5 Tips SEO Strategy
What the heck is SEO all about anyway?
First, we need to understand the basics of the wild world of search engines. Let’s walk through a little visual. You hop on your computer, pull up Google, and search “Who is Carole Baskin?” Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo (or AskJeeves for all my Gen X’ers) use bots, or crawlers, to comb through all the content that has been published to the internet. These bots come back with all the information in order to index the information based on the relevance of the search you made. From there it goes into this fancy, and always ever-changing, algorithm that ultimately provides the ranking system. All of this is done in a matter of 0.5 seconds, give or take, and can yield millions of search results. In this example, Google came back with 23,700,000 search options in a matter of 0.4 seconds.
So, what is Search Engine Optimization? Quite simply, it’s a way of ranking how relevant your website is to people’s searches. They take into account the quality and quantity of your website to provide organic search results. As mentioned before, these algorithms are constantly changing. Because of this search engines reward websites that adhere to the updated algorithms with a higher rank on their search engine ranking pages (SERPs).
Why should you care? Well, optimized websites get higher rankings and more traffic to their sites, which ultimately results in more leads and sales—all without spending advertising dollars. YAY!
I could talk about SEO for hours, probably days, if you let me. I don’t suggest bringing up the topic at a dinner party—I’ll never let you leave my dark web (pun intended). To save you the hours I could chat about this particular topic I have compiled 5 must knows for SEO.
01.
Secure site
Google has long announced that if your site doesn’t have a SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate it’ll get flagged. Getting flagged by Google is similar to getting a red or yellow card in soccer—it can take you out of commission. Up to 2/3rds of your site could be flagged as unsafe which is terrible news for those that rely on their site for lead generation. While not having a SSL certificate doesn’t necessarily mean your site won’t be indexed it does mean it won’t give preference to your site—say hello to page 23 of the SERPs. Google cares very deeply about its user, and security for that matter, which is why they have led the charge with demanding sites use a SSL certificate.
What is a SSL certificate?
This is an extra layer of protection on a website that creates a secure link between the website and user’s browser. Everything becomes encrypted in an effort to protect the user and make it extremely difficult for a hacker to gain access to information.
How do I know if my site has a SSL certificate?
Type in your web address. If the address starts with https:// then a SSL certificate has been installed. If it says http:// then you are operating without a secure site.
What does this mean for you?
Add a SSL certificate today—100%! If you aren’t sure how to do this click the link below to get in touch with me—I’ll help you out! Squarespace, which is my platform of choice, provides a SSL certificate for FREE.
02.
Page speed
It’s obvious that search engines care a lot about UX (user experience). They reward sites with faster loader times with a higher ranking in their SERPs. Let’s face it—we live in an era of instantaneous satisfaction. When we “can’t get no satisfaction” we tend to exit those sites before even seeing their relevant information. Give me instant access or give me death—just kidding, just get me off your site.
Your photography is holding your back.
Bigger is not better in this instance. The photography used on your site is likely way too large. Do not take this information as a signal you need to delete photos. DO NOT DO THAT. I repeat—DO NOT delete your photos. The algorithm is a finicky beast. SEO wants to see photography that is relevant to the information you have on your site.
Dimension size should be viewing size.
If you upload a huge photo but scale it down to a smaller viewing size the image size is still large it’s just scaled. Pixel size matters here. Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all pixel size, but be mindful of the dimension size vs. what is actually being displayed.
What you do need to be very aware of is the file size.
A 20.3MB digitally rich photo takes up a massive amount of space and throws off the loading time of your site. So, what do you do? You’ll need to compress the file size. Compressing a file is EXACTLY like using a vacuum bag to compress your winter sweaters. They’re still there, just smaller. My favorite tool is tinyjpg. Give it a try. Don’t want to do any of this? No problem. I’m here for you!
03.
Bounce rate
Your bounce rate is likely too high. Imagine this: you rank high on the SERP, someone clicks on your link, navigates to your page, then immediately clicks off your site. What a freaking bummer. Search engines think so, too. I’m telling you, all the search engine algorithms care very deeply about UX (user experience). When people jump ship after only a few seconds that signals the search engine to question if they indexed the information correctly. You have about 15 seconds, if that, to capture the attention of a user. Perhaps your site isn’t as relevant to that search as they thought? Perhaps the user didn’t like the aesthetics of your homepage? Whatever the reason, the user’s decision matters to the search engine.
This requires you to dissect your website and page analytics.
Never done that before? Most haven’t and that’s ok. I suggest connecting your site to a free service like Google Analytics. Here you will find a wealth of information on your page views, bounce rates, and click-through rates. I will warn you though, this information can be quite dull to someone not attuned to digest this kind of information. Luckily for you, I love data and analytics and understand how to use this information to make appropriate changes that influence a better UX.
*Google Analytics includes “Bounce Rate” in many reports under “Audience”.
**My Google Analytics report doesn’t have enough data yet, so this is a screenshot from a client
04.
Page titles and descriptions
People, this is one of the easiest ways to improve your SEO ranking, but so many people just flat out fail to do it. Every single page gets a page title and description—EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Home page? Page title and description. Contact Us page? Page title and description. Search engine bots don’t have brains, they need to be told what is on the page. They also need a quick overview and description, like CliffsNotes. This is also the description that users will see when a particular page shows up on Google.
Page titles and descriptions need to sum up the information on the page, otherwise, the bots have to ascertain on their own.
Trust me, you don’t want bots doing this. That’s like handing in an award-winning dissertation and allowing your child to explain it. The general idea will come across, but the main points will be missed.
Check out your Google Analytics to see which keywords people are using that land them on your page. This will give you a better idea of how you should title your pages.
05.
Relevant content
The more relevant content you add to your website the more opportunities you have to be relevant for users. Now, this doesn’t mean add a bunch of copy to your site just for the fun of it. There’s only so much you can write about in the About Us section without boring people to tears. What this does mean is you need to CREATE content. Yes, you guessed it—you need a blog.
Blogs provide new, up-to-date, relevant information for the user.
It’s a reason for them to visit your site frequently and often which is great for UX and lead generation and SEO. Remember these pages need page titles and descriptions plus tags and categories once you get enough posted.
Remember when we talked about bounce rate?
Well, blogs help tremendously with that! You can check your bounce rate percentage after you post a blog. Chances are the bounce rate percentage will go down and time spent on your site will go up.
Google and other search engines update their algorithms on average every quarter. If you aren’t staying abreast of the new updates to the algorithms you could be pushed lower in the SERPs, which could be the difference between your business making revenue goals for the month/quarter/year or not.
While these easy changes can make a difference in your ranking, there’s so much more to be considered that this overview did not touch on. I wouldn’t suggest leaving the complexity of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to someone internally unless you feel confident in assigning them to a revenue number. Schedule a free consultation call with me to chat about your website and how we can improve your ranking, and long-term growth!