Do you know your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Score?

If you have recently had a shiny, expensive new website built, you may well think, that is that, let the good times roll. Well, you might be right, at least for a while but it depends on a number of factors.

There is a lot of competition in the web design market and as the old phrase goes, “you pay for what you get”. Having your website build is a once off and really only needs to be updated if it is either out of date or there are product, service or business changes that need to be reflected on the site.

SEO is a different proposition and this needs to be clarified. There are SEO companies specialising in elevating your website from the nether regions of the web. Should this have not been done initially when the website was built? The answer is ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. They are two separate skills and we have seen countless examples of sites being built that just do not rank rendering the site pretty much pointless in the offset. Disagree?

What is the point …..in having a website if nobody can see it?

Well, their isn’t much of a point. How do you know if your website is performing well? You get business, simple and straightforward. How do you know if customers are contacting you after having visited your site? Contact form, phone calls or just ask them out straight is how.

If your page shows up on the 11th page on Google rankings what use is that? Generally people don’t go past the first two pages when performing a search. That is what we at iBrutes call the ‘dark web’ as no business ever sees the ‘light of display’ when they are there.

There are many things that need to be considered when trying to get your site up the rankings. We will try to educate as much as possible on them but this really is just an eye opener on the what is involved.

Rule No.1: SEO rules change all the time.

Having a mobile site is now very important in Googles site ranking test. If your site is not optimised, your site will lose valuable SEO ‘street cred’, why because people literally won’t be able to visit your site walking down the street.

Having a mobile site is just one of the many important factors that help improve your SEO score. To view all Google’s ranking factors, click here otherwise below is a list of some of the more important ones:

1: All sites should submit a sitemap to the search engine.
2: Keywords research is important as it helps describe to Google or other search engines the nature of your site. This should be natural and pages should not be stuffed with a specific keywords as this is regarded as black SEO tactics by Search Engines.
3: Fast page loading speeds
4: SSL certificate
5: Descriptive URLs
6: Fresh and regularly updated content
7: A few relevant outbound links to authority domains
8: Long form, high-quality and relevant content

It takes TIME

Of course this list is not exhaustive, in fact there are probably over 200 factors to take into account. This gives an insight into the many aspects of SEO. SEO does NOT happen overnight either and takes time to be worked upon and should be continuous. It can take from 3 months to a year depending to achieve satisfactory results. So below are a few more SEO considerations.

List of common SEO issues:

Meta Title : This is the main headline the search engine spits up at you when the search engine appears.
Meta Description: Brief description of the webpage and what it is about.
Keyword: One word to describe what your page is about. Some times this is used too often in the same page. Google is intelligent and limits are set as to how many times this can be used.
Heading: In HTML there are heading tags and these are used to reinforce a particular topic just like you would a document.
Robots.txt: This file limits what folders can be accessed within the hosting directory.
Sitemap: All sites must submit a sitemap to the search engine.
URL friendly: Describing what the page is about in the URL.
Accessibility: Must be friendly and accessible to visually impaired.
Social Media: Is your site connected to Social Media?
Page size and loading speed: Speed is important so loading speed is a high ranking factor. If the site does not load within two seconds. Users will most likely get frustrated and move on.
Freshness: Static sites are not viewed favourably and need to be updated regularly.
Links: Do you have internal and external links to other sites.
Qualty of Code: Is your code written easily to read for developers?

If your website is not achieving the results you expected from Google or other search engines, we would be delighted to have a chat with you to help get your site back moving in the right direction.