SEO, it is one of the fundamentals of the online world. 93% of all experiences on the internet start with a search engine, and 3/4 of search engine users will not even bother to click on to the second page of the search results. There is one big reason as to why other websites rank higher than yours, and that is because they focus more attention and effort on improving SEO. If you are finding that the SEO of your website is lacking and you are not receiving as much traffic as you would like, then this blog post is going to be very beneficial to you.
We are going to be covering 5 fundamental ways to improve your SEO in 2021. Across the board, search volumes have been increasing throughout 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, resulting in people heading online in search of things to do and information to find. Now is a great time to take advantage of trending topics and improve your website's SEO so you can place more focus on ranking for your target keywords. And if you are a car rental company you can benefit from our amazing offer including FREE initial SEO Onsite Optimization. You can also check other FREE SEO Services we provide here.
A lot of businesses are afraid of SEO, which is understandable, as it involves a lot of research, testing, and content writing. However, the benefits of it far outweigh the workload attached to it. Effective SEO can bring traffic to your website for years to come, and once the content is written and optimized, it just needs monitoring and improving based on how the search engine algorithms change.
We have a full blog post dedicated to this topic. You can read it here.
Let’s dive right into the exact methods!
#1 Improve Your Page Load Speed
No one likes a slow website, especially those that are visiting yours. A slow site can have a detrimental effect on whether or not users will stick around or simply exit before the web page even loads. Not only do users recognize this, but so do search engines and a slow website has a direct impact on a website's rankings.
The diagram below shows just how much a few seconds change in site speed impacts bounce rate (when a user clicks out of the site immediately upon entering)
If you are looking to find out what your website's page load speed is, you can do so by using tools such as Google's Page Speed Insights. This is a brilliant tool that will allow you to explore your website’s usability and see things from the users perspective. It identifies elements that are leading to slow loading time and a poor mobile user experience, and provides you with suggestions on how to improve and fix them.
Something as simple as optimizing your websites images by reducing their file size can have a significant impact on your site speed, and without knowing the current loading time of your website, it can be difficult to know if there are even issues that need fixing.
#2 Use Targeted Keywords & Phrases
Keywords and phrases play a major role in SEO. Since users are searching for information online using keywords and phrases, it only makes sense that you include them within your website. But, it is important to note that ‘keyword stuffing’ can have a negative effect, so you must use them properly and integrate them within the contents of your website. There are many places you can include targeted keywords and phrases. To name a few:
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- Image captions
- Within blog posts and web page content
- In the URLs of web pages
One of the best ways to use keywords within your website is to incorporate them into phrases. Most people will not search for ‘phone’, but they will search for ‘best phone for photography’ or ‘phones with the best battery life’. Over the years, SEO has become more and more optimized to daily life and how we as humans interact online and as people. It is important to consider that when integrating keywords and phrases into the content of your site.
#3 Post Relevant, High Quality Content To Your Blog
A blog is an excellent way to start connecting with your existing audience and further expand it. Not only does a blog help highlight the human side of your business, it shows that you care for your customers and are there to offer genuine advice, information and help.
A huge benefit of a blog is the ability to create and share localised content. This is content that is specific to your area of operation. You can write blog posts about places to go and things to see in the local area, so when holiday goers arrive, they know exactly what they are going to do and see!
By posting relevant, high quality content to your blog, you are over time going to further populate your website with keywords, phrases and popular search terms that is going to increase your rankings and lead to more search traffic, and search traffic can turn into paying customers, which will help you further expand your businesses operations.
#4 Focus On Webpage Meta Data
Metadata provides information about certain contents of a webpage. There are different kinds of metadata, but the most commonly referred to include:
- Title/Name
- Description
- File Format
The meta title is what you see when you find a webpage within the search engine results pages. For example, the meta title of this webpage is “5 Ways To Improve Your SEO In 2021 | VEVS Blog”. This title is incredibly important as it not only has an impact on your website's SEO value, it needs to be interesting enough to encourage users to click.
The meta description is like a snippet of the information to be found within the webpage. It gives the user an insight before they take the action to click. Just like the title, It should include a good summary, that is interesting enough to capture attention, yet includes relevant keywords in order to further provide SEO value.
File formats refer to information held within files that are included within the webpage. So, in the instance of a blog post, there will most likely be images placed within the post to further enhance the written information. You can optimise the file data of an image, by choosing a filename that includes relevant keywords, and also by adding an alt tag to the image providing some form of description about what is happening within said image.
Meta data is something that is often overlooked, simply because it is more technical SEO than just placing a few keywords and phrases within a webpage. However, it is highly important to make sure all meta data is filled in for every webpage within your site, to maximise your chances of getting search traffic and increasing your rankings.
#5 Optimize Your Website For Mobile
As you are most likely already aware, mobile is on the rise, and at a pretty alarming pace. Gone are the days where websites were being optimised for only desktop. In fact, mobile is now the new norm and the mobile first approach is being used within more and more websites because of the benefits of doing so.
Did you know that over 50% of online searches are made from mobile devices? The rest comes from desktop and tablet. Google has made changes over recent years to their algorithms, meaning that the mobile version of a website is crawled before the desktop version.
So, what does this mean for your website? Well, in simple terms, it means that if your website is not optimized for mobile, it could be having a huge impact on your rankings and your ability to increase search traffic.
Have you read our blog post on The Mobile First Approach & Why It Is Highly Important?
Conclusion
We are sure those improvements are going to have a positive impact on your websites SEO, and it is up to you to make sure your website can take full advantage of all the benefits effective SEO can provide.
We understand that the operations side of business can become hectic if not managed efficiently and with correctly implemented delegation of tasks. That is why alongside our Website Builder, we provide a range of digital marketing services for our clients, including SEO.
If you are interested in finding out how VEVS and our team of experts can help your business when it comes to marketing, please visit our digital marketing page for more information.
We have some other great blog posts for you to view:
> 3 Must-Have Essentials On Your Website Going Into 2021
> How To Pick A Domain For Your Businesses Website
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