changes aren’t always predictable. They’re also not immediate. Google takes a while to re-crawl websites it’s indexed before, so make changes and give them time to get noticed. Leaving your website stale for a long time will cause Google to look at it less often, so be particularly patient if you’ve not changed your content for a long time – keep adding new content in future for the continued success of your site.
Interested in knowing more? Read about Xander Marketing’s SEO services here.
