In an increasingly competitive digital market, having a great website is quite simply not enough. Search engines aren’t human; they don’t interpret your website in the same way as potential clients do, so you need to make sure that your website is appealing to search engines as well as your target audience. The way to do this is via onsite optimisation, a critical process which ensures on and off-site brand engagement and trust.
Onsite optimisation involves continuous investment, time and updating to ensure that your website is visible among a myriad competitors. Whilst this can seem a daunting task, there are some simple things that digital marketing experts do to make sure their clients come out on top. Here, we take a look at some of the top tricks of the optimisation trade.
Keyword content
By identifying the most common search terms in relation to your business, SEO professionals are able to create keyword targeted content that will help search engines to identify your website as relevant to the searcher:
- Give each page a unique and descriptive title and description which features your primary keyword.
- Include your keywords in URLs, meta descriptions, title tags and alt tags.
- Create a page, or reassign existing pages, for each identified keyword.
Target Audience
By identifying your target audience you can make sure that your content counts. In addition to being keyword heavy, content should be original, engaging and appealing, to encourage conversions once the customer reaches the page; there is no point in getting someone to your website if, once they are there, there is nothing of interest:
- Examine competitor sites and create new content, or improve existing content to meet or exceed their standards.
- Do a full analysis of existing pages; merge duplicate pages, remove less relevant or substandard ones, and add new pages to meet your keyword strategy.
- Ensure that, where necessary, calls to action are present and located prominently so that your target audience is encouraged to act.
- Undertake a full content review to determine whether all content is of a high quality and representative of your brand’s ethos and expertise.
- Incorporate social media sharing buttons in blogs and general content to encourage user engagement.
Links
By adding links you will improve your visibility to search engines and create a useful tool to help guide your website users to critical pages. By analysing your inbound traffic, a digital marketing company will be able to tell you where your online traffic comes from and areas that you can optimise or improve traffic:
- Ensure that your key landing pages and your main navigation bar link to your most important pages.
- Add relevant links, which open in a new browser.
- Once published, make sure that all of the links work.
- Remove superfluous links that direct traffic away from your site.
- Create a brand-specific 404 error page which directs users to alternative (working) links.
Some elements of online optimisation need to be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that the website is fully functional and visible. Whilst it is possible to undertake some optimisation tasks independently, without the guidance of a professional digital marketing SEO team, it is unlikely that your website will perform to its full potential. If you are experiencing low traffic or a drop in website traffic, it may be worth investing in professional onsite optimisation services to help you to get an edge on your competitors.
