10 Simple SEO Checks To Make On Your Website

Do you want to increase your website’s SEO ranking? Not sure how to go about it? SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is an important part of website development and ranking when looking to become established on the World Wide Web. However, in today’s world many businesses don’t know the importance of SEO and how it can be a huge investment when properly implemented. SEO, as daunting as it seems to the inexperienced, doesn’t have to be overwhelming. The following are some simple SEO checks that you can make on your website to help improve its overall ranking in popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing.

Tips To Increasing Your Ranking Through SEO Improvements

Use More Content

When it comes to SEO it’s important that your website features a lot of keyword rich content. Web pages which feature little or no content, links, or images tend to be invisible to search engines. To rank your website successfully, search engines need to have something positive to find. The more content you have on each page, the more the search engine will be able to find and rank your website or pages. It’s estimated that a word count of between 300-500 words is sufficient per page. When writing your content remember to use white space effectively. Don’t keep your content bulky and in large, hard to read paragraphs, always use spaces every 4 to 5 sentences and utilize bullet points where necessary.

Incorporate Keywords

Although content is important for any website it’s not just about the amount of content you have on your page. It’s also about integrating it with specific targeted keywords which help search engines categorize your website when people search for those specific keywords. Google Keyword Tool is a great way to search for keywords that are relevant with your business or what your website has to offer. This simple-to-use tool can show you how many hits per month a specific keyword receives while also showing you the competitiveness of people who use the same keyword for their own website.

Incorporating your targeted keywords within your content every 100 to 200 words can help boost your SEO rankings dramatically. The best keywords to use are the ones that target your main business and services. They can also come as long-tail keywords. For example, if your business sells printers, it’s obvious that your target keyword would be ‘printer’, right? Although this is partially true, just using printer won’t increase your rankings greatly. Instead think of what someone might be searching for with printers.

For example, Google Keyword Tool can show you if many people have been searching for ‘canon printers for sale’. Incorporating this long-tail keyword into your content can help to target a more direct audience than what “printer” will. You also have a better chance of your pages ranking higher in popular search engines. But where do you place your keyword for maximum effect you ask? Some places include:

• Page titles

• H1 Tags

• Website URLs

Link Webpages Together

To help increase your SEO rankings, check to see whether you have linked your most important webpages with one another. This helps popular search engines to lead your visitors to the pages and information they’re searching for in a much easier way. The text that are used for these links are generally called Anchor Text and tell the search engine spiders exactly what the linked page is all about. To create the best results, it’s best that you hyperlink a link on a keyword within a specific section of a sentence. Generally, links that say “click here” don’t do anything for the visibility of a website. As great as Anchor Text is, it’s always important to remember to not overdo it.

Update Your Website Frequently

To really optimise SEO for better search engine rankings it’s important to keep everything fresh, new and up-to-date. Websites which aren’t constantly updating their content, products, keywords, images and other items, tend to start falling in search engine rankings. When updating content however, it has to be engaging, fresh and share worthy. Incorporating blogs, new columns or factual articles can show search engine spiders that your website is a consistent and reliable new source of information. This can also help to attract more visitors to your website over the long term.

Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

In today’s society more and more people are using their mobile phones to search the internet. The problem is however; many websites aren’t mobile friendly. This means that when someone is searching a website it won’t fit the screen as it does on the computer. This can make it difficult for visitors to read and search your website. In 2015 Google released a new ranking algorithm which specially caters for mobile friendly web pages when they’re searched on the mobile phone through Google. If you’re website isn’t mobile ready, it won’t rank well even if it ranks at the top of computer searches. This is why it’s important for your website to be mobile-friendly. The following is a Google test tool that will tell you if your website is ready to be viewed and ranked on mobiles and smartphones.

Formatting And Design

In the SEO world, the format and design may not seem like your likely candidate to increase rankings, however it does play a large part to a successful website and user experience. While your website needs to be easily seen and indexed for spiders and bots, it also needs to be fully appealing to your human audience. The design of your website needs to be appealing to your visitors. The use of colours, images, and bold text can help make your website stand out from others in the same niche. The format and layout of the images and content also needs to be addressed. Check to see whether all content is easy to read, understandable and is broken up with sufficient paragraphs and white space. Headings are a great way of breaking up large text where needed. The more your website appeals to your visitors, the more returning visitors you will see. This results in higher search engine rankings.

Google Analytics

Google offers many add-ons which can help to enhance your overall internet experience. Installing Google Analytics on your businesses website can help you to understand where your visitors are coming from and how people are using your website. This is a great way of targeting your audience better and increasing your SEO rankings.

Use Google Search Console and Screaming Frog

Installing Google Search Console is another way to help keep a track of your SEO and website’s performance. Google Search Console is designed to analyse the health of your website and gives all business owners a grand overview of any low ranking sites, crawl errors, Google messages, and indexing issues. This tool can be an essential asset to any business website to help increase overall rankings and SEO performance. Search Console was previously known as Webmaster Tools.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool is also another great asset for any business to boost SEO efforts. This tool is capable of checking your Meta data, titles and descriptions to help improve overall search engine optimisation. The best part about using Screaming Frog is that it’s free to use.

Check Your XML Sitemap

Another way to help improve your overall SEO rankings is by checking whether you’ve submitted an XML sitemap to Google Search Console. To check this, simply take your domain name and type in /sitemap.xml at the end. In doing this a list of your sitemap should be displayed. As an example, if your website is named Aussie Road Art Studios it should come up with something that looks like http://aussieroadartstudios.com/sitemap.xml. With the use of Google Search Console, you can check for alerts and errors on your sitemap.

Check For Robots.Txt

For any SEO checklist, it’s important to check for Robots.txt files. Many business or website owners don’t even realise they have this file. This file is renowned for blocking important content from being indexed. To check whether this is occurring simply take your domain name and type in /robots.txt at the end. This will give you a list of any pages which are stopping search engines from indexing your website. It’s important to realise though that some pages will need to be blocked including admin pages.

Conclusion

When it comes to checking the SEO of your website, it’s important to check everything to ensure your website is performing and ranking well. By making a few changes and ticking these key tricks off your SEO checklist, you can easily create a top performing and search engine friendly website that will be at the top for years to come. So have you incorporated these tips? Did they work for you?

Tristan Gray is Managing Director at Studio 56 in Melbourne Australia. As a serial entrepreneur and business owner, he and his team now help business owners grow their business online through a large number of advertising channels. Tristan is great at thinking outside the box and helping his clients understand how to best get a return on their investment. He strongly believes in building good ethical networks with other like minded business owners.