Quality content is the number one driver of your search engine rankings and there is no substitute for great content. Content created specifically for your intended end user increases site traffic, which improves your site’s authority and relevance. Regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best indicators of a site’s relevancy, so always ensure that you keep it updated and fresh. Always aim to publish content on your own website first. Try to include text wherever possible, even if you have a video, try to include a line of text explaining what the video is about. The same for images, always try to add a description of what the image is.
Page titles and descriptions
When search engines are reading your pages, among the things they check are the page title, the description of the page, the major headings and images. They do so because they need to understand what the page is about. Each page must have a unique title that will help both search engines and users understand what the page is about. The page description is what the searcher will see in the search engine results page.
Create good navigation links
Make your customer’s journey within your website as easy and smooth as possible. The shorter the steps they need to make to find your details or complete a sale, the higher success rate you will receive. Search engines crawl your website through your navigation links, so if your customers are happily browsing there’s a good chance that search engine crawlers are too.
Get listed on local search engines and directories
Start with the main ones like Google Plus Local, Yahoo directory and Yelp, then down to the business and local government listings in your area. You increase the likelihood of your potential customers finding you when you make more listings.
If you are a Landscaping, Gardening or Tree Surgery company you may like to visit Landscape Marketers where we have specific information on directories for Landscaping companies and can help to tailor your marketing.
XML Sitemaps
Although Google won’t take your XML sitemap as a rule of which pages to crawl, it takes it as a hint so always make sure it’s up to date to help reinforce which pages of your site it should be indexing. Remove any old pages from your site and add any new pages.
Images
Images are important, but should not increase the loading time of your website. Use ALT tags to describe the image, as this helps search engines understand what the image is about. Optimise the size of your images and reduce the size of your image without sacrificing the quality. Use descriptive file names, don’t just call your image ‘image.1’ instead give it a name that describes what it is.
Internal linking
Linking to pages within your website is very important for SEO. The first step a search engine spider will do is follow the links they find. When they arrive at your page, if you don’t have any other links they will read your page and go. If you have links pointing to other pages they will take those into account. Links are also a good way to tell search engines which are your most important pages, and internal linking is one of the ways to pin-point the most important pages. It is also a good way to increase time on your site, a user that is reading your post is more likely to click on a link to read more.
