There are tonnes of simple fixes you can make to your website to help boost your SEO capability, and your chance of capturing users’ attention once they reach your online home. 

If you don’t have hours to spend on optimising your site, there’s still plenty you can do to increase your visibility in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), and to help new users discover your brand, and convert too.

Simple fixes like…

1. Create content for humans.

As tempting as it can be to go rogue and pack in those keywords left, right and centre, you really should focus on creating content for humans, not search engines

Use your keyword research as a starting point for your content themes, and then expand out your research into more long tail keywords and related terms. That way you can create a core or pillar page, and link off to blogs, articles and other resources on your site which are relevant and complement the user journey.

Creating a web of information is one of the best ways to support your customer’s or user’s journey to conversion. Some users only want the top level stats and facts. Others want to delve into the granular stuff, so make sure you cater to the needs of all the people looking for your product.

2. Give them what they want.

Your Google Analytics account is a treasure trove of user data which can offer key insights into what your users like, and what they’re not interested in. One of the key pieces of information that I give to clients is to look at the top performing content on site.

Use this information to identify how long users spend on these pages, and use this as a starting point for building out more content. For example, a page which talks about organising an event could link off to blogs or articles elsewhere on site which look at different types of events, how-to guides, advice from professionals, or how to troubleshoot issues at the last minute. Take this idea and apply it to your brand, product or service themes.

This approach allows you to build informed pillar page content, and to create relevant branches of information off from here. These can be peppered with CTAs, or enquiry / order forms, which give the opportunity to capture interest at every step. Bonus points for using multimedia such as images and video to better enhance the user experience.

3. Focus on accessibility.

Accessibility is essential for every website in 2020. Google has become increasingly hot on the topic over recent years. It’s no longer an optional extra – it’s totally essential that anyone can access your site.

Accessibility refers to the ability to access a site across the full array of screen sizes, devices and load speeds – meaning that even someone with a slightly older model of phone or with a less extensive data package can access the site. But it also refers to how easy it is to access for those with impairments.

It’s important to consider all the ways in which you can make your site accessible to people using screen readers and other accessibility tools. This includes making sure every image has alt text, high contrast between text and backgrounds, and that the site can be navigated via the tab key.

4. Tag it all up.

Whilst on the topic of alt text on all images, you should also ensure every single page on your site has a meta description and title tag. That doesn’t mean copying and pasting the same one across the whole site, but rather creating custom descriptions for each page.

It’s important to remember that a meta description is the first impression someone gets when discovering your site via organic search. So include the keywords for that page, keep to the point, and give the user a short but useful description of what to expect.

5. UX is everything.

Your user journey is crucial to ensuring a good experience on site, and increasing the chances of conversion. Whether this is a purchase, an inquiry or signing up to a newsletter, you need to make sure that you have the content and navigation to get your users there.

Without a clear and easy-to-use design, those users might become bored, confused or even frustrated with the site – and then leave before they’ve seen everything you have to offer. Plus, not all content is created equal. So build custom content for your site, segment it up,  and use your headers to make navigating the information as simple as possible and to support Google spiders crawling your site for information.

You should test your site regularly to make sure your user experience is optimised, across all devices, for all types of users and across all of the different desired outcomes. If you’re not seeing the sales or enquiries you were expecting, it could be down to a poor user journey, unclear call-to-actions or generally poor website design. Failure to address these issues will lead to high bounce rates, unhappy users and the potential to be knocked down in the SERPs.

Those top tips should get you off to a good start, but there’s always more to learn with the world of SEO. If you think your site could do with a tuneup, or you’re not reaching your goals and objectives online, then give me a shout at poppy@ilkagency.com. The kettle’s always on!