Are you getting the best return from your website? Does it channel traffic to your business? Your website should be found easily, should load quickly, and give the best information that it can. If you want to improve the visibility of your website and ensure that it pops up easily in internet searches (and who doesn’t?) there are a few simple actions that you can take to make that happen. All are free and not too difficult to implement. Here are some simple steps to improving Search Engine Optimisation to encourage this and to direct traffic to your website.
Websites that are updated regularly will get more views and visits than those that lie dormant, so dust off your content and update the site regularly. Add new text, images and links to keep the site fresh and include in this keywords that describe your services, business and products. Link those keywords to your geographic location (Sligo plumber, Mayo eyebrow tinting etc.) and if you feel really creative use long tailed keywords to increase ranking and making sure that your website stands out from the competition. Keep those keywords simple, relatable, and up to date. Hot topics are always good to include on your website.
If you have links to other websites, known as ‘backlinks,’ on your site, check that they are working and that they to external websites that still exists and are still relevant. If you don’t have any backlinks, it might be a good idea to get some. These can refer to government websites for information on grants, or How to Guides related to your services and products or anything that you feel will enhance you own trade.
Review your website on a few different devices to see how it looks on each one. Your site may load differently on desktop, mobile, tablet. The menu might need particular attention as they often don’t translate well from one device to another. If you are a Dmac Media client, there will be no issue with this, but if you have built on WordPress or created your own website, you might be losing business as your site does not show up properly. Contact your technical support to make your website mobile friendly.
Abandoned shopping carts and incomplete searches are a feature of a poorly loading website. This is also called a high bounce rate. While the loss of revenue and customer interest is difficult enough to take, a high bounce rate also has a detrimental effect on how Google rates the searchability of your site. Check your website speed here. If slow loading of the site is an issue, you may need to reduce images or page sizes, you could remove video backgrounds and pop ups. It is also useful to deactivate plug ins that you are no longer using. Limiting the use of external scripts helps too and if all comes to all consider increasing bandwidth or changing your web hosting provider.
Search engines like to be told what is in an image. The want a clear description or Alt Tag. So, tell them by adding a concise written description consisting of a few words on each image on the website. Something simple and straightforward ‘boy with Macy’s ice cream’ or ‘dog sleeping on Hugme dog bed.’ Only do this for images that are relevant to your business, services and or your topics.
Meta Tags are little pieces of text that describe the pages content. They don’t appear on the page itself, but within the pages’ source code. These should be keyword rich and relevant to your business. Title Tags on each page are an important example of a Meta Tag that easily increases SEO and has a real impact on search rankings. Adding Meta Tags will improve the searching process for your website.
Keeping your website fresh, updated, and making these simple tweaks will go a long way to improving the traffic to your website and advertising and promoting your work, products, or services to a wider audience. If you have any questions about SEO and making your website work smarter for you, feel free to contact our vibrant Dmac Media Digital Marketing Team. We have been designing and building creative and intuitive websites backed by smart SEO to grow businesses online for over 15 years.