A Basic Guide To SEO

SEO is one of the most important things when it comes to your website or blog success - Search Engine Optimisation is what gets you discovered on Google, and the better your SEO, the higher up the rankings you will climb. Luckily with CMS systems like Wix, all your SEO bases are covered so you don’t need to sweat the technical stuff – especially with Wix SEO Wiz by your side. However, as more website owners become SEO savvy, keeping up with future trends is crucial for you to stay competitive.

Grab a cup of tea or coffee, get comfy, and get reading about how to ace your SEO strategy. Search engines are getting smarter, Google is answering more queries directly on results’ pages, and we can see a clear increase of voice-activated search - is your website fully optimised? Search engines like Google and Bing are learning to understand content better and faster, and are aiming to satisfy users’ needs as best as they can. And as harsh as it may be, it doesn't matter how amazing your business is - unless your website is Google friendly, you're not going to be coming top of users search results.

1. Optimise Your Titles and Headings

One of the key jobs in optimising your website should be to look at your Titles and Headings. The Title tag has the most weight in SEO - so make sure your keywords are appearing in your Title tags, and the closer your keyword to the beginning of the title the better! Then focus on your Headings: H1 is the most important, H2 has slightly less weight - and so on. The bigger the number at the end of H, the less importance it has. Your H1 Heading can be the same as the title or slightly different - just make sure your keywords appear in both!

If you use PPC (Google Ads and alike) - use your titles and keywords in your tags so the campaigns are in line with each other.

2. Write Blogs

Blogs are a great way to have longer pieces of content and target several keywords in one article, for example: 'basic seo guide', 'seo guide for beginners', 'easy seo guide'. Your blogs should be between 300 -2,000 words depending on the kind of blog you want to write - short blogs will encourage discussions, longer blogs are brilliant for your SEO and keeping people on your website (as well as showing you as an expert in your field!)

Focus on a keyword, then write a blog post around it. For example, if you wanted to sell a wellbeing weekend, you may want to think about 'wellbeing weekend destinations in the UK' or 'why a wellbeing weekend is great for productivity'. You get the idea.

3. Thing About Your Website Navigation

Your website menu is one of the most important tools for SEO - it's the first thing linking to the other pages on your website and it's typically at the top of all your pages. This means these links have weight when it comes to SEO. Google ranks these pages as very important as you can access them from any other page - so if you're focussing on a particular page make sure it's also in your navigation menu - don't hide it!

This is why the Homepage ranks high - it's because there is always a link to the Homepage on any page, in the logo or in the header image!

4. Add Tracking To Your Website

If you don't track your ranking, traffic, visitor numbers, and audience demographics - you haven't got a clue what's happening on your website and if your marketing campaigns are working! It's one of the first things which should be added to a website. Tracking will also help you discover problem pages: which page do visitors leave from? Is there a higher bounce rate? Is there a problem with a contact form? You may also find that a drop in traffic could mean something simply isn't working - a campaign, your website, a page, or you could have even been dropped from rankings.

The best tracking comes from the source itself - Google Analytics have everything you need to get started and even dig deep into your website stats.

5. Add Your Google My Business Listing

Using Google My Business instantly lets people in your area find you; it also helps you appear multiple times on Google. The business listing links back to your website and if their in your area or using your keywords this will appear right at the top of the page on the right hand side.

Google My Business will also help people find you easier, and build trust providing that your organisation exists and has trusted reviews!

6. Reduce Your Loading Time

The average loading time of most websites on the internet is about 10 seconds. However, 53% of people will leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. We're an impatient bunch of customers! You can see it's crucial to keep your loading time to a minimum when it comes to your SEO - I remember when I attended a digital marketing conference with a client of mine, the company marketing their services audited every brands website without telling them. I am solely responsible for my clients site performance and design and even though I run regular tests, I was nervous. The times in the room went from over a minute to load , to the best performance in the room at 3 seconds - I let out a breath of relief, it was our website which was a clear winner with no red flags.

You can test your website here: www.thinkwithgoogle.com/feature/testmysite

To reduce your loading time, there are a few elements you need to look at - images are the number one culprit for slow loading time. Images take up the most physical space on your server - which means they also take up the most physical space on your user's device and take the most time to load, making the experience slow. You need to compress your images - this won't affect the quality of the images, but it will significantly reduce their size - websites like Wix and Wordpress have apps and plug ins which can help you do this. Or if you get stuck, there's always the old fashioned way - resize your images and then re-upload them to your website! It might seem like a pain, but trust me it will be worth it to increase your website SEO.

7. Use Social Media

Create social media profiles on the platforms where you audience lives - make sure your website is displayed on these sites, and you are publishing engaging and shareable content on your feed. Social media links add 'juice' to your SEO - but your links need to have engagement and shares in order to have power!

8. Create Backlinks From High Ranking Sites

Creating a backlink strategy should be an important part of your SEO master plan. That's why so many people get annoying, impersonal emails which go something like this: "Hello Sir/Madam, We would like to place an article on your site which we think your audience will enjoy. Please see attached (an article on something completely unrelated to your service!)." These companies are trying to do the right thing, the wrong way.

Approach sites which are similar to yours, offer to exchange articles to help each other grow, offer an interesting angle - and remember to approach news sites with exciting and engaging content!

9. Include Share Buttons

It may seem basic to some, but it's very easy to forget to include Share buttons on content which you want people to talk about, like blog post and articles. These are easy to add on platforms like Wix, Wordpress, and Squarespace - and most blog templates come with share buttons as standard!

10. Keep Refreshing Content

Make sure Google knows your website is current and provides fresh content to your audience - update your pages with new content, refresh the look of your pages with new imagery and copy, and utilise your blog roll! This is why I keep telling my clients blog posts are so important - it keeps your website fresh and up to date in the most simple way, along with many more benefits.

Create a blog schedule to post consistently, and jump onto your site every couple of months or so to update your key information and pages.

If your brain isn't completely frazzled, then start working on your SEO now as it takes some time for it to kick in - I usually monitor results over 3 months to give my SEO updates a good chance of improving rankings. It's a slow process, but trust me your can't beat organic SEO listings - these are the most important for your business. What happens if your Google Adwords budget runs out and your organic listing is on page 55? You're not going to get found. Invest your time in improving your SEO, then come back and thank me!

If you would like to chat to me about SEO and other digital marketing coaching, feel free to contact me - I love chatting to you!