Improve your website’s SEO and get more visitors – 10 easy steps

A photo of Googles main search page on the internet

Your product or service is the best. People want it. They are searching for it!

But how do you get it in front of potential customers? How do you bring more visitors to your website to see what you have to offer?

Search Engine Optimization is a bit of a mouthful, but SEO is a bit like exercise. Once you are fit, then your fitness is easier to maintain. It will take time and some work to get your website fit, but once it is, it’s easier to keep that way.

What is SEO?

It can be a struggle to get people to visit your website. Even if your product or service is the best, your potential customers won’t have the opportunity to engage with you to place that new order if they can’t find you.

And there are almost 2 billion websites out there. How on earth does your website stand out from the crowd?

That’s where SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, comes in. You may or may not have heard of SEO. It doesn’t matter.

SEO is the art of getting your website to appear high in search results when the right people (your potential customers) search for the things that they want (a product/a service/a solution).

What factors affect your website’s SEO

There are many factors that affect search results, but here are some of the most common – some are called ‘on-page’, meaning they are part of your website’s code, and others are ‘off-page’, meaning they are related to outside factors.

  • Website structure. Your website’s navigation and page hierarchy.
  • Page speed. Literally the speed that a web page loads.
  • Page titles and meta descriptions. These are the main texts you see in search engine results for each page.
  • Security. Protecting your website and its data from threats like hacking, malware, and data breaches to ensure safe and secure user interactions and maintain trust.
  • Internal links. Links between relevant pages on your website.
  • External links. Links from other relevant websites to our own.
  • Mobile friendliness. The ability of a website to look good on different sized devices like phones and tablets, as well as desktop.
  • Content and keywords. Your website content and the words people use to search the web (keywords).
  • Headings. What we see as titles on a web page. These include the overall title of a page and the sub-headings.
  • Image alt text. Descriptive text added to images to help search engines understand what the image is about. This also improves accessibility.

It’s clear that there are a lot of factors (and these are just a few), but we can influence all of these quite easily and begin to make a difference to our website’s SEO.

The top 10 things to do to improve SEO

Let’s take a look at the best aspects of your website to work on. Bear in mind that SEO is not a quick hit… it’s a marathon, not a sprint… and so on!

It takes time, persistence and consistency – keep at it and you will get there.

Website structure

Your website needs to be set up correctly. Pages need to be easy to find and follow a logical structure. Page layouts should present information clearly.

A well-structured website enables search engines to efficiently crawl and index your pages. By organizing your content logically, using internal links, and maintaining a clear hierarchy, you ensure that search engines can easily recognize key pages, which boosts their chances of ranking higher in search results.

Page speed

Your website should be fast.

A fast website is important because it makes the experience better for your visitors. When pages load quickly, visitors are more likely to stay, explore, and take action, like making a donation or signing up.

Slow websites frustrate people, causing them to leave and look elsewhere. Additionally, search engines like Google prefer faster websites, meaning a quicker site is more likely to show up higher in search results, attracting more visitors.

Page titles and meta descriptions

Page titles and meta descriptions are important for SEO because they directly influence how your website appears in search engine results.

The page title serves as the headline that users see in search results, and it should include relevant keywords to help search engines understand the content of the page. Well-crafted titles can improve your click-through rate (CTR) by attracting more users.

Meta descriptions provide a brief summary of the page’s content, also visible in search results, helping users understand what to expect before clicking. While meta descriptions are not a direct ranking factor, a compelling description can increase the number of clicks, indirectly benefiting SEO by telling search engines that your page is relevant and engaging.

Security

A secure website is essential because it protects sensitive information like personal details, payment data, and passwords. When a site is secure, it uses encryption to keep data safe from hackers, preventing theft or misuse.

This not only builds trust with visitors but also ensures compliance with privacy laws.

Plus, search engines prioritize secure websites, which can help the site rank higher and attract more visitors. In short, a secure website keeps users’ data safe, builds trust, and improves site performance.

Screenshot of address bar in Google Chrome

Internal links

Internal website links are crucial for SEO because they help both search engines and users navigate your site more effectively. They boost your site’s SEO by helping search engines index your pages, distributing ‘authority’, and improving user navigation.

Internal links guide search engines through your website, helping them discover and index your pages. The better your site is linked internally, the easier it is for search engines to find all of your content and understand the relationships between pages​.

When you link to other pages within your site, you pass ‘link juice’ or authority from one page to another. This helps important pages rank higher in search results, especially when you link from high-traffic pages to newer or less-visited ones​.

Internal links provide clear paths for users to follow, keeping them engaged longer by leading them to relevant content. This increases time spent on the site and decreases bounce rates, both of which can positively impact SEO rankings​.

Internal links help define the hierarchy of your website’s content. By linking related pages, you give search engines a clear idea of which content is most important, boosting visibility for key pages​.

External links

External links, or links from your website to other reputable sites, can help in several ways.

By linking to high-quality sources, you show search engines that your content is well-researched and relevant. This can help improve your website’s credibility, which may contribute to better rankings​.

External links can also improve the user experience by directing visitors to additional information that enhances their understanding of a topic. Search engines favour sites that aim to provide a better user experience, which can indirectly boost your SEO​.

Overall, using external links thoughtfully can help establish your site’s trustworthiness and relevance, which are important for SEO performance.

Mobile friendliness

Mobile friendliness, or responsiveness, is a key factor in website SEO because search engines like Google prioritize websites that offer a seamless experience on mobile devices.

Google now uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily evaluates the mobile version of your website when determining rankings. If your site isn’t optimized for mobile, it may rank lower in search results​.

A mobile-friendly website provides an easier, more enjoyable experience for users, reducing bounce rates and increasing time spent on the site. Positive user behaviour signals help improve your site’s SEO​.

Content and keywords

The pages on your website must contain great content that’s unique to you. Your content, along with the keywords they contain, are foundational to SEO because they help search engines understand what your website is about and match it to people’s searches.

High-quality, relevant content that addresses user needs directly influences SEO. When you create content that aligns with the search intent behind popular queries, it increases the likelihood that search engines will show your page in response to those searches​.

Using targeted keywords throughout your content helps search engines identify the main topics of your page. Including keywords in titles, headings, and body text allows search engines to better understand your content, making it more likely to rank for those terms. Long-tail keywords, which are more specific, can help attract targeted traffic and are often less competitive​.

Well-crafted content keeps users on your page longer, which reduces bounce rates and signals to search engines that your content is valuable and engaging. This user engagement can indirectly boost your page’s ranking over time​.

Headings

Your headings are important as they help both your visitors and search engines.

Headings (H1 to H6) are important for SEO because they help structure the content on a page, making it easier for search engines to understand the main topics and subtopics.

The H1 tag usually represents the primary focus of the page, while H2 through H6 tags help organize the content into sections and subsections.

This hierarchical structure enables search engines to better grasp the context and relevance of the content, which can contribute to higher rankings​.

Additionally, well-organized headings improve user experience by making content easier to read and navigate, which can further boost SEO performance​.

Image alt text

Image alt tags help search engines understand the content of images. This can improve the overall relevance and visibility of a page.

Alt tags provide a text description of images, making them accessible to screen readers for visually impaired users, which is also a positive ranking signal for search engines. Additionally, using descriptive keywords in alt tags can help images appear in Google Image search results, driving more organic traffic to your site​.

Measure your website’s performance

Ultimately, your website is only a success if it achieves your goals. We use tools like Google Analytics and Search Console to measure how well your site is performing in terms of goals and a myriad of other little bits of data that can help to tweak things to make your website even better.

Using a suite of different techniques can help your website appear in search results. This is a continual process and there’s no ‘quick fix’ – even though you may receive lots of emails claiming to get you to the top of search results! Nobody (who is being honest) will guarantee to get you to the top of Google or Bing. Please keep away from anyone making those sorts of claims. Honestly! They can actually harm your online reputation.

So, can we help you appear in search results?

With any website, whether new or been around forever, you must appear high in Google’s search results for the right keywords. After all, no visitors means no customers.

We work with clients to create a marketing plan and we continuously tweak the plan based on valuable data insights we get from the tools we use. We’ll make actionable recommendations based on your specific needs.

This might include an audit of performance on an existing site. We can, for example, highlight keywords (the words and phrases people use when searching online) to ‘target’. We can monitor performance and re-prioritise and re-target over time.

Setting goals – ways of measuring your website’s success – can really help. Goals might be sales, visitors, leads or people completing a contact form.