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How to improve your website for Google search

08/18/202202/07/2022 by scmarketing

Improving your website for Google doesn’t have to be difficult, it just takes a few steps to begin with. If you want more traffic on your website then it’s important to ensure that Google can crawl and index the pages of your site quickly. The faster the bots can do this, the higher you’ll rank in search engine results pages (SERPs). So here are 10 easy ways to improve your website for Google and get more web traffic:

One of the most important factors in getting a high ranking on Google is having a high-quality site structure. This allows search engines to crawl and index your pages quickly and easily. Links should go straight through from one page to another. Avoid just using “click here”, say what that link is for so as not to confuse the bots, they need to know where you want them to go next.

Every page on your website should be crawlable and indexable by Googlebot, so it’s important than you don’t block pages with JavaScript or CSS styling. Google may not be able to crawl your site properly if it needs JavaScript, so you may lose visitors.

Use crawlable URLs that Google can read and index.

Give your web pages descriptive and relevant keywords in file names and your site structure, this makes it a lot easier for you to find the relevant page faster and also very helpful for bots as they can see what’s on a page at a glance.

Off page factors such as social signals and inbound links can influence your website’s rankings on Google, so make sure you focus on these when trying to improve your site for Google. Social signals are a great way of showing Google which pages with content people like and trust the most, this helps boost your page rankability. Make sure that your website is on as many social media sites as relevant to your business, but don’t spam with your followers with updates.

The more frequently you update your website the better it will be for Google and its crawling bots. Not only does this keep Google from dropping your ranking, but it also keeps you in front of a target audience who are potentially looking for your services or products. You want to be the first one they see when they search their interested keywords, so update your website frequently.

Don’t forget about mobile optimisation. Getting a good Google ranking on mobile devices is incredibly important these days, so make sure that you have a responsive design in place to ensure that you’re not losing any web traffic because of your website design.

It’s important to build inbound links to your website from other trusted sites, this boosts your search engine rankings and also helps you get more targeted traffic. The more quality inbound links you have the better it is for Google and its bots, so make sure that you’re building them as part of your overall marketing strategy.

Search engine crawling can be slowed down if you have too much external content on your web pages, so make sure that you only have high-quality images and videos on each page. This will tell Google to keep crawling your site at a proper speed, allowing it to index more pages which means more traffic!

SEO agency Croydon

As a digital marketing agency in Croydon, we’re well placed to offer local businesses digital marketing services and online marketing advice relating to local SEO services and content marketing to help increase presence in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Get in touch to chat about your business goals and how a tailored SEO campaign can help your marketing strategy.

Improving SEO with Internal links

08/19/202210/27/2021 by scmarketing

Internal links are another key element to consider as part of your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy. Internal links help website navigation, define your website’s architecture and highlights page authority and ranking in search results.

Create quality content

In order to add links to your website, you need quality content! This can be done by regularly posting to your website usually on a blog or news page. Make sure you include links to specific pages on your website to help a user – and search engines – easily navigate your website.

And, remember that content should be informative for your target audience. Offer your target tips and advice that will help them overcome challenges rather than being product and service focused.

Use anchor text

You should use anchor text for your links. This means include the keyword or phrase generally found on the webpage you are linking to and that you want to be found for in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Link building to avoid

There are two links you should try and avoid linking to in your content:

Homepage: Most websites already have a lot of links pointing to a homepage. It is better to link to other internal web pages to strengthen those and help further boost the overall SEO of your website.
Contact us: At the end of a blog there’s usually a line of text saying ‘give us a call’ (or something similar). Only link back to your contact page if it is 100% necessary and relevant. An alternative is to set up a specific landing page which allows you to book a consultation or link to a relevant service or product.

In general, you want to avoid linking to pages that are already in the main menu, as these will appear in every web page already.

Natural links

Ensure that your links are natural to the reader. If the link matches the context of the content, the reader is more likely to click on it. If it’s an internal link, it helps a visitor stay on your website longer and website engagement is improved.

Use a reasonable number of links

You don’t need to cram your blog post full of links pointing to every page on your website.

Blogs that we usually write are around 500 words and in general we would link to 4 or 5 internal webpages.

There are already a large number of links on all of your pages, in your menu, footer, adverts, main brand logo pointing to your homepage.

SEO agency Croydon

Get in touch to chat about your business goals and how a tailored SEO campaign can help your marketing strategy.

5 steps to utilise your CMS for SEO

08/19/202210/20/2021 by scmarketing

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a major, ongoing task for any website, and making sure your website is structured and formatted correctly to achieve the best search ranking possible is extremely important.

Luckily, if your website utilises a Content Management System (CMS), you can use its built in features to make sure you are using the best SEO methods.

Here are 5 ways to make sure your CMS website is improving its rankings.

1. Control the URL for every page

The automatic URL a CMS creates for web pages on your website won’t always be formatted in a way that search engines can read. Ultimately you want the URL to tell search engines what’s on the page. However, a CMS website will allow you to manually create the URL for each page, so you can be sure that it contains specific keywords to highlight what the content is per page. This will the help search engines, such as Google, understand the context of your page, which will better inform how it should be ranked. The URL name is always going to be important – it’s a key factor in creating web presence.

2. Complete metadata

Metadata is incredibly important for also letting search engines know what is on a web page. This includes the meta title and description.

A CMS website provides the capability to define the metadata manually for each page, helping you tell the search engine about your content and the ability to add in keywords where possible.

3. Set up redirects

Creating redirects from one URL to another is something that a CMS website will let you do. This makes sure anyone trying to access a page which has changed its URL will be sent to the right place.

This is especially helpful following a website redesign, which often uses new URLs for new content. Setting up redirects from an old URL to the new URL will make sure the search engines don’t find any broken links and penalise you for this.

4. Broken links

Links to pages that have moved or changed can impact your search engine ranking. So, regularly reviewing CMS reports and fixing issues with broken links is essential to make sure you’re getting the best SEO value.

5. Dynamic sitemap

A site map is a page that lists and links to every page of your website. This is essential for search engines to be able to index all your website’s content. A CMS site provides easy functionality for automatically creating and updating dynamic sitemap using XML or HTML. By using this feature, you can ensure that search engines are always able to access your content and understand your site’s structure.

Web design Croydon

If you use the CMS features you are providing search engines with all the right information so that they can index the pages on your website. This allows you to focus your attention on creating great quality and engaging content.

We provide web design services for local businesses in the Croydon area, creating responsive, optimised, CMS websites. This gives a lot of flexibility for future blog uploads through to ad hoc landing page creations for new products or services.

Book a meeting with us or take advantage of our free website review to see how your website is performing.

How to choose your keywords

08/19/202210/15/2021 by scmarketing

Using keywords and phrases on your website is an important part of search engine optimisation (SEO). Keywords form part of the strategy to help your website be found in search engine results pages (SERPs). So, how do you choose what keywords are right for your business?
Here, we look at a few ways you can brainstorm for keywords that will help with your online marketing campaign.

Search online and take a look at competitors and get a feel for what they are talking about. Look at blogs and news pages to find out about new product launches or services, how they are promoted and talked about.
Check your competitor’s social media feeds to see what snippets they are sharing with their followers and get a feel for what is popular by the amount of shares or likes their posts receive. The types of hashtags being used can help with your keyword research too.
Use Google Trends and see what people are searching for right now.
Check affiliate networks such as Clickbank then check the products and find the relevant keywords that are usually written in descriptions of any product.
Look for long tail keywords. Head keywords are considered to be the most popular searched item, such as “accountant”. This however only takes up a small percentage of total searches the majority being long tail and specific searches such as “find an accountant for self-assessment in Croydon”. So note specific long tail keywords as part of your research.
Membership associations. If you’re an accounting firm and you are part of an association such as ICAEW then check their website for what events and webinars they are hosting as the titles of talks and presentations will give an indication of what’s a topical theme for discussion.
Check industry publications that you know your audience are interested in. See what’s being discussed and trending to help brainstorm ideas for keywords.
Use a tool such as Semrush to help improve online visibility and get further insight into keyword volume and difficulty.

Once you’ve found your keywords you can use these as the basis of your online marketing campaigns however do not use keywords unnecessarily. This is known as keyword stuffing and search engines such as Google will penalise accordingly. In a nutshell, don’t overuse words, if your content feels uncomfortable to read lacking a natural flow because of keywords and it’s perhaps sounding too salesy and irrelevant then it’s best not to use it.

Most importantly focus on writing good quality content to engage with you target audience.

Keywords are just one of many ways you can help to optimise your website.

Digital marketing agency Croydon

It’s important that you understand why optimising your website is key when it comes to the growth of your business. So, if you need a helping hand with your digital marketing strategy, get in touch with us at Smart Cow Digital Marketing for expert advice.

Services we offer include web design and development, SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC), social media management through to CRM and marketing automation.