You’ve built a website for your business, blog or some other personal project.
But how do you ensure that all of your hard work is seen by the right people with minimal effort on your part?
Search engine optimisation (SEO) has been around for as long as Google has existed, but its best practices have changed considerably over the years.
In the past, to get your website seen, you may have stuffed it full of keywords, regardless of their placement, repetition or even what their presence did to the readability of your content.
Thankfully, we live in a very different world now. Google is smarter than many people realise and ranks websites in a spookily human fashion.
Here’s what SEO is and why it’ll help your small business.
It’s all about ranking
At its base level, SEO is all about tuning your website so that it ranks as highly as possible within search results for relevant search terms. In turn, this should result in lots of relevant traffic to your website.
Google is understandably tight lipped about exactly how itss algorithm works, but we do know that it likes:
- websites that perform perfectly on mobile devices;
- websites which contain relevant and unique content;
- websites which are fast and user-friendly;
- websites which appear to be popular, given the number and quality of links pointing towards them; and
- websites which are regularly updated.
There are many opinions out there about the benefits of long form content over short form content, but in reality, providing you’re meeting the above ranking rules, your website should perform well on Google.
Can I undertake SEO myself?
Yes, absolutely!
The creation of on-going content for your website is definitely something you can do, along with basic SEO duties such as meta titles and tagging.
However, for the deeper aspects of SEO (under the hood of your website and in relation to link building), seeking the help of an expert is always a sound investment.
SEO best practices change regularly, and it takes an experienced hand to ensure your website remains relevant in the eyes of Google.
SEO goes far deeper than your website as a whole
It’s important to remember that Google doesn’t rank entire websites – it ranks pages.
This is a crucial and easily misunderstood element of SEO. It also means that you can optimise different pages within your website for different purposes and audiences.
For digital marketing campaigns to be effective, you need to ensure that you have the right landing pages on your website, which is why SEO should always be viewed as a per-page endeavour.
The importance of mobile-friendliness
Google now operates on a mobile-first index, which means it will take into account the mobile version of your website (or its compatibility with smaller devices) before the desktop.
It’s why mobile web design and optimisation is a huge part of SEO these days. Put simply, if your website doesn’t perform well on your smartphone, Google probably isn’t going to like it.
Speed and usability matter – big time
There was once a time when you could get away with a slow, cumbersome website if it had the right number of keywords.
Not any more.
Google now actively pays attention to the speed with which websites work. If they’re too slow, it’ll drop them down the ranks.
The same goes for the user journey. Google is smart enough to know if you’ve created a user interface that’s difficult to use and will mark you down accordingly.
Wrapping up
We’ve only brushed the surface of SEO today, but if there’s one takeaway, it’s this: Google thinks like a human as it ranks pages.
The search giant wants to create the best experience for its users by pointing them in the direction of the most relevant and easy to use websites.
If yours fits within that bracket already, you’re already thinking with an SEO mindset. You just might need a bit of help with the more technical aspects!
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