SEO tips from Madison Solutions

We are often asked “can you SEO my website?” or “When you build my web site will you SEO it?”. SEO is a tricky subject but you must start with one thing…

The website and especially your desired landing pages must be well built, what does this mean?

• It needs to load fast,
• It needs to be clear to use,
• It must have relevant and easy to use calls to action,
• It must follow web best practices,
• And above all, follow the highest level of accessibility standards.

The next step is the key terms you are looking to rank for.

When choosing the key terms you want to rank for, first we look at what you want to promote. Once we decide this, we then research what terms are being used to find this; this is done through a tool supplied by Google as well as some competitor research. Once we have a selection of terms, we select a cluster of these and at this point we can start the SEO process! We can focus the content of the web site to rank highly for the selected key terms. This along with the basic high quality web build principles mentioned at the start will improve your rankings in search engines.

To improve your page score for both organic rankings and Google AdWords, focus on enhancing three key components: relevance, user experience, and performance.

Relevance

• Keywords: You should ensure that your content is relevant to the keywords we are aiming to rank highly for. As well as the url structure and the content structure (H1, H2, H3 tags etc), and page title all being inline with each other
• Content Quality: Provide high-quality, original content that is valuable to users. Avoid thin content and ensure your page offers a substantial, engaging experience. Are you finding this article useful so far?
  If you are using AdWords, it is important to craft compelling ad copy which also aligns with the content on the page. The more relevant the page content is to your ad and visa versa, the lower your ad cost will be.
• If you are not using Google AdWords and instead are looking to rank “Organically” then writing a brief, compelling, factually correct meta description for the page is important. We can advise where you would add this on the site, just ask. We always build in a native method to do this through any CMS we build, without the need for further plugins like SEO Yoast. Some plugins may pose a potential security risk or slow a site down through code bloat. (Remember, a slower site ranks lower)

User Experience

• Site design is important for the user experience, especially how the site responds on different devices. Mobile friendliness or mobile first design is a term often used. Be careful, mobile first simply means the site designed for mobile first and then modified for larger devices. We would suggest checking your user base and seeing the ratio of mobile to desktop users, this will inform what information should be prioritised. You can access this information free with Google Analytics if you are replacing an old site, always remember, the design can also affect load times so keep checking.

Performance

• Page Load Speed: Improve your landing page load time by compressing images, leveraging browser caching, and minimizing JavaScript and CSS files.
• Reduce the temptation to use plugins where you could code functionality directly. This will reduce code bloat and increase server response time helping the speed of page load.

Monitoring and adjusting these factors will improve your AdWords page score, as well as helping your organic rankings, leading to better ad placements and potentially lower costs per click.

If you would like to know more, see how we can help you or call us on 01273757996 talk about any aspect of your website.