How to Optimise Your Website for Search Engines?

Considering the unforeseen growth that occurred in the digital and e-commerce sectors, there is no doubt that creating a business website is an absolute must for any business nowadays. And once a business owns a website, getting the website noticed on search engines and reaching customers in critical moments is what matters most. Because with tons of businesses competing in the industry, ensuring you are listed high on top of search engines like Google is the key to winning customers online.

And when it comes to the improvement of a website’s searchability and visibility, SEO plays a crucial role.

Even if you are at the start of your journey, you might already be aware of the fact that SEO is important and has something to do with search engines.

But before we dive deep into what SEO is and how to optimise the website for search engines, let’s first begin with the definition of ‘search engines‘.

What are search engines?

A search engine is software specially built to retrieve information according to the user’s query. We can call it an answering machine that provides a list of results that match what the user is trying to find. And the best part is it takes merely a second to identify results in a database that match specified criteria.

For example, today, for a Google search, we just open up the Google website and type a set of a word in the search bar as per our query; all it takes is just 0.69 seconds to come up with billions of answers. Even if Google is the one search engine that most people look up to for everyday searches, other popular search engines include Bing, Yahoo, StartPage, DuckDuckGo, Baidu etc.

What is search engine optimisation (SEO)?

Before we define SEO, it is important to understand how the search engines we discussed above find results. Mainly, the process occurs in three stages, crawling, indexing and ranking.

• Crawlers discover the pages that exist on the web.
• Then, once a page is crawled, the search engines try to understand what the content is about so that you can rank for the right search queries.
• Later the search engine ranks content on a number of factors.

And this is where SEO comes in.

Simply put, Search engine optimisation is the practice of optimising website content to maximise its visibility when people search for services or products related to your business. SEO focuses on upgrading the rankings in the organic search results, and it is one great way to get people to your website for free!

Now that we got some introductory ideas about both search engines and search engine optimisation let’s break down why SEO is so crucial for businesses.

There is no substitute for SEO for your business

Suppose you own a painting company in Melbourne. No wonder you will want your website to appear in the top search results when people Google “painting company Melbourne”.

Because the higher you rank, the more users will visit your page.

A study by Backlinko shows that the first result in Google’s organic search results gets an average CTR of 27.6%, which is 10x higher than a page ranking in position no 10.

The study also states that only 0.63% of Google searchers clicked on something from the second page and beyond.

Now the question is how exactly would you climb those rankings and become one of the first results that people see?

One answer is search engine optimisation.

Search engines are getting smarter. And when ranking relevant results, Google search and other search engines focus on some website performance metrics like query meaning, relevance, usability or quality to determine where websites rank on a result page.

And SEO is one great way to convince search engines like Google to rank your page. SEO activities take place both on-site and off-site. And working on pages and improving websites enables you to create relevant, high-quality content, increasing the potential for users to find your website and your brand.

Alongside securing a high ranking, SEO assures quality traffic that primarily converts, offers impressive ROI, boosts leads and sales, saves money, and develops credibility and trust as well. Most importantly, it is not a one-time affair; it is a long-term strategy leading to increased results for several years.

Some best practices to optimise your website for search engines

SEO generally involves certain qualitative content principles and technical improvements. So to set you up for SEO success in 2023 and beyond, here are some of the proven practices that you can consider applying in regard to search engine optimisation.

Perform thorough keyword research

Keywords are the search term people use when conducting research online. And keyword research is one of the first steps that you need to follow when creating content for your website.

Because it’s of no good, just throwing keywords on your page. If the keywords on your page aren’t relevant to what people are searching for, there is no chance of finding your content among the results. And this makes advanced-level keyword research and keyword selection more important than ever.

Ensure the use of keyword research tools that makes it easier to find the right keywords to target. Consider the relevancy, authoritativeness and volume when selecting keywords. Put priority on long tail keywords; as compared to the popular head terms, they are less competitive and make up the vast majority of all searches performed on Google.

A study by SEMrush shows that despite having low search volumes, long tail keywords make up a large percentage of overall searches when added together.

Keyword research provides specific search data. You can understand the competitive landscape and get to see which domains are already competing for those respective keywords. Conducting keyword research also helps you understand the search intent, and this enables you to create and identify content that aligns with why people are using a keyword to find products or services in your niche.

Write value-rich content

Quality and authoritative content are key drivers that boost rankings. Create quality content targeting the keywords you selected that your users are already using. Put your focus on both core pages (like the home page, service page, and product pages) and blog article content and target those with your keywords.

Use descriptive and accurate titles for your pages. Add your primary keyword early on in your content; it can be among the first couple of sentences or within the first paragraph because Google puts more weight on terms that appear at the top of a webpage. Whatever the placement is, make sure to insert keywords naturally without compromising the quality.

Try to avoid duplicate content, or it can cost you a loss of rankings for your web pages. Maintain Regular content update account for trends, new offerings or seasons. Because regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best indicators of a website’s relevancy.

Metadata

Metadata is structured information that helps search engines process information and understands the context of your pages. It lets search engines index your pages for the right results. So it is crucial to update metadata to boost your search rankings. When updating metadata, some key places to focus include the title tag, meta description and image tags.

The title tag is one most important metadata on your page that is displayed at the top of a browser window. This helps search engines understand the context of a webpage. Add keywords and the name of your brand and create a unique page title keeping it to 50-60 characters in length.

The meta description is displayed as part of the search snippet under a page name and URL when people search on search engines. A page’s meta description impacts a page’s CTR in Google’s SERP because it can significantly impact user behaviour. So it is crucial to optimise meta description for SEO. Include a concise description adding targeted keywords, and keep it to 150-160 characters in length.

Alt tags provide search engines with information about an image and allow them to index an image correctly. It eventually improves accessibility by describing what an image is about, not just to the search engine crawlers but to the users. Keep it short and descriptive using just one or two keywords.

Get quality backlinks

Backlinks are highly correlated with higher Google rankings. The more high-quality backlinks you obtain, the more it ensures your success in SERP.

A study published on Backlinko mentioned that pages with more backlinks tend to rank higher than pages with fewer backlinks.

SEO backlinks are a link from another website to your website. SEO backlinks ensure website growth in many ways. The links work as a trust signal to search engines because they demonstrate that your website has authority. Backlink building also improves your website’s visibility and makes it much easier to find your website online. As a result, you get more website visitors through referral traffic.

When it comes to link building, it takes time and strategy. Perform competitive backlink research by examining the backlink profile thoroughly because authority is a crucial consideration. Definitely, you can have backlinks from spammy, low-quality websites, but they won’t be as impactful as backlinks from authoritative sites.

Work on your website design

You need to design and develop SEO-friendly websites because if your website is poorly designed, that leads to users clicking away. People look for the fastest and simplest way possible when they read stuff online. So when designing your website, keep website navigation in mind to satisfy users first. Turn navigation simple and obvious because most of the users have a very short attention span.

Try all the ways to improve your site’s loading speed, as site loading speed is one of the rare ranking factors that search engines consider in their algorithm. Also, users tend to abandon a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Consider the font style, font size, headers and subheaders, line height and length, and the placement and size of visuals as well.

As a larger percentage of searches conducts through mobile devices, responsive mobile design has become another core component for SEO success. One of Statista’s reports showed that 58.99% of all website traffic worldwide comes from mobile phones.

So no wonder Google is using mobile-friendly sites as a ranking factor. And to ensure a quality mobile user experience, you must design a website in a simpler direction with no flash or pop-ups and consider the path of the user’s finger.

Monitor your SEO growth

Once you are done with all the updates to your website, understand how your strategies are working and whether you are successful in driving people to your website. From performance to coverage to enhancement, monitor every data on a regular basis.

Some of the important SEO KPIs include:

• Engagement time
• Content efficiency
• Organic CTR
• Branded traffic
• Average time on site
• Search rankings
• ROI

And many more. Monitor how people see and click on your site in Google searches, how your keywords are performing, and which pages from your website Google has indexed. Also, track your impression and clicks over time. Check the bounce rate and conversion.

You should use SEO tools to gain valuable insights. Suppose you can track your search visibility and monitor the early results of website optimisation with the Google Search Console. Tools like Ahrefs can also help you monitor how your search position for the target keywords is changing. There are many backlink analytics tools like Moz, Ahrefs or Majestic that you can use to get the score that estimates the quality of your link profile.

Whether you are failing to get new visitors to your website or struggling to rank above your competitors in the search engines, take action now to refresh your website. And the above points highlight some proven practices to look out for when you are planning to optimise your website for search engines. The sooner you do it, the better!