October 30, 2020
The SEO Sleuth. The components of SEO on websites.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the most important and powerful tools you should have on your website. If your website isn’t ranking organically on Google, then the blame lies with poor or no SEO on your website.
As you may have picked up on a recent blog post by Mark, SEO is pretty confusing and VERY technical. In fact, if you spend too much time in Sherlock Holmes mode, trying to work out the elusive algorithm, you may just go cross-eyed.
Here we break down the 3 aspects of SEO in layman’s terms.
Getting all the technical aspects of a website in order to rank higher on search engines is known as technical SEO (and is also part of On Page SEO). Technical aspects can include website speed, better crawlability (yep, it’s a word!), and other small things you can do to increase rank – (click to read article). The more boxes you tick here, the better your rank. Technical SEO makes up around 50% of your ranking ‘score’.
This is all about SEO that’s ON each of your website pages – which includes the text that’s used to explain to your website visitors all about your business. If done properly, the user will never know that what they are reading is optimised for search engines. If done badly (where the text repeats itself and the information seems to keep using the same words – otherwise known as ‘keyword stuffing’) the user will be confused, bored and bounce.
This type of SEO is pretty simple – it’s all about back links. Back links are other websites that have a link back to your website. The good news is the more back links you have, the more Google thinks your website is highly reputable and relevant, and you’ll rank higher. The bad news is there’s not a huge amount you can do about it. However over time, as more people share content from your website, you’ll increase your number of back links. It’s also important to set up Google My Business as this can directly assist in you ranking better on Google. You need to ensure the information in Google My Business matches your website and make sure you’re asking your customers for reviews and replying to those reviews. Every little thing you do on GMB helps!
So, how do you fix your website’s SEO? Well, given there are over 200 factors that generate where you rank on Google (yikes!), it’s best to talk to your web designer.
If you’ve got a template-driven website, such as Wordpress, Wix or Square Space, unfortunately, no matter what your web designer does, it’s unlikely your SEO score can be increased much more to rank you higher – it’s a limitation with any of those type of websites.
If you have a custom website, then talk to your web designer about ongoing SEO updates. As with anything online, algorithms change, so you need to ensure your SEO is relevant and up to date. Whether you do this monthly, or once or twice a year, it’s better than leaving it as over time, your Google rank will drop.
Interested in discussing a custom website with excellent SEO? Contact us today on 1300 494 990 or hit us up on the contact page.
