Effective SEO Best Practices You Can Implement Today
Improving your website's search engine ranking takes time and effort, but there are straightforward SEO best practices you can implement yourself. You don’t need to be a tech guru to follow these strategies and see decent results.
1) Optimise Headings and Titles
Ensure all your pages target the correct keywords. The title tag is crucial in search engine optimisation, so focus on precise naming conventions. Position your keyword at the start of the title for maximum impact. Similarly, the H1 tag, which is the most important heading, should be named like the title tag and placed before the rest of the content.
2) Enhance Your Website Navigation
Website navigation is a key structural element. Navigation links, often at the top of each page, carry significant weight with search engines. The homepage gains high authority partly because the logo, typically linked to the homepage, is the first link on each page. Optimise your navigation by carefully choosing links to important pages and including relevant keywords in the links.
3) Implement Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs improve user experience by helping visitors understand their location on your site and how to navigate back. They also assist Google in understanding your website’s structure. eCommerce websites, in particular, benefit from breadcrumbs as they pass authority from category pages to product pages.
4) Install an SSL Certificate
Since 2014, SSL certificates have been an essential ranking factor due to their role in enhancing security. Google rewards sites with SSL certificates with better search engine positions and penalises those without. Secure your site and boost your rankings by installing an SSL certificate.
5) Optimise Your Google My Business Listing
Creating and optimising your Google My Business listing is quick and yields excellent results. Ensure your business account is complete and accurate, including all required details and several images to build trust with potential customers. This listing can get your website featured multiple times in Google searches, making your business easier to find.
6) Optimise Your Images
Images consume the most memory on your server and user devices, affecting page loading speeds—a crucial ranking factor for Google. Reduce loading times by compressing images. If you use a CMS like WordPress, leverage image compression plugins. Otherwise, manually compress images and re-upload them to your server.
Ready to rank higher? Find out more about our dedicated SEO services here.