How To Do Basic SEO On Your Website & Our Three Top Tips

Let’s just start off by clarifying something; SEO isn’t basic. Far from it…

But what we mean by “How To Do Basic SEO” is that there are a few foundational areas you can focus on to get started.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a process that should be carried out continually on a website in order to keep up with ever-increasing demand for businesses to have a strong online presence, together with an ever-changing search engine algorithm.

There are many levels and areas on which you can focus your efforts but today, we’re taking a look at a few things you can do in the first instance to get you started.

Check out our Beginner’s Guide To SEO for a more thorough insight.

Why is SEO important?

Well, put simply, if you have a great website but it can’t be found by search engines (and therefore, potential customers), what’s the point of having that site in the first place? 

SEO should go hand-in-hand with any marketing strategy for your business. The Covid-19 pandemic caused a huge surge in online activity (which was already extremely high, given the easy accessibility we all have to technology nowadays) so it’s vital for businesses to have some sort of online presence if you want to nurture and develop your customer base.

SEO will help search engines find, understand and acknowledge your website, ultimately indexing it and offering it up to users should your website’s content suit a search query.

Where to start

Focus on building a solid foundation on which you can grow a comprehensive campaign. To do this, we would recommend looking at the following (although, please note that this list is not complete – it’s just a few pointers to get you going):

• Metadata – All live URLs will have a title tag and a meta description which should be well-written, unique to each page, optimised (but not stuffed!) with keywords, encourage click-throughs and conform to best practice guidelines, such as pixel length, character count etc.
• Headings – Most pages should have a H1 header tag which is often seen as the “on-page title”. Following that, and in order to break up big chunks of content, further header tags would go H2, H3, H4 and so on. Again, use these as a chance to optimise for your key terms
• ALT attributes – Search engines cannot see images and so you should use these attributes to effectively describe what’s on show. It’s also a good opportunity to add important keywords – just be careful not to overdo it.
• Spelling and grammar – You may not think it’s that important, but search engines do take poorly written content into consideration, plus it may even turn customers away if it’s really bad. Let’s be honest, no one likes sloppy writing – it looks messy, lazy and downright unprofessional. Take the time to go over the content on your website – read it out loud to yourself, if you have to – and really scrutinise the wording. Is it informative? Is it helpful? And does it make sense?
• Focus on producing unique, good quality content – “If you build it, they will come” – that goes for users, search engines – and even backlinks. But that’s a post for another day…

Our three top SEO tips

1. Use tools to gain as much knowledge about your website’s current state of play – here is a list of free tools that we use to help get you started
2. Don’t get too caught up on keywords. We often find people worry about what position they are in for one particular keyword, compared to where they were yesterday. Obviously, it’s important to keep an eye on your ranking positions and identify any downwards trends to see where improvements could be made. But you don’t need to worry too much if you find yourself moving from position 5 to 6 and back to 5 again. Ranking fluctuations happen and, as long as you don’t drop drastically without recovery, it shouldn’t be anything to worry about. Don’t forget, your competitors may be working on their own websites and this can affect your position in the rankings. And that leads us nicely on to…
3. Focus on more than just keywords. Don’t forget about the other metrics that can help you monitor your progress – website traffic, for example, is a great way of understanding whether your hard work is paying off. Be sure to keep an eye on traffic to your site and the various sources people are using to access it with Google Analytics

Need a helping hand?

We’ve written before about how important SEO is and how, if done properly, it can skyrocket your online presence and help to achieve business goals. And it’s the same now as it ever was.

Our experts stay up to date with all the latest trends and developments within the world of digital marketing so you don’t have to. We put our years of knowledge and experience to good use, ironing out any creases, working on the basics and striving to build a solid foundation on which we can then build a strong and powerful online presence for your business.

Working collaboratively with you throughout, we keep you up to date every step of the way, explaining the what’s, why’s and how’s of our procedures. We provide regular, monthly reports enabling you to see your website’s progress in visual, easy-to-understand data but if you should ever have a question, we’re always happy to help. 

Want to know more about how we can build and boost your SEO – Give us a call.