Launching a new website is exciting. But sometimes you click live and then … nothing. There are many reasons why your new website isn’t getting the results you had hoped for, even after you feel you’ve done everything right, or worse, paid someone to do it for you. A common misconception that many people have is that SEO is complicated and requires the handy work of a technological whizz to navigate around the back end of a website. The truth is, you don’t have to be a fully qualified SEO specialist to fix the issues that are stopping your website from getting the website traffic it deserves. Most people who build websites have a limited knowledge of SEO, so you often only need a basic understanding of what will drive results in order to succeed. Here are some of the ways you can optimise your website to stand out from competitors and get found online.
Title Tags
Title tags are an important feature that not only help search engines understand the content of your page but also gives the user their first impression of your website. Therefore it is important to ensure you have a clear and compelling title, as it can often be the make or break factor. It is also a good idea to keep your title tags under 70 characters long as most search engine results page will only display this many characters before cutting the remaining off. We recommend using the format Title of Page | Keyword | Name of your organisation, which is the format most SEO specialists use for increasing website traffic.
Meta Descriptions
While the impact of meta descriptions on the rankings of websites is debated, they do play a vital role in persuading a user to click. Search engines display the meta description in the results page when the searched for phrase is within the description, which is why it is vital that these are optimised. Similar to title tags, meta descriptions also perform better when they are under a certain character limit, as it minimises the risk of certain keywords being left out on the search engine results page. We recommend keeping the meta description under 160 characters long, so you have a better chance of getting found online.
Add Alt Attributes
Alt attributes are used by Google’s image search function to generate relevant visual results. The alt attribute or alt text is two or three words which describe the picture and helps Google categorise it accordingly. All images on a website should have an alt attribute to ensure you will appear in image searches. This is an SEO element often missed by web builders but it’s quick and easy to add them in and get yourself ranking for Google image results.
Keywords
Keyword research is an essential task that SEO specialists perform for optimisation, as it helps us understand what customers are searching for and more importantly, determines which industry related keywords will help you get found online. Once you have chosen your keywords, you can check their website traffic potential by using a keyword research tool such as Ahrefs Keywords Explorer. A common mistake that users make when choosing keywords is targeting the most popular keywords only, which can be detrimental to your ranking since there are only ten spots available in the first page of the search engine results. Instead, aim for low competition, long tail keywords which will result in more organic website traffic.
Once you have made these adjustments, keep in mind that it may take a couple of months to see any results, so be patient and you will eventually find out if the changes made were beneficial. At Digital Freak, we pride ourselves on being SEO specialists, so if you don’t feel comfortable fiddling around with the back end of your website, we can do it for you! We offer a free SEO audit which can help determine what needs to be altered to help you get found online.
To claim your free SEO audit contact us today and mention this blog.
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