Getting your website to rank on the first page of Google’s search results is a big deal, so it’s critical to improve your search engine optimisation (SEO) at every turn.
According to imFORZA, 93% of online experiences start with a search engine, reflecting just how important SEO is to the success of your online presence.
Here are four ways to optimise your SEO and improve your website’s search ranking:
1. Republish old content
Republishing your old website content will provide your readers with the most up-to-date information and make your website stand out in search engines, which prioritise currency of content.
There are a few ways you can refresh your content, including creating a follow-up post to an existing article.
Simply keep the main points from your original piece and make some changes to key words and the article structure. For example, you might want to turn a regular article into a listicle.
Updating older posts is another way to refresh your content if your original article or blog post is no longer relevant — just revise the necessary points and remember to manually update the publish date in your content management system (CMS).
If you want to totally overhaul an old piece of content, you can always create a new post and redirect the old URL to a new one.
2. Optimise your website with structured markup
With the growth of voice search and Google displaying ‘rich snippets’ above other search results (a key pull-out that answers a specifically searched question which links back to the page), using structured markup is an important aspect in your website optimisation.
Structured data (also known as schema markup) are standardised ways of defining your content so search engines can better understand it. It’s essentially metadata – data about the content on your site, hidden from users in your source code. There are very specific hierarchies you can use that identify things specific to areas such as events, organisations and even recipes.
3. Add alt text to images
Images are a key ingredient to any good website, but you need to assign alt text to them so that search engines can identify them.
Google and other search engines can’t actually see the images on your website, so adding descriptive alt text to images helps improve your site usability and visibility, which will ultimately help your search ranking.
But be careful not to force in your SEO keywords, which is also known as ‘keyword stuffing’.
Try and be as semantic and descriptive as possible. Alt text also means that the picture can be explained to people who are visually impaired, making your website more accessible.
4. Create SEO-friendly headlines
Search engines place a lot of emphasis on headlines, whether it’s for an article or a web page nested in your site.
You can enhance the SEO performance of your headlines by checking Google’s related search terms, tracking trends on Google and Twitter, and running a marketing workshop to identify key topics.
When it comes to Google’s related search terms, don’t forget to analyse the related search results, which are found at the bottom of the page.
Check out Google Trends to find out which popular topics and search queries are connected to your headline or sign in to Twitter and see what is trending next to your Twitter feed.
You can also run a workshop to uncover key terms and phrases for your headlines. Think about frequently asked questions from your clients and how you can use those questions and the answers in your headlines.
If you’d like to take things to the next level, you could use paid tools such as SEMRush’s Topic Research Tool to help identify what users are looking for.
Get trusted SEO advice
As a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne, Assemblo can create powerful SEO strategies to greatly improve your search engine rankings and attract more website visitors.
To find out how we can help, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or drop us a note via the contact form below.