SEO is the process of optimising your website for search engines. To maximise traffic to your website, it needs to rank high on Google search engine results. Whichever industry you’re in – life science or not, SEO should form a crucial part of your marketing activities.
But how can you maximise your websites’ search engine visibility? The sheer quantity of information to navigate can make this feel like a minefield, but take a look at my top tips to get your website seen by more people online.
1. Be sure your pages load as quickly as possible
Is your website packed with images?
That could be slowing down your page loading time. How big are your images? Images formatted for the web shouldn’t be larger than a 500Kb, ideally less.
There are also some next generation image formats that are beginning to speed up website performance such as WEBP formats. You can convert your images using an online converter such as this tool.
Whatever image format you’d like to use, it’s vital to make sure that your images aren’t too big (you can reduce them with free tools like this one) . It’s also a good idea to keep your image formats consistent so it’s easy to replicate from one blog post or website page to the next.
2. On each image you upload make sure there’s an alt tag
User experience is key. If images fail to load, or a user is using a screenreader, this is where alt tags come in.
They are key components to your website for SEO and accessibility. They are small sections of text that accompany images. By adding alt tags, you’re still enhancing user experience through improving the clarity of your images.
3. Be sure that all links work – remove the broken ones!
To rank highly for SEO user experience needs to be maximised.
Broken links give the user a bad experience of your site. 404 errors and dead links all negatively impact user experience. Be sure that this isn’t something you’re providing users! A frustrated user may never return to your site! Broken links devalue your SEO activities as they restrict the flow of users through your site.
If users are struggling to navigate your site it won’t rank highly.
4. Use a keyword strategy to help your content rank
What keywords would you like your content to rank for?
Researching keywords will help you select those that are right for your website. How many times is the keyword being searched? Does the keyword match the interest of prospective customers? Can you imagine them searching for your site in response to a problem they could be looking to solve?
Create a list of terms that you would like your site to rank for. Keep a record of these terms. How are they reflected in what people are searching for? Adding these keywords to your site will help you to rank for those terms.
Make a list of these keywords. Assign keywords to the pages you can. The keywords left over can provide content ideas for your blog. Each post and section of content on your website needs to contain the keywords you’re using for SEO.
Ultimately, your website should be showcasing to Google what it’s about. If you’re clear enough – Google will rank your content as high as possible. Want to learn more about keyword research? Click here.
5. Get other people to link to your website
When another site adds a link to your website, this is called a backlink. Backlinks can be created different ways. The most popular method is through writing in depth, authoritative articles on other sites.
Backlinks are the single biggest ranking factor for your website. Use this free backlink checker to see how many your website has.
Blog posts are a great way to increase your backlinks. You can offer to write reciprocal blog posts for a business partner. At the bottom, you can then add a link back to your website. This can be a particularly effective way of driving backlinks if you’re working with a small budget.
6. Step up your technical SEO
A huge portion of SEO is based on what is known as “technical SEO”. This is essentially how functional your website is in practice. The most successful websites on Google have a great user experience. They’re functional and easy to navigate.
This is perhaps one of the hardest areas to get started on and may need the help of your website developer to implement. You can start however with a simple clean-up of your website. Are you storing lots of images and pages you don’t need? The first step is to make sure that your website only contains content you absolutely need. Another easy thing to implement is to ensure that your images are of an internet-friendly size – less than 1MB. This will help your website to load fast!
Want to improve your website’s search engine results? If you’d like to explore your online potential with SEO services in Hertfordshire then send me a message here.
