SEO: Ten tips for topping search results

SEO: Ten tips for topping search results

SEO, that is search engine optimisation, is fundamental to making any website visible to potential users. It is a suite of technical, creative and marketing skills that ensures a site ranks highly when people type in particular search terms – ideally on the first page of search results. About two-thirds of what people do online begins with a query on a search engine such as Google. So the higher up your site is in search results the more clicks – and customers – you will get.

Optimisation is complicated to get right and needs continuing attention, and any website build should include optimisation techniques right from the beginning. Correctly applied, the SEO strategy will:

• Give the website more credibility with customers, as a company that ranks highly will be seen as more successful and reputable.
• Improve site users’ experience by providing them with relevant content.
• Reduce costs, as customers will be able to find you easily so you can get away with minimal spending on marketing and advertising.

Before discussing optimisation techniques further it would be helpful to have a look at what happens once a search engine finds your page.

How do search engines work?

The work of a search engine is divided into three stages: crawling, indexing and serving search results. Google, for example, is constantly trawling the web looking for new pages using what are known as bots, crawlers or spiders.

Once the crawler has visited the site Google analyses what it is about. This is known as indexing, and takes in visible and non-visible elements of the site such as text, content tags, titles, images, videos and so on. It may well decide that one page is canonical. This means that page is seen as the most representative of a number of similar ones, for example, a listing for a pair of shoes on a retailer’s website will stand for all the pages listing similar shoes. The information that Google gathers about a page is indexed on one of its many computers.

When a user enters a search query, Google’s computers search the index for pages that match the query and serves the ones that it decides are the most relevant and highest quality. Relevance is determined by hundreds of factors and will change even if the user makes quite minor changes to the search query. Google will also try to use servers that are closest to where the request originated from.

How does Google work so fast?

We all take the astonishing speed with which search results are served up for granted. Google is able to achieve this near-miraculous feat because it is searching its indexes not the whole internet. It also caches common searches and searches are handled by a number of computers at once, each dealing with a part of them in parallel. Its very sophisticated algorithms also play a big role.

So, what are the crawlers looking for and what sort of things are they impressed by?

Content, keywords and structure

1. Content and keywords

SEO-friendly content is absolutely key to getting good search rankings. This means using keywords on your site that help search engines recognise what a site is about. The keywords are the words that people type into the Google search field. Your main keyword should appear high on the site and you should have related keywords on the site as well.

The content itself must offer what the site visitors are looking for and be as compelling as you can make it. The algorithms will pick up if people visit your site but leave quickly (bounce rate), having not been satisfied by the content. A high bounce rate is a problem and should be looked into.

By using Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/trends/) you can see what terms people are searching for that are similar to your keywords. Other companies also offer keyword search tools (https://zapier.com/blog/best-keyword-research-tool/).

Keywords must be used naturally – Google down ranks sites if it determines they are ‘keyword stuffing’, that is, overusing them or using them inappropriately or in the wrong place on a website. And ideally the content on each page should be unique. The Google algorithms don’t rate duplicate content.

2. Tags and meta descriptions

Header tags go from <h1> to <h6> and are created in HTML. The headings give a structure to websites that helps spiders to understand their contents. A well-optimised site will have as many keywords as possible in the header, without resorting to keyword stuffing. The most important keywords should be in the <h1> and <h2> tags.

Effective header tagging will enable crawlers to accurately index a site, making the site easier to serve up.

Title tags are the clickable blue text that appears in a larger size as the heading of your website in search results. They should include your main keyword, ideally at the beginning, and not be more than 50 to 60 characters. One keyword is enough, use the others elsewhere in the site.

The meta description is the paragraph that appears below the title tag and introduces the site’s content. This should be no more than 155 to 160 characters and, again, should have your main keywords in it. The meta description should be as compelling as possible to encourage people to click through.

Technical SEO basics

3. Clean URL structure

Search engines use URLs to index websites so it is essential they are simple, clear and relate to their website. Short ones tend to be better and numbers should be avoided. The target keyword should be in the URL.

4. Anchor text

Anchor text is the clickable text on a website that takes users to a different part of the website or to another one. Anchor text should be rich in keywords that relate to the website and to what the anchor text links to.

5 Optimising for mobile

Well over half of global internet traffic is mobile-based and search engines rank for how mobile-friendly a site is. Websites are expected to load quickly on to mobile devices and should be designed to adjust to different screen sizes. Google offers a mobile-friendly test (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/overview/) that assists with this.

Media and performance

6. Images

Pictures should have an appropriate file name, ideally with some keywords in them that relate to what is in the image. This will help the crawlers identify the image’s content. It’s always worth compressing image file sizes especially if there are a lot of them before uploading them to your site. Large picture sizes can make sites load more slowly on devices, which is bad for SEO rankings as well as users.

In addition to captions that identify who and what is in pictures they should have alt text. This is often overlooked as it is invisible to users. It should be written as a simple description in a few words of what the image depicts. As well as being good SEO practice it helps users who are visually impaired.

A site with images and videos will appear in image and video search results, another reason for including them.

7. Optimising loading times

As so often, what is good for the user experience is good practice for SEO optimisation. Fast site loading times improves rankings as well as usability. Key to this is minimising http requests. When people visit your website their browser sends a request to your web server (where your site is hosted) for the content associated with the page they have clicked on, whether that is text, images or multimedia content. This content then appears on the user’s device.

The more requests for each page that have to pass between browser and server and the more data each request involves the more time the transfer is likely to take. Tools such as HubSpot’s Website Grader (https://website.grader.com/) analyses websites’ SEO performance and Google Chrome’s Network panel (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/overview) provides tools for http optimisation.

Also helpful is caching frequently accessed files on users’ browsers. This means the browser doesn’t need to download them each time.

Marketing and analytics tools

8. Using social media

Having a presence on social media is among the most important ways of improving a site’s search rankings and generating more business. And the backlinks (links from other sites to your site) from the various social platforms will help with SEO.

It is crucial to know which platforms are generating the most traffic and what they are effective at, whether that is general marketing or increasing sales. Any profile or posts on platforms should have calls to action and links back to your site.

New and updated content should be regularly added to social media and to the main site. This stops the site slipping down the search rankings, as well as encouraging users to return.

9. Website tools

Being able to analyse a website’s core metrics is vital for optimising its performance. Google offers a number of tools such as Google Search Console (https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome) and Google Analytics (https://www.hostinger.com/uk/tutorials/google-analytics-4-tutorial) that do this. The Search Console enables site owners to see how their sites are performing in search results and gives insights into how Google views their content and the queries audiences use to find it. It will also pick up problems with your site such as incorrect meta tags (HTML elements that provide information to search engines and users) or broken links.

Google Analytics provides metrics about your site’s performance. While the data is not always easy to interpret, it can flag up underperforming pages and areas for improvement in the site, and offer insights into how people interact with the site.

There are also tools that clean up and organise site code. Clean coding helps with search engine indexing and speeds up site loading times. The three main types of code are HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Linking and conclusion

10. Linking

The pages on your site should be linked to each other and to external sites. This network of pages helps search engines understand the structure and relevance of your site. Make sure to add links to any blog posts and on social platforms if you have them.

Also important is backlinking as Google’s algorithms regard backlinking as a sign a website has authority and bumps it up the rankings accordingly.

Conclusion

An effective SEO strategy is only one part of effective online marketing so look out for other articles on the Finsbury Robinson site about marketing your business online in which we will cover topics such as creating your first website, and which social media platform is right for your business.

If you would like any advice about setting up or running your business please contact Finsbury Robinson. We are a full-service tax, accountancy and business advisory firm, and our friendly and highly experienced team is available on 020 8858 4303 or via email at info@finsburyrobinson.co.uk.