by the FutureSoft Admin Team
In this digital age, almost everyone needs to prove their worth online. From small home-based businesses to medium and large companies, you will find everyone vying for online visibility focused on building a successful online and offline business. Every day hundreds of websites are created and launched. So how do you ensure that your website is the one that your target audience clicks on in the list of search results?
Let us introduce you to SEO — or better known as Search Engine Optimization.
The majority of online traffic is driven by search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Although social media can generate visitors to your website, search engines are still the major source of navigation for most Internet users, irrespective of whether your site provides information, or focuses on products or services. An average customer, searching for a service or product online, generally doesn’t go beyond the first three pages of search results in any search engine listing. It’s like going to the mall, most shoppers automatically go into the first store they see and it’s no different with websites. Getting on top of a Search Engine ranking can be an excellent opportunity for your business, but you must remember that getting on top is only half-the-battle, the actual work lies in staying on the top.
So the big question is — how do you ensure that your website continuously features at the top of the search engine result page (SERP)? The answer is SEO — better known as Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a big part of Digital Marketing and basically focuses on optimizing your website by following various guidelines set by search engines. SEO needs to be done both on-site and off-site and includes using meta tags, title tags, having an XML site map included, building backlinks and much more.
If you still feel completely lost, just keep reading…
Here are 5 easy to implement tips to improve your search engine ranking…
1. Header Tags
Good formatting of your content helps improve the user experience of your website tremendously. It makes readers more willing to spend time to read your content and come back for more, which will ultimately signal your relevancy to search engines. Proper use of header tags can help break up your content into sections that are easier to read and utilize.
2. Outbound Links
To make your content more useful and relevant, you can link out to authority sites for more in-depth information your readers can use. Linking out to well-respected authority sites will not only increase the relevancy of your content and time readers spend on your site, but it is also believed to send trust signals to Google and improve SEO ranking. However, more is not necessarily better. Too many outbound links can be distracting and make the content hard to get through.
3. Readability
Even if you have a well-educated audience, they still don’t want to have to have a dictionary at hand when they visit your website. Making your content easy to read and understand helps make it useful to your readers. Some experts also believe that Google takes readability into account when ranking webpages. You can use a variety of tools to test your content’s readability, including:
The Readability Test Tool
Readability statistics in MS Word
4. Contact Us Page
According to Google, websites that have sufficient contact information are considered to be more trust-worthy and therefore may rank higher by search engines. Well-designed contact forms increase user participation and help generate new business opportunities, capture new leads, improve customer service, and more. Thus including a Contact Us page on your website and putting the link in the navigation not only makes for good user experience, but can also potentially earn you some Google trust.
5. Page Load Speed
Users may leave your site if they have to wait even just an extra few seconds for each page to load, which is why both Google and Bing take page-load speeds into account in their ranking algorithms.
4 seconds is the optimal page load speed you should be aiming for. There are many ways to increase page load speed, some of which include using a caching plug-ins, making sure the code is clean and streamlined, optimizing image sizes, reducing the number of plug-ins, and minimizing redirects.
Nkemdilim Uwaje Begho is a seasoned Information Technology professional with over 15 years of industry experience in Africa’s largest emerging economy with a deep purpose and focus on bridging the digital divide and transforming Africa by harnessing the benefits of digital. At home in technology from childhood, Nkemdilim is walking in her fathers’ footsteps as a second-generation Nigerian Information Technology expert. Currently CEO of Future Software Resources Ltd. (Futuresoft), one of Nigeria’s leading digital & technology solutions companies, providing a broad range of solutions for the scaling African enterprise, to consistently attract and retain its target audience, optimize its processes and increase its bottom line.
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