Increasing website traffic is the goal of many companies who are aiming to sell their services or products online, but business owners are often unsure of the right tactics to obtain more visitors.
One of the quickest options to rapidly boost the amount of visitors to your site is through paid search advertising, allowing your business to feature prominently at the top of important keyword searches relating to your business on search engines like Google and Bing. This strategy is dependant on your budget however, with your business competing against others within your industry on a pay-per-click basis.
But paid search isn’t the only way to boost your website’s prominence on these search engines. A core part of any good online marketing plan is a tailored search engine optimisation (SEO) plan, with specific strategies to help your business organically display in the searches of your target audience. With the right content, targeted keywords and website optimisations your website can start ranking higher over time, as search engines like Google begin to recognise your company as a leader within your industry with an optimised online presence. In this article we’ll detail a number of SEO strategies to help you optimise your website properly and organically receive more online traffic to your business’ website.
What Exactly Is Search Engine Optimisation?
Put simply, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy aimed at enhancing a website’s visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) organically. Unlike Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which involves paid per click advertising to increase visibility, SEO focuses on optimising various elements of a website to improve its relevance and authority in the eyes of search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. By aligning with the algorithms that govern search engine rankings, SEO enables websites to attract more organic traffic, thereby increasing their online presence and potential for business growth.
That might sound complicated, but in reality, its simply about making your website more user-friendly and matching your target customers search query with engaging content across your website pages. Websites that are engaging, user friendly and helpful to the search engine user are simply more likely to be shown by these search engines, so its important to have proper SEO strategies in place to help boost the credibility of your site.
The SEO strategies you’ll see below are tactics that almost any business owner can start today, either by utilising the services of a digital marketing agency or on their own with the right technical know-how. From creating engaging content to optimising your website for mobile devices, we’re going to dig deeper into what a high-performing website looks like and the type of content you need to feature across your business’ website.
Keyword Research and Optimisation
At the heart of every successful SEO strategy is a meticulous keyword research process, helping to guide potential customers to your digital doorstep. By discerning the terms and phrases frequently used by your target audience, you can gain invaluable insights into their search intent and preferences. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and UberSuggest empower businesses to unearth high-value keywords with relative ease, featuring interactive dashboards that quickly provide insight into what people are looking for within your industry. But the real work begins once you’ve built an understanding of those keywords.
Being able to leverage this knowledge by embedding these keywords across your website, from page headings to meta tags to image alt text, is a key step to success in this process, and one of the core ways that search engines can recognise your site as relevant to their users search query. While this can be a technical, time-consuming process, it is a very important one and one of the first tasks we perform here at Sky High Digital when building a new website. Without that strong keyword foundation your website’s traffic will suffer, so if you feel like your website needs a keyword audit be sure to action it as soon as possible.
Quality Content Creation
Content is king in the world of SEO, but with so many businesses online you need to ensure that your website’s pages and articles are full of relevant and helpful information. High-quality, relevant content not only engages your audience but also signals to search engines that your website is authoritative and valuable. You should aim to create informative, well-written content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience, making it more likely for them to stay engaged with your website and interact with additional pages.
Whether it’s blog posts, articles, videos, or new website pages, you should aim to provide valuable insights and solutions that keep visitors coming back for more. Regularly updating your website with fresh content also signals to search engines that your site is active and worthy of indexing.
Optimise Your On-Page Elements
Having strong, keyword focused content is key to success online, but if your pages and articles are not created with the right structure then your content may simply be not visible to search engines. This makes optimising on-page elements a crucial step for improving your website’s visibility. This includes optimising headings (H1, H2, etc.), meta descriptions, image alt text and much more to help Google, Bing and Yahoo match their users search query to your content.
If you are concerned that the backend of your website is not structured properly then you should consider a full website design audit, either by yourself or with the assistance of web design professionals.
Mobile Optimisation
One of the biggest mistakes we see in the SEO space is having a website designed solely for the desktop PC experience. This can quickly lead to a poor experience for mobile and tablet users visiting your site, with common issues including broken text, misaligned images and forms that simply don’t work. Optimising your website for mobile and tablet devices is no longer an optional step in the SEO world – it’s essential.
Your website needs to have a responsive design that adjusts to the size of the device it is being browsed by, with text adjustments, multiple element sizing options and design choices that factor in touchscreen devices all needing to be featured to enhance the user experience for mobile devices. Google and other search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites in their rankings, so investing in mobile optimisation can significantly impact your website’s visibility.
Taking Long-Term Action On Your Website’s SEO Strategy
Businesses need to remember that SEO is a long-term strategy, not something that will rapidly increase the amount of users to your site in a short time. Only by consistently creating content, updating your pages and adjusting to the needs of your users will you see results in this space, helping your business to rank higher as a trusted provider of information within your industry.
For many business owners and managers, the amount of time needed to pursue this SEO strategy is simply not available, which is where a digital marketing agency may need to step in. Here at Sky High Digital, we create high-functioning websites that are optimised both for the end-user and search engines, with a number of SEO strategies in place to help our clients succeed online.
If you’re looking to improve your website’s search ranking then consider the services of our Sky High Digital team. We’ll work with you to identify a target audience for your business and then optimising your website to suit the long-term goals of your business. To learn more about our web design and SEO services, call us today on (03) 9723 1783 or email hello@skyhighdigital.com.au.
