7 Key SEO Tips to Prepare Your Website for Google in 2018

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the focus on growing a websites or web pages visibility organically (not paid) on search engines like Google and Bing. A good SEO strategy involves a great deal of work, both technical and creative. It is the combination of several strategies and implementations that helps a website increase in rankings on search engines.

Based on some recent research results our team has been following from some of the top SEO tools in the world, as well as our own experience in working with SEO for our clients’ websites, we have listed the seven key areas we believe people should be focusing on now and in the new year to improve a website’s ranking.

1. Have a website people want to visit.Studies show that having direct visits to your website is a hugely important area for getting search engines, like Google, to notice your website. It shows you have loyal followers and fans who are looking you up, visiting your website and likely coming back because you are creating or sharing great content.

2. Create content that people want to read.User behaviour is how search engines decide the ‘quality’ of your site. Search engines want sites that people are spending time on, as well as visiting several pages throughout the site. Ideally a visitor should visit a minimum of three pages per one session when the user lands on your website.

3. Have a low bounce rate.A bounce is when a user visits your website, then quickly leaves the site. This is often caused by slow loading websites or driving traffic to a site with a false message that is made apparent to them upon visiting the site. You can avoid having a high bounce rate by ensuring your website loads quickly and provides quality content. Also, make sure not to false advertise a message that is on your webpage when advertising the content on other locations.

4. Backlinks continue to impress search engines.A backlink is when a website page links to another page. So, if a particular page on your site has several, high ranking, websites referring to and linking back to your website, this will help search engines not only know about your site, but trust that the content you are putting up is valuable and correct.

5. People are attracted to long content, so search engines rank long content.An article’s word count quickly gives your page credibility with a user. As a result, users stay on the page longer, do not bounce off the page and may even find that you are a creditable source and therefore come back for more information in future. As a result of a user staying on the page longer, studies show that pages with long content tend to rank higher.

6. Website security matters!This area is probably one of the easiest to implement, that is if you have a good relationship with the company or business that looks after your domain. Having a HTTPS website can help your ranking against not HTTPS competitors.

   We suggest having your website developer or a contact at your hosting company set this up for you to insure it is done correctly.

7. On-page SEO factors still make a difference.Factors, such as the presence of keywords in a title or sub-title, meta description and body, although are not always the most important factors of SEO, it is how a page speaks to search engines. Keywords assist in telling search engines what the page is about and focused on. However, because this is one of the most common techniques focused on in SEO, this alone will not usually get your website ranking on the first page when you are in a competitive industry.

At the end of the day, SEO is a HUGE BEAST that isn’t always easy to learn and is often even harder to maintain. However, if you are looking for a good place to put your focus on in order to improve your SEO in 2018, just remember, content is king! So to improve not only your websites ranking, but the quality of your site as well, writing quality, long and engaging content is a great place to focus your energy.

If you want to speak to one of our team members around what keywords and topics you should be focusing on, email us today to set up your marketing consultation.