Search Engine Optimisation is how you can get your website onto Google’s page one – and keep it there. Unfortunately for business owners who expect instant ROI, search engine optimisation is a lengthy process that requires a minimum of 3 – 6 months to start yielding visible results. However, when the results do start rolling in, they don’t stop (if you manage your monthly SEO properly).
Managing your SEO isn’t as simple as “adding keywords to my website.” If it were, we would surely be out of business as digital marketers. Search Engine Optimisation is a culmination of countless micro-activities, tweaks, updates and expansions – over a period of years – in order to build a detailed and favourable rapport between your website and search engines like Google.
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How people find products and services
We’re going to put our necks out and guess that you did a fair amount of your festive season shopping online this year. You may have even Googled names of brands or products to see which online retailers are offering you the best deal.
An overwhelming majority of internet users begin the process of buying a product or using a brand’s services with an internet search. “Embroidered Christmas Stockings” is an example of something you might have searched during the last festive season.
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Where does website SEO come in?
Based on a plethora of performance indicators, search engines will assess websites selling embroidered stockings. On Google’s results pages, it will display websites in order of how well their SEO has been paid attention to. Websites with no SEO can still rank on Google, but will most likely only appear on pages two (if they’re lucky) or lower.
Since most internet users are likely to limit their clicks to the top three positions on page one, your website is practically invisible if it’s not on page one. This is where SEO comes in, to ensure your website stays visible online as competitor websites come and go.
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5 top tips for SEO in 2022
How well your website does on Google and the like depends on an insanely complex algorithm. The “ranking factors” are often changing, and shifting goal posts require constant monitoring so that websites remain compliant to current best-practices. As it stands, below is a bulleted summary of the most important SEO knowledge we can impart:
1. Improve website speed
Who likes waiting while a very slow website loads a page you’re looking for at snail pace? The answer is nobody, and that’s exactly why Google frowns on slow websites. Like a parent coming home from work to find their toddler covered in permanent marker.
SEO thought leaders across the planet have held a consensus for years now: aim to make your website as fast as possible. As marketers who actively manage SEO for many of our clients, we have the tools to dramatically improve the loading speed of your site.
2. Update core content
The core content of your website can be considered the pages holding the most important information. These include your Home page, your About page, your Services page, and others. Search engines love seeing websites update their content, so now is the best time ever to refresh your site’s wording.
The wording found on each page will be carefully assessed and ranked according to readability and relevancy factors. This is why we don’t recommend simply sitting down and writing whatever comes to mind. Core content needs to be carefully planned, written, and optimised.
3. Start writing blogs
Research shows one clear fact about SEO: writing blog articles does help. Websites that blog 1 – 2 times per month receive over double the online traffic than ones not blogging at all. And if you really want to start pushing for Google’s top 3 positions on the first page, bump your blogging up to between 6 and 10 articles per month.
Blog writing forms part of the broader marketing area called content marketing. We are highly skilled at writing SEO-centric blog articles of any length for any business in any industry. We apply sound research and industry analysis to develop blog articles that seriously bolster a website’s SEO performance.
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4. Invest in backlinks
Backlinks are exactly that: links that point back to your website from other parts of the vast online landscape. Backlinks can come from multiple sources, including other websites, social media, forums, and newsletters. A backlink is shows that a website trusts another enough to send its own visitors there.
These sorts of digital handshakes are important SEO ranking factors, but you don’t want to go out and pay the first person who offers you 1000 backlinks in a month. These paid for backlinks are almost always from low quality, spammy websites. You can have 1000 backlinks, but if they are all terrible quality, it could actually hurt your website’s SEO.
5. Google Business Profile
Previously called Google My Business, this SEO product from Google is a vital tool in the belt of any business hoping to attract customers in their area. Optimising your website to appeal to local clients is called local SEO, and Google Business Profile is one way of making sure your brand and website stay visible to your community.
Guess who has ample experience successfully managing Google Business Profile accounts for clients? This digital marketing company does! Let us claim your business listing, set it up using your business information, and manage your local SEO to keep you coming up when people execute ‘near me’ searches for your products or services.
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Experienced SEO consultants in South Africa
WSI Durban has the backing and resources of the world’s largest network of digital marketers. This means we have the right tools to get the job done, and we have the results to prove that we can do it. Don’t let your website spend another day amongst the cobwebs below page one! Start a SEO project with us and get the online attention your brand deserves.