5 Quick SEO Tips To Boost Your Business!

It’s almost the weekend and I know that we’re all very busy with everything that summer has to offer. For this reason, I thought I’d do a really short blog post just covering 5 quick tips to help you boost your search engine optimisation and therefore help grow your business. You never know, you might be able to get a couple done over the weekend!

USE KEYWORDS STRATEGICALLY

The first tip is to use keywords strategically. Now I know that the term “keywords” is used a lot and often it can be confusing as to what it actually means, so here is a brief overview. A keyword is basically any term or phrase that a potential customer might use when searching for your business.

However, rather than flooding your text areas with hundreds of keywords (which will be considered spamming by the search engines) try to use them strategically and with purpose. By this I mean that keyword phrases should be specifically related to your company; for example your location, products or services that you offer and even the style of work that you do. Equally keywords should be used in a conversational way, rather than with an obvious marketing voice. Here is an example sentence:

“Joe Bloggs Photography, based in Stroud, specialises in timeless, traditional wedding photography for couples in the Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Somerset and Wiltshire area.”

Just in this sentence we have managed to include the keywords “photography”, “Stroud”, “timeless”, “traditional”, “wedding photography”, “Gloucestershire”, “Oxfordshire”, “Somerset” and “Wiltshire”.

PROVIDE USEFUL, HIGH-QUALITY CONTENT

We’ve spoken about providing high-quality content many times in the past but I feel that it is worth mentioning again. If your business is offering a potential customer useful and high-quality content then they will spend more time on your site which is great for SEO. One of the easiest ways of providing regular high-quality content is by using a blog. This is a great way of keeping your customers and visitors up to date with your business without having to constantly update your website. Not to mention a great way of getting those keywords in conversationally!

PAGE LOADING SPEED

Google is just one of the search engines that takes page loading speeds seriously when ranking your website. I know that this might seem out of your hands but there are a few things you can do to improve your page loading speeds. One of the best ways to increase page speeds is to optimise your image sizes. This means saving your images using the “save for web” tool in Photoshop or other image editing software and making them an appropriate size. We would recommend making your images about 1500px on the longest side for your web pages.

TITLES AND HEADINGS

There are two reasons why titles and headings are great for search engine optimisation.

The first is that using titles and headings is one of the easiest and quickest ways to give good formatting to your content. Good formatting makes your content far more usable and readable for your customers which is great because it means they are more likely to stay on your website for longer. This is loved by search engines because it proves to them that you have useful and relevant content.

The second is that search engines rate keywords found in titles and headings more heavily that those found in regular text, so it’s great to get a few relevant keywords in there.

LAYOUT AND FORMAT

I know we just touched on this subject but here is a bit more detail about formatting your content for the best search engine results. Formatting your website content instantly improves readability and usability. This means that customers are more likely to stay on your site for longer and revisit your website, which is good for your SEO.

The best way to format and layout your content is to:

• Use an easy to read typography and to choose an appropriate font size.
• Use bold type and colour sparingly. It can be really distracting and when used too much can actually make your text harder to read.
• Use short paragraphs with proper line spacing.
• If you are going to share a list then use bullet points or numbers (like this!). This will break the content down into more consumable chunks.
• Use sub-headings. Most of us skim read text before we read it in detail. If a customer can gain a glimpse of what the content is about from the outset they are more likely to read it in full.

How have you given your website an SEO boost in the past? Do you have anymore SEO tips? Let us know in the comments below!