Improve your SEO with these top tips
I often get asked what my clients can do to help their search engine rankings. Although I set these up when I first design a site, SEO is a ongoing maintenance that should be incorporated into your business.
So here are my top tips!!
Keywords, keywords, keywords
Keywords, or the phrases that people type into a search engine to find content like yours, are incredibly important to your SEO. If you include them in the content and metadata of your page, it makes it easier for those keywords to be found by search engines and for readers to find what you're looking for. That being said, don't just throw them in without thought. Write for people first, not just for search engines.
Go local!
Incorporating local search into your website's SEO strategy is essential for both businesses that have a physical location and businesses that don't. It helps bring more traffic to your site and may help you rank higher on SERPs. Whether you're a local restaurant, unique gift shop, or a local blogger, there are many ways to incorporate local search into your website's SEO strategy. Here are 7 suggestions:
Geo-tag your photos. This makes it easier for Google find out where they were taken and thus include them in image results when people do searches with location keywords. For example, when someone enters "Montreal" + "restaurant" + "images", you want Google to know that the images of food on your website are from Montreal so they can be included in the search results.
Include your location in tags of pages or posts. When Google crawls and indexes the pages of your site it will pick up keywords such as city name, state/province name and neighbourhood name that match what people are searching for locally. If you're an author who lives in Chicago, putting something like this at the beginning of every page title will help people from Chicago find you when they look for authors who live there: Chicago Author |
Add an address to your website's footer navigation so it appears on every page of the website.. This lets visitors know where you're located, which is helpful if someone wants to visit you in person or if you offer delivery within a certain radius. Having an address on all pages also gives the additional benefit of having multiple mentions across different parts of each page which all contribute to making each one more relevant to include in search results relevant to that location.
Include mapping services such as Google Maps or Bing Maps on any landing pages where visitors might be interested in directions (e.,g., a contact page). A map provides people with information about how far away they live
Make your images work for you
It might have been a while since you thought about your images, but the text that accompanies them can be one of the most important tools in your SEO kit. That’s because search engine crawlers use image alt text to understand the context of images and what they represent. In other words, if you use alt text correctly, it can help lead crawlers to your page and improve your site’s ranking.
When it comes to optimizing alt text, there are a few key things that should always come first:
Context: If an image is purely decorative (i.e., it doesn’t add value to the content on the page), then don’t include alt text at all. Instead, use CSS to hide the element from screen readers and search engines so that they ignore it completely during indexing.
Length: On average, Google uses only about 125 characters of an image's alt attribute when describing it in its search index—so keep yours relatively short! A good rule of thumb is 70–120 characters including spaces – avoid stuffing keywords into your alt text as this can actually harm your rankings.
Blog
As the saying goes, “content is king”—and a blog is one of the best ways to create fresh, relevant content. If you have an active blog on your site, search engines will crawl it regularly and give your site's SEO a boost. A blog also allows you to share expertise in your field and engage in conversations with readers, which can lead to new business and referrals. Just be sure to add keywords to the title, text, and images on each post so your blog appears higher in search rankings.
Up-to-date, unique and quality copy
A website should never be static or "set and forget". Refreshing and keeping your copy up to date lets search engines know that your website is still relevant and live.
Ensuring events or dates you have listed are up to date or removed is also important for professionalism.
Never copy from other websites as search engine crawlers can recognise plagiarism and you can be penalised for this. This also applies to shop stock. try to put your own discretion in rather than the one the manufacturer has provided that many other sites may have,