Maximise Your Online Presence with These 7 SEO Tips to Optimising Your Website

Landing on that sweet #1 spot is a huge challenge, especially if you operate in a crowded niche. But, with proper search engine optimisation, you will be able to start improving your rankings and get there eventually.

Optimising your site might seem like a lot of work and quite a daunting task, but the hardest part about it is figuring out where to start. So, for those of you who feel lost in what you should do to improve your site鈥檚 optimisation, I have prepared a short list of seven SEO tips to help you out.

The first thing you鈥檙e going to need is some kind of tool that allows you to track your metrics. Linkio has a pretty great compilation of the best SEO audit tools out there, so be sure to give them a visit.

Anyway, let鈥檚 jump into our first tip.

#1. Mobile-Friendliness Is a MUST

This is one of the very first things you need to ensure. An enormous amount of users prefer their mobile devices to browse the Web, and their percentage is still growing.

Whereas only a couple of years before mobile users were responsible for about one-third of all traffic, today their count is almost doubled. 

Mobile traffic is up by 222% in the last 7 years! ~ broadbandsearch.net

66% is a lot to lose. But in addition to losing more than half of your traffic because of poor mobile optimization, Google will actually place a penalty on your site on top of that, cutting your traffic even further.

Why? Because Google knows most people use smartphones, and to help create a better experience for them, it favors sites that are properly optimized for them.

So, you absolutely need to ensure that your resource looks and performs flawlessly on all platforms and browsers.

#2. Upload a Sitemap

Every once in a while, Google鈥檚 bots come crawling through your site to index your pages. But the thing is: they aren鈥檛 perfect at it. Especially if you have dozens upon dozens of pages and some hidden from view.

Pages that you are editing, ones that aren鈥檛 ready to go live, etc. 

There is also a limited amount of pages they can index per visit. So, in order to get the most out of crawlers, it is advisable that you upload a .xml sitemap.

What is it? Essentially it鈥檚 a list of all your pages that are up for indexing. Formatting it properly is quite tricky, but you don鈥檛 actually have to do it on your own.

If your site runs on WordPress, Yoast SEO is a great plugin. In addition to helping you optimize your site automatically, it can create sitemaps for you and notify Google each time something changes on your resource, so the bots always know when and what to index.

#3. Choose Keywords Wisely

Choosing proper keywords to rank for is a huge part of SEO. But which ones do you go for? 

Just picking the #1 keyword in your niche isn鈥檛 enough. Even though it might be the most popular one that people search for, there鈥檚 going to be a ton of competition. 

Try to implement a healthy mix of keywords with lots of variation and synonyms. Don鈥檛 be afraid to go for keywords that are ranking a little lower. 

Don鈥檛 be afraid to check which keywords your competitors are ranking for since you might find some real gems there. And, be sure to monitor every keyword鈥檚 ranking and keep an eye out for ones that are steadily growing in popularity since those are great contenders that can overtake the #1 spot if used properly.

Ahrefs has one of the best keyword rank trackers out there.

#4. Site Speed Matters

There are two reasons why you need to pay attention to your site speed. The first being that nobody likes to look at that annoying loading animation for longer than a split second and being too slow might cause a spike in your site鈥檚 click-off rate. 

The second one, though, is tied directly with Google. Every time your pages get indexed the bots actually take notice of how long it takes to load them and that information actually affects your ratings.

So, it is pretty important to stay fast. Use PageSpeed Insights to check your site speed and get a few tips on how to make it load faster all in the same place.

#5. Both Internal and External Links Are Amazing for SEO

You should make interlinking your own pages into a habit if you haven鈥檛 already. It鈥檚 great for two reasons: firstly, it helps direct your visitors through your content and might make them stay around for longer. 

And secondly, it helps Google鈥檚 bots crawl your site faster. After all, it is much easier to follow a link than to scan the entirety of your resource to find a page.

As for external links though, I鈥檓 sure you鈥檙e already aware of the benefits of link building. The more backlinks from high-authority websites you have, the more traffic they transfer to your own one.

Don鈥檛 be afraid to link to smaller websites too as it helps you build relationships, which usually turn out to be mutually beneficial.

#6. Take Advantage of Social Medias

Now, of course, boosting your organic traffic should always be your highest priority. But the amount of traffic you can be able to redirect, say, from Facebook is quite considerable.

By placing ads there you鈥檒l be able to capture much more attention than from Google alone. If you setup up a Facebook pixel on your website it will help you re-target people at a later date with more specific adverts. It also causes a little bit of a snowball effect: someone shares a post of yours, then their friends see it, and so on.

Besides, no successful website is complete without a social media page. Reposting other people鈥檚 content on Twitter is also a pretty nice way to get on someone鈥檚 radar. And while it has no direct effect on your SEO, it will definitely help during your link building campaign.

#7. Run Audits Often

Even when you鈥檙e nearing the finish of your SEO campaign (or at least running out of tasks to do), it鈥檚 important to remember that there鈥檚 no real end to SEO. Google constantly gets updated, your competition figures out new strategies, links get removed along with thousands of other factors that come into play when your rankings are determined.

So, your job is never over. That鈥檚 why you need to run audits of your site at least a few times a month. In fact, you can also run audits of your competitor鈥檚 sites to see what they鈥檙e up to.

A tool like SpyFu is a great way of peeking behind the curtains of any site to check what鈥檚 going on back there.

Good Luck With Your SEO!

Thank you for staying with me until the end and I hope my tips will come in handy during your own SEO campaign!