Many SEO ranking factors are actually related to the design and development of your site, meaning they need to be considered from the get-go. While optimising content with keywords is crucial, equally as important is the speed of your website, how clean the navigation is, and the level of security you offer visitors.
If you are considering using SEO techniques to improve the visibility of your website (and you should be) it’s best to partner with a full services digital agency, a team that provides both web development and SEO services in Australia. They’ll be able to attack your SEO campaign from all angles to guarantee success.
Development SEO
Technical SEO describes all the decisions your development team makes that can impact on your search engine rankings.
While technical SEO strategies are implemented to help search engine bots crawl and index your site more easily, they can also improve the overall user experience for your real human visitors.
Many of these strategies can be implemented at a later date, meaning you shouldn’t be too concerned if you’ve already created your website and are only just now thinking about SEO. However, it’s always going to be easier to build the site properly from the ground up.
To start with, make sure your development team choses a good CMS platform. Most of the top-end platforms these days, including WordPress, Drupal, and Kentico, come stacked with plenty of features that make SEO optimisation easy. Stick with one of these to simplify the process.
Quality CMS platforms are likely to also offer top-of-the-line security protocols. Google takes the security of its users very seriously and is unlikely to recommend a website if it doesn’t use a SSL certificate, for example.
Google also understands that its users tend to be a little impatient, meaning website speed is a very important factor. When setting up your website, use a fast hosting provider, edit your code to remove any unnecessary information, and minimise the use of unnecessary plugins.
Design SEO
It’s important that your website looks good but it’s equally as important that it provides a good user experience. Design-related SEO strategies are all about finding a balance between these two.
For example, while it’s important to have high-resolution images and videos, these tend to slow down your website speed. An SEO company in Melbourne will tell you about the importance of compressing visual assets to ensure they add to rather than subtract from the user experience.
A second and very important design-related factor is mobile-friendliness. In 2022, if your website is not accessible on a mobile device, you face an uphill battle from an SEO perspective. The best way to achieve a mobile-friendly website is by following responsive web design principles.
Site structure should also be taken into account, both from a user and SEO point-of-view. The more complex your site is, the more time you will have to spend planning the architecture out to maximise internal linking and help facilitate a positive user experience. A site-map is also a must-have and will help search engine bots better understand your content.
Marketing SEO
Keywords are very important in search engine optimisation and need to be utilised far more broadly than just in your blog content. An SEO company in Melbourne will tell you that there are quite a few spots throughout your website that can be optimised using targeted keywords.
Before we get into these strategies, a word of warning. Avoid including too many keywords in your content, a practice known as keyword stuffing. Google prioritises user experience above everything else and will frown on anyone who tries to trick search engine bots by pumping content with irrelevant or excessive keywords.
Content you can incorporate keywords into includes landing pages, header tags, image alt-text, image file names, title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs.
Many people wonder whether social media content influences SEO rankings. The answer is largely no. While having a few thousand followers on Instagram won’t do anything to harm your search engine rankings, it doesn’t add to it. While including keywords can help with internal-app searches (like placing a few relevant hashtags within your Instagram post caption) it won’t impact the performance of your linked website.
The main rule of thumb when working with keywords, whether you’re optimising a blog post or a meta description, is to have a plan. Conduct thorough keyword research, target keywords that are relevant and be prepared to spend a few months working on each keyword until you start seeing positive results.
As you can see, there are plenty of strategies that go into a successful SEO campaign. Much like any type of marketing, you’ll see the best SEO results if you leave the hard work to the professionals. If you’re planning to build a new website for your company this year and are wanting to consider SEO from the very early planning stages, speak to a web development team that also provides SEO services in Australia today.
