SEO Techniques
SEO Techniques To Improve Your Rankings
We have a range of SEO techniques which we use with every SEO campaign. We use these particular techniques as they have proven to benefit every client we have worked with in improving their rankings. As time goes on different techniques become available or unavailable, which is why we research every technique we use in depth to ensure it has the same benefits as it once did/didn’t. The techniques we use are as follows:
Onsite SEO
Onsite SEO covers a very wide range of techniques and when combined together they can ensure that your website is both search engine and user friendly, as well as improving your chances of reaching the higher pages on search engines such as Google and Bing. Every SEO company uses different methods of optimising a website, some will cover some areas whilst others will optimize other areas. There is nothing set in stone on how to optimise a website, but there are many areas which are proven to help improve a websites search engine positioning. These are:
Keyword Analysis
Keyword analysis can be important for your company, as these keywords will be the one’s which your website will rank for. If this step is done incorrectly not only are you wasting time you are also losing money on keywords which aren’t returning the investment. No SEO campaign should be started until you are completely satisfied with the keyword analysis. When it comes to keyword analysis you should ensure the keywords you are going to choose are competitive and will drive the most traffic to your website.
Page Structure
When it comes to page structure it is important that you structure each and every page correctly, this can lead to “perfectly” optimised pages. An example of this would be including your keyword within the content a certain number of times, along with linking to certain pages and using your location, for local search. All of these are able to help you when it comes to page structure. Although it is difficult to decided on the exact amount of keywords which should be used per page, you can make up simple rules for the rest of your company to follow. For example only use 2-3 on the shorter pages and use 4-6 on the lager pages, as well as using images, page titles and H1/H2 headers.
Meta Data
The first thing you should ensure you optimise is the page title of your website. The most commonly followed way of creating a title is to include your main keyword at the beginning, followed by another keyword of less importance. The meta description should be unique for each page and should be used to entice searchers to visit your website over other websites in the results. A meta keyword area is available, but Google as well as other search engines announced that this does nothing to help improve your positioning.
Headings
Headings are located within the content, starting with a h1 header working down to h6. The h1 is normally the title of the page, the h2 is the sub title, the h3 a sub sub title, etc. The more content you have on a page, the more likely you will use more headings. The h1 heading should contain the main keyword you are targeting on a page, this is because it is commonly found at the top of a page which helps search engines identify what a page is about.
Content
Content is king when it comes to SEO, which has been repeated by a number of big names in the industry. The better quality of content available on your website, the better your chances is at appearing higher for your chosen keyword. You should avoid duplicating any content from another website as this can get your website penalized by search engines, as well as using any spammy content at all. The content you create must include the keywords you are targeting for a page to ensure search engines are able to establish what each page on your website is about. You should avoid repeating the same keyword as this may come off spammy, but that isn’t to say you are unable to mention it more than once. Content analaysis is the best way to ensure the content isn’t spammy, by reading it and deciding whether the content is something you would read on another website; if you decide it isn’t, chances are the content could be improved.
Internal Linking
Internal linking is what helps search engines navigate around your website to help crawl all the pages you have. The better your internal linking structure, the more likely you will improve your rankings. There are a number of things you must take in to consideration when applying an internal linking structure to your website, such as the amount of times you use an anchor text on your website, the amount of links you have coming out of a page and the amount of times you link to a particular page. By ensuring your internal linking doesn’t coming of spammy will help reduce the chances of being penalised by search engines.
Page Speed
Page speed became a signal for improving search engine rankings about a year ago and has since become more important as peoples demand for fast websites has increased. To ensure you cover this technique you must ensure you spend a little more money a quality website host and also ensure your website is created with speed in mind.
Alt tags
Alt tags are used on the images you publish around your website to help search engines understand what an image is about. This tag is a great place to insert keywords which are relevant to your page and the content within the page and can help with your website’s SEO. Along with this, Alt tags enable people who cannot see your images to understand what is there. When you are creating an alt tag you should ensure they are short and to the point, usually two or three words will suffice.
There is no right or wrong way to use these alt tags other than spamming the alt tags with keywords which are not relevant to the page or the pages content. If this technique is carried out on your site and you are caught you may be penalised by Google and sent down within the search engine rankings. So whatever you are doing, ensure you do it the right way.
Offsite SEO
Offsite SEO compliments any onsite SEO that you have carried out on your website. By carrying out offsite SEO you can increase your chance of being seen across the web. Although offsite SEO is able to massively improve your websites rankings it also concentrates on the visibility of your site. Due to the sheer amount of websites out there, there are many things you can do to enhance your rankings and visibility. Here are a few examples:
External linking
External linking has been the number one method when it comes to improving your websites rankings for a number of years now. Due to recent algorithm updates by search engines such as Google, getting external links for a website is more challenging as it can have your website penalized. To avoid being penalized, a quality external linking strategy must be implemented over a certain period of time. By being careful with where you get your links from, you can help improve your websites position depending on the quality of your backlinking portfolio.
Social media
Social media is becoming very big nowadays and it is used every day by millions of people worldwide. However, not only is it getting big for personal use it is also getting big for optimisation purposes. If you are not using these social media websites nowadays you are missing out on a very big step which can help to promote your business online.
Social media websites that are used by businesses to promote themselves are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+. By keeping your social media profiles up to date frequently will help you promote your business online.
Linkbaiting
The most ethical way of getting links to your website is through linkbaiting. Linkbaiting is a method of enticing webmasters to link to your website, through using innovate ideas such as videos, images, games, etc. If it is something people will like, webmasters are more likely to link to it than other websites.
Articles
By submitting articles around the web you may be able to attract some high quality backlinks. These articles will be posted in portals that are relevant to your industry. Articles can also be used to promote new services and offers your business may have available that customers are unaware of.
Maps
If your business is accessible by the public then having your location available online is the perfect way to help attract new customers. There are many services available on the web to help get your company on maps, such as Google Places, Yelp, and Bing maps.
