How To Improve Website SEO

In order to increase website traffic, it is essential to learn about the basic SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) technique. One option is to leave everything up to a professional service (such as RankPay that I’ve reviewed in the past) or large, reliable company. Obviously there will be a cost involved. Whether you rely on these services or do it yourself, without knowing the reason behind the importance of SEO you would likely to struggle to expand your business.

Most of the major search engines such as Google and Bing determine the website ranks by using an algorithm, such as amount and content provided on each page, as well as the level of “optimisation” provided on the page.

How To Improve Website SEO

1: Use Relevant Keywords

It is critical that you find keywords that related to the topic of your post, so that search engines consider the page as relevant and they invite web users to your page by ranking it high. Google Adwords Keyword Planner is one tool to find suggested words.

My recommendation is Jaaxy, as I reviewed a while ago, as it offers many extra functions such as keyword competition rates, how many searches are made in a month and other high-ranked websites using the same keywords.

Try targeting niche keywords with low competition and make it specific. For example a keyword “fashion” would be too broad with millions of competitors and there’s no uniqueness, whereas “men’s accessories” would be less competitive, and “men’s hats” would be even less. If you ran an antique furniture shop in New York, you’d like to set your keyword as “antique furniture shop New York” rather than just “antique shop“. Therefore before deciding your keywords you need to check how competitive they are using Jaaxy for example.

Use the word(s) several times throughout the page naturally, i.e. don’t use the same words over & over again or mix irrelevant words in meaninglessly to the page content. These are called “old black-hat SEO techniques“, your website may be penalized by the search engines and it will risk the removal from their index.

Title Tag and META Description Tag

The most relevant keywords should be in the title. Search engines allow up to 60 characters in the title. META Description tag once used to be important but now considered less, because Google and Yahoo do not utilize it in the ranking process, although some other engines still do.

2. Choose Good and Right Domain Name

If you choose the keyword in the domain name, it will help increasing the web traffic. Domain name should have a longevity and unique enough to attract visitors too. You should buy a domain name rather than to use a free service. Free service (Subdomain such as example.yahoo.com tends to be ranked lower.

Namecheap.com and Godaddy.com are popular to obtain your domain name from, as they’re reliable and for reasonable prices (around $10 per year). My No. 1 recommendation is Siterubix.com, as it offers web-hosting by Wealthy Affiliate within the same platform. Meaning if you have any problem you receive almost an instant reply from experts.

3: Create Unique Content

The page content has to have a quality and has its originality. It is essential to write an article with your own words. Copying & pasting paragraphs from other sites would be stealing and duplicating, therefore not only your site penalised by the search engines but it will harm the original site.

Text should be no misspelling, and should grammatically make sense. Grammar checker program such as Grammarly.com may be useful.

It’s also important for your page to have a clear intention and not to mislead or confuse the readers. The content of your article should be what’s described in the search engine.

Your website design should have an up-to-date, modern look to attract visitors. You can hire a professional web designer but by learning how your site should laid out, which colors are used and how images are placed, it will create your own uniqueness. And more importantly, you should use the latest web publishing platform. Old software may use javascript or flash in navigation instead of HTML, which cannot be picked up by search engines.

4: Create A Sitemap

A sitemap is a list of your content pages. Search engine read this file to crawl your website. It can provide the structure of your site, how often it is updated and when it was last updated. In the beginning your website has few external links. Search engine web crawlers will be able to find links from one page to another. Also as you add more contents/pages, your website will be larger and more complex. The sitemap will help web crawlers to find the latest pages easily.

5: Join Google Plus and Other Social Media

Joining Social Media and sharing your posts is one of the most advantageous way to make your website known. With Google Plus, you will be able to open a business account, join as many communities as you wish, and share your web posts to the community members as well as to the entire public. Your shared posts on Google Plus can be indexed and ranked in Google search, meaning visitors can be invited to your website, therefore will work in synergy.

6: Other Tips How to Improve Website SEO

Headings, Bold, Italics

Search Engines consider the importance of keywords according to the size of the font, expressed in HTML code as <h1>, <h2>, <h3> and so on. Title is usually set for the largest font <h1> and, you should use the 2nd largest heading font <h2> for sub-titles which should contain similar keywords . With any web publishing platform, there should be a heading size indicator, such as at the top menu.

Bold and Italics can also be focused by search engines. Therefore headings sizes, bold and Italics should be used according to the importance. However they shouldn’t be overused, as it can make the entire article look messy.

Good Backlinks

When another website links to your page, it is called a backlink, or inward/incoming link. It only works in your favor if the other website is more popular (i.e. more visitors) than yours. There are several ways to build backlinks to your site; submit your site to a web directory such as Dmoz.org, press release distribution, link exchange with other websites, if you are good writer, guest blogging in someone else’s site is another way.

Avoid Spam Comments

Use an anti-spam comment plugin and avoid any spam comments on your website. Comments with spam links give adverse effect to your site, therefore should be deleted immediately. Equally you should not spam other websites to build backlinks to your site. It will likely for search engines to remove your site from their index permanently.