Optimize Your Website With These 5 SEO Tips
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
SEO can be a very scary term for many business owners, and while it can be a very complex beast, there are a few simple measures that you can take to improve your website’s SEO ranking.
01 / Sign up for Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free service that helps you manage your site's presence in Google search results. Through Google Search Console, you can request that Google index your site, meaning changes you've made can show up in search results sooner. Once you’ve connected Google Search Console to your website, you can check your analytics to see which keywords visitors are using to find your site — which in turn can then help you further optimize the copy you use on your website.
02 / Install an SSL Certificate
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is the standard measurement for a secure internet connection on your website. This layer of security prevents criminals from reading or modifying information transferred between users and websites. When you see a padlock icon next to the URL in the address bar, or “https” before the website URL that means SSL protects the website you are visiting. If you’re using Squarespace or Shopify, SSL is automatically applied to your website meaning you don’t have that extra hassle and your website is classified as “secure”.
03 / Add Page Titles and Meta Descriptions
Ensure that every page of your website has an appropriate page title as well as a meta description - which is a short description of the content on the page and speaks to your offering. This, in essence, tells Google what your website (and each page of your website) is about and helps users find you. Search engine users read meta descriptions to decide which search result to click. Make your site inviting by keeping your descriptions short, relevant, and readable.
Page Title: Keep it short & simple and under 60 - 70 characters
Page Meta Descriptions: Keep it under 180 characters. Optimise your descriptions with clear keywords but avoid keyword-stuffing.
The ultimate goal is to encourage visitors to click through to your website so think about how you can communicate that your site, page, or product will solve a problem they have.
04 / Optimize Your Image Sizes
Uploading clear and high-quality images to your website is always important for visual effect, but it is important to ensure that the file sizes of your images are optimised and not too large as this will result in your site load time being severely impacted (which in turn will negatively impact your SEO and user interaction). As a general rule of thumb, try and get all your images to be roughly around 500KB and under in size. For banner images or images that will be seen across the screen large, you should also try and keep to at least 2000px in width to ensure they are not pixelated. All other images you can aim for a width of around 1500px. You can use Adobe Photoshop, or other photo editing software (e.g. the Photos App on Mac) to resize your images to the desired dimensions in pixels. For reducing the photo size itself once it has been cropped to the desired dimensions, if you don’t have Photoshop, you could find various online options such as tinypng or tinyjpg.
05 / Rename Or Add Alt Text to Images
Your images can be a great source of organic traffic to your site if you invest the time to name them descriptively. Describe what is in the photo in the most informative and clear way you can (think of keywords). The auto generated letter-and-number names from your camera do not serve any SEO purpose. Instead, use the image name to tell Google what’s in it so that your images can be found and direct traffic to your website. Images are also descriptively named for accessibility best-practice so that visually-impaired site visitors can have an understanding of what’s on your page when using a screen reader. Accessibility reinforces SEO, so rather try to describe an image using clear, descriptive words rather than keyword-stuffing in an attempt to boost SEO. Most times, the alt text of an image is directly pulled from the image file name, but if you are using Squarespace, you can amend the alt text for images directly once already uploaded to your website so no need to rename beforehand.
The most important thing with SEO is to know it takes time (patience) and consistency - so don’t expect any quick fixes. Even as a website designer, I can tell you that working with us may not guarantee you to rank highly on search engines like Google. Copywriting, good responsive design, and consistent and effective marketing efforts all contribute to your website SEO. Because the more people visit your site and the longer they stay on your site, it tells Google that your website has valuable content. So it truly is a holistic journey that will take time to build.
If you are overwhelmed and want to hand all of this over to an expert, head to our Services page to read more about our offerings or our Portfolio page to see some of the websites we’ve created for clients. We partner with great copywriters that can help you with SEO-driven copywriting for your website if that’s something you’re interested in.