About 1/3 of your site’s traffic comes from organic search. This accounts for more traffic than your social and paid traffic combined, which means SEO is pretty important. If you run a business, have a blog or work in marketing, then it’s important you know the basics of SEO to help rank your site.
Links
Links are vital to your website because without them, your site is going to remain low in search results. For years, links have been an important ranking factor on Google search. Having links is like having someone vouch for you, and the more you have the more trustworthy you are. Here are two ways you can get backlinks – and they don’t require special technical skills:
- Write testimonials for clients you’ve worked with. It’s an easy and underrated method of gaining links.
- Publishing a study your company has carried out. Other companies will see the study and will WANT to mention it on their own blog, or link back to you as the source.
Content
The reason content is important for SEO is common sense. But also, Google wants you to produce fresh content so they know your business is still active. This encourages users to keep visiting your site, and gives a signal to search engines that you’re delivering useful and relevant information.
User experience
If the user experience isn’t up to standard, this will negatively affect your SEO. If your site takes a long time to load, users will just bounce. As more and more users leave your site, Google receives a signal that your user experience isn’t good enough, thus causing you to lose your ranking position.
Meta descriptions and titles
The title and meta description of your page appears in search results. It’s probably the first thing a user will see of your site. The meta description isn’t a direct ranking signal for Google, but it does have some importance. Basically, it helps users decide if they should click on your site. And if people aren’t clicking, then Google will drop your ranking.
Mobile
Having a mobile-friendly site is more important than ever. At the moment, Google’s algorithms analyse the desktop version of your site first, but very soon, they’ll use page speed as a mobile ranking factor. Mobile-first indexing is here, and you need to make sure your website is ready.
These are proactive methods you can use to improve your SEO – even if you lack technical skills. Make sure you’re going after important metrics such as links and content. And don’t forget to get ahead by optimising your site for mobile!
