Thr-Easy Peasy: The three SEO tasks you should be doing immediately
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a critical element of promoting a website or business. Beneath the wider umbrella of strategic marketing, the worlds of SEO and PR play a crucial role together. A strong SEO programme will improve the quality of a PR campaign by ensuring the messaging reaches its target audience. Here at Kredo, we consider SEO a means to ‘supercharge’ effective PR.
More than two thirds of online experiences begin with a search engine{1}. When searching a term, engines use a complex algorithm to rank the list of results by relevancy. There are hundreds of relevancy factors, the majority of which can be influenced. This is where SEO comes in.
It would be fair to say that SEO can be a daunting task – it is an ongoing process that shifts and evolves; one that you can never truly ‘complete’. It is a specialist area that demands regular attention if you want to avoid slipping to page two of the results (where less than 1% of Google searchers click through{2}). Despite its challenging nature, there are a number of ‘quick wins’ even a beginner can utilise. Read on for our top 3 tips for quick fixes to your SEO strategy:
Capitalise on broken links
Inbound links are the most weighted signal of relevancy for Google and so it is critical that you build relevant links to your site. Previously, it was all about quantity, but now the focus is on quality. The perfect link is from a site that itself gets lots of traffic and has high authority (achieved by having lots of links to it from elsewhere).
Quick and easy link building opportunities can be obtained from broken links i.e. one to a page that does not exist. Our first tip is to seek high authority sites that have broken links. Once identified, create content that answers the same question or addresses the same need and get in contact with the site owner. Inform them of the broken link and let them know that you have the perfect page they can link to instead. Great job! You’ve earned yourself a quality link.
Write for humans, not for search engines
On-page signals are also weighted heavily by Google’s algorithm. In order to rank, you must optimise for your keywords and phrases and make sure your content is relevant to your targets. It is no longer necessary to write content specifically for search engines, such as stuffing keywords into as many places as possible or having single pages for each keyword. Google realised that this approach was unhelpful and difficult to understand/navigate.
Instead, write for humans by making your content useful and relevant. If you can do so, people will want to read it. There is no perfect keyword density – instead, write content that truly answers the question the user is asking.
Optimise every image on your site
Before uploading an image to your site, be sure to change the file name to include your keywords. You should also only upload images at the size they will be displayed at and compress the file beforehand to avoid long download times. Indeed, the speed of your site as a whole is important both for Google’s algorithm and the user experience of your visitors. You will quickly lose engagement if your content takes a long time to load.
Furthermore, every embedded image on your site should have optimised alt text that includes targeted keywords (alt text being that which describes images to visitors who are unable to see them). These are simple tasks that will take you no time at all but will significantly improve your SEO performance.
A quick disclaimer: these tips are not exhaustive! SEO is a complex process with many different avenues. There are many factors that you can target, each with their own best practices. Furthermore, many of these strategies flip on their heads if you are addressing SEO for Mobile, International SEO or Local SEO.
One short blog could never do justice to the detail (and skill!) involved in efficient SEO, but we hope you find our top tips beneficial. If you are interested in hearing more about how Kredo can assist with your SEO, you can get in contact with the team via the links below.
{1} https://videos.brightedge.com/research-report/BrightEdge_ChannelReport2019_FINAL.pdf
{2} https://backlinko.com/google-ctr-stats