Small businesses frequently make common mistakes with their websites, thinking that once they have one, even if it’s custom-made, they will quickly rank high on Google and attract many new customers. While this can happen sometimes, it’s much more likely that you will need to put in some effort to improve your SEO.

With an average click through rate (CTR) of 36.4%, you’ll benefit from more than a third of clicks from a search engine if you can rank a keyword term in the first position. The top three listings take 58.4% of all the searches! That is why seo is something that all business should take very seriously. [Source Optify CTR Study]

5 Tips to Improve SEO and Rise to the Top!

To make your website rise to the top you need to follow these tips.

improve seo

1. Keyword Selection

The keyword phrase (a term longer than one word, for example “Employment Solicitors Manchester”) that the user will enter into the search engine is hugely important and sits at the very foundation of getting top search engine rankings.

Think about the term your ideal client will enter into the search engine when they are looking for the results that your service can provide.

Your company name and your location are good for brand awareness but it is not addressing the scores of people that don’t yet know about you.

2. Quality content that is keyword optimised

In order for Google to fully understand what your content is about, it first of all sends a spider along to crawl your pages. The spider looks at pre defined areas of the page that help it translate the content and report back as to what the content is about.

The areas that you need to consider are:

  • Page Title
  • Heading
  • Sub headings
  • Alt tags for images
  • URL of the page

All of these elements of the page are considered by the search engines when indexing your content in the correct place so that your ideal visitor can find it. But remember that if your page is over optimised, in other words you are writing for the search engines, then it may not be easily decipherable for a human reader. Think about the user experience first.

3. Internal Linking

Internal linking is about how and where you link a page or post to other content that is relevant within your website. The point being that the search engines want to provide the user with the best possible experience they can.

Continuing with the “Employment Solicitors Manchester” search term earlier, it would be of benefit if you could then link to pages containing information and references to employment tribunals, constructive dismissal cases, and workplace discrimination.

By doing this you are providing greater detail for the user, which will help them make a judgement on your suitability to help them and the search engines will also appreciate. If the internal linking is managed correctly it will contribute to improving SEO, edging your content closer and closer to the very top search engine rankings where all the clicks happen.

Google and the other search engines rely highly on other people linking to your website in order for them to establish how popular your website is. The more popular the website, the higher your return in the search results.

The goal here is to create highly valuable, unique, entertaining, thought provoking, controversial content that people want to talk about and share.

The more people that link back to your site signifies to the search engines the popularity and value of the piece of content. Over time generating more links back to your content will result in greater search engine traffic. However, this does not mean that all links are equal; the quality and relevance of the link is highly important too.

Google takes into consideration where the link has come from. If your content is about employment solicitors then a link from the law society is a valuable link. If you receive a link back from a Comedy Club blog then as complimentary as it is that you have received a link it is less relevant and holds less authority.

5. Have a Social Media plan

Social signals such as being liked, tweeted or +1’d now impact your search engine rankings.

That is why you need to have a social media plan that includes identifying which social channels your customers frequent, tracking social conversations, trending topics, managing your online reputation and developing and sharing optimised content.

By ensuring you can easily create and post relevant content to social channels on a regular basis, you will not only improve your search rankings, but reach more potential customers when your content is linked to, liked, or shared.

Search engine optimisation techniques are constantly changing. What doesn’t change, and in fact becomes more prominent, is the fact that if you invest the time creating quality content that has value with the readers on a regular basis you will be able to improve seo and find your site and pages getting top search engine rankings, driving more clicks and ultimately converting to a higher number of sales.