How to improve your website's SEO
Many businesses find that although their site is in the Google index, its pages do not show up in searches. There are a number of changes that can be made to improve a site’s rankings for specific searches and/or traffic from search engines to help fix this problem. This is a process known as search engine optimisation (SEO).
SEO involves changing a site’s content and code in order to make the site rank higher in results for relevant searches. The easiest and most effective ways to do this include:
- Change site copy to include words users actually search for; a ranking for a term that nobody searches for is meaningless.
- Removing jargon, many sites use complicated industry jargon instead of words people use. As an example, did you know it isn’t car insurance but motor insurance? Neither do most people who use search engines looking to insure their car.
- Use local terminology; words in different parts mean different things (thong comes instantly to mind). If you market is Americans, using “cell phones” rather than “mobile phones” makes sense. Ditto “vacation” over “holiday”.
- Be specific, overt and use repetition; you may know what you do, but be sure to state it overtly. “We are specialists who can help you” isn’t as effective for SEO as “Looking for an accountant? XYZ Accountants can help meet your business’s accounting needs”. Don’t over do it, but be sure to use the keywords at least a few times on a page.
- Build new pages; search engines rank individual pages, and no one page can rank for every search term. Building new pages for specific areas, for example separate pages for divorce lawyers and corporate lawyers, will help a site rank for a larger number of unique and different searches.
- Get links from other sites; the more links a site has, the more important it is, and the higher its pages will rank. Building links is hard, but getting links from friends with a website and from partner businesses is usually fairly easy. Directories are another good source. The WMS Consulting website lists a great number of directories that can be submitted to, many for free.
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