Local SEO solutions can help build effective website optimisation, which is a crucial part of growing any business. SEMrush’s 2017 study on ranking research found that direct website visits, the time spent on a website and the number of pages visited per session on a website were the most important factors when it comes to website rankings. If you take the time to encourage these three actions as part of a successful SEO strategy, you’re going to see both improved rankings and business growth.
Optimising your website for search engines can be an overwhelming and a daunting task, and it’s often difficult to know where to begin. Our ‘Beginners Basics to SEO Solutions’ will help you create a strategy and help you to understand why you even need local SEO solutions support in the first place.
Role of search engines
Ultimately we know that, as users, we expect search engines to return relevant, recent and valuable websites instantly. Search engines have detailed criteria for returning results, which is constantly changing as they react to new technology and demands.
They will start by crawling and indexing your website to find the information they need in order to return it as a result and rank it accordingly. This is why local SEO solutions are important because we have to help search engines find what they need - they are robots at the end of the day and even google has limitations in what it can read.
There are certain things that we can do (as outlined below) to prove that our website is relevant to the search term that the user has typed into Google.
Basics of SEO friendly design & development:
Indexable content
Ensure your content is in text format. Anything in java or flash or in an image will be ignored. Google also recommends a minimum of 300 words per page and ideally 800-1200 to be deemed relevant to the user’s search term.
Crawlable link structures
Google’s crawlers start at your home page and then follow links from one page to the next as defined in your menu navigation. To make this process work more efficiently, ensure you have a site map for crawlers to read. Beware that any pages not linked may be left out.
Keyword usage and targeting
Keywords are crucial and important to consider when adopting local SEO solutions. Google will index the keywords and phrases found in your content and store them ready to return as a result when someone searches using those same keywords.
One of the ways google determines whether your web page is relevant is to measure how you use those keywords. We recommend using the keyword in the title of your page and in the first paragraph of your copy. Then, use it 2 - 3 more times in different ways throughout the content.
Use the alt description for images and videos as an opportunity to place your keywords again. Also, put keyword variations in your URL slugs and remove small irrelevant words (and, is, the etc.) to make it short. Keywords should appear at least once in the meta description too, and while meta descriptions are not used for ranking, they appear to the user in the results therefore help to entice users to click on your web page.
Importantly, do not abuse keyword usage. If you stuff keywords into meta descriptions or scatter them randomly throughout your page when the rest of the content is irrelevant, search engines will know.
Want to read about this in more depth? Check out our blog on how to nail your keyword research.
The Impact of Usability and User Experience
How users experience or rate your website will influence its rankings.
A well-designed and helpful website ensures that visitors to your site perceive it positively and are encouraged to share, bookmark, return, and create inbound links (a hyperlink back to your site from another site). These signals trickle down to the search engines and contribute to high rankings.
They reinforce the fact that the site is popular and the information found on it is relevant and up to date. Therefore, google are more likely to return your website to someone else searching for the same term - it makes google look good too remember.
Measurement
It’s very easy to become overwhelmed by the number of measurements and statistics available when it comes to tracking the success of your website.
A good place to start is simply deciding which keyword or keywords you are going to measure. Secondly, measure the traffic to your website or a specific web page and track where it comes from e.g. organic search terms, social media or a referral from a linked site.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt about it, SEO is an ongoing task and there are local SEO solutions that can help. You’ll need consistently monitor, evaluate and improve your website as time goes on. Your competitors will be doing the same, so it’s important to stay ahead of the pack. Be consistent, come up with a strategy with how you’re going to achieve your goals and start putting SEO building blocks into place.
If you need more help or simply want to know where to start and what needs improving on your website - get started with a FREE SEO website audit now or download our free beginner's guide below.
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