Search engine optimisation is something that all marketing teams should consider for their marketing campaign. It is one of the many digital marketing methods used by digital teams to continue the growth of a company. The problem with SEO is that it is constantly changing and can be challenging to keep up with.
Many companies prioritise social media advertising due to it being much easier to use. Additionally, the more money you put into social media, the more it can return, similar to how PPC works. However, SEO is an upfront cost and a long-term investment. Once SEO is implemented correctly, you will see endless benefits once those rankings start to improve.
What digital marketers had to do to improve their rankings five years ago is very different to now. Furthermore, keeping on top of your rankings is difficult which is why many people give up. Rankings can fluctuate throughout the year because of Google updates and this is something we cannot predict. Nonetheless, the updates released last year and everything told to us by Google can help us with what to expect in 2023.
SEO is still a fundamental marketing method and if you want to see growth in your company then use organic search. Here is how you can improve your organic rankings in 2023 this month.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO can make a massive change to SEO rankings as it can affect the click rate of your pages. Let’s start from the top.
Meta titles are essential to enticing the user to click on your website however the description may not matter as much. In the last few years, Google has released an update where it has started to pull meta descriptions from your page. Therefore, the meta descriptions you write are no longer on the search engine results page. Nonetheless, the meta titles are still there so it is worth optimising them for your keywords. Going through your key pages and optimising your meta titles is the first step to optimising your website.
Next, you want to optimise the content that is on the page. It includes the H1s, H2s, H3s and the main body of the content. Again, this content needs to be optimised throughout the page for it to rank well. Moreover, something many digital agencies get wrong with optimising content is keyword spamming. Google released an algorithm update many years ago that punished websites for keyword spamming so make sure your content reads organically.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is something that some digital marketers forget and can affect your rankings massively. If you are uncertain what technical SEO is, this is where your website is developed in a way that Google can crawl your website, making it easier to index. If not, Google and other search engines cannot crawl the page as quickly as you would like. Furthermore, content is still essential for your website to rank well on the SERPs although if Google cannot crawl that page, it won’t rank.
Security
One of the technical sides of SEO you need to implement is the security of your website which is the SSL certificate. It ensures the information the user receives is secure from the website.
Sometimes, a website won’t have HTTPS or HTTP in front of the website’s URL. That is because there is no SSL certificate activated for the website and not secure. Not only do you want to ensure your website is more readable but you also need to ensure that the website is safe for the users.
Speed
Website speed is another important factor with Google since they implemented the core web vitals update. The reason why you want a good website speed is that it lowers your bounce rate and may increase your conversion rate. If a website is slow and not loading, the user will likely leave the website meaning the user will go elsewhere.
It is fairly technical, hence why it is in the technical SEO section. It isn’t something that the average user can do either. If you are not experienced with coding, it is advised you get a web developer to do this for you. They will know the plugins they can instal to improve the speed of your website, including useless code they can delete to speed up the website’s load speed.
Optimise Your Website For Mobile
Mobile optimisation is essential in 2023 because this is something everybody uses to browse a website. Whether you are buying a product or enquiring about a service, you will likely use your mobile. The only time you may use a desktop is when the product is expensive or there are a lot of steps to complete before you enquire. For example, booking a holiday or seeking landlord legal advice.
Internal Linking
Internal linking for your website is essential. If you are not familiar with internal linking, this is where you will add a hyperlink to a word or sentence that will take you to another page on your website. It helps Google index your website at a much faster speed as well.
Another advantage of internal links is that they can naturally match the text you have written, making them easy to implement. Additionally, we advise you to implement your internal links early on in the page as this can help reduce the bounce rate of your website.
Latent Semantic Indexing
Although this is not a new SEO method, it is something that many people forget about when optimising the content on your website. It is where you optimise your content for words similar to your primary keyword. We do not mean synonyms. For example, going back to the landlord’s legal advice, you could implement legal advice for landlords in your content to ensure Google understands this as the main keyword.
To Conclude
Google is constantly releasing algorithm updates throughout the year which can affect your rankings. You must keep up with SEO blog sites such as search engine land and search engine journal to keep up with the algorithm updates. Furthermore, Google also releases bits of information about many large algorithm updates that may be released soon. These sorts of updates may be beneficial for you as they can give you a heads-up of what to expect.
User experience continues to be the priority for Google to improve. That is why optimising your website for mobile users is essential. Additionally, you want to ensure that your website is fast and responsive. Using Google’s Page Speed Insights is a free tool to let you know what is wrong with your website and what is good.