When it comes to achieving top rankings in the search engines, a good SEO strategy is vital. However, it’s important to understand that the way in which to achieve success with SEO is not simply by following the steps and then leaving your website to its own devices. If you want to find yourself on the first page of the search engine rankings, you will have to continue to improve and optimise your site across the three core pillars.

Step 1 – Technical SEO

This is effectively the foundation of your website. It’s vital for SEO to have a website that is built in a way that search engine crawlers can easily index and understand. Essentially, the foundation of your website, including its structure and speed are the stepping stones from which you need to move forward with the rest of your strategy.

Technical SEO involves assessing, analysing and improving your:

• Site structure- Your website should be well organised in a hierarchy that helps guide the search engines to the most important pages.
• XML site map- These act as a map for the search engines to follow to discover the content you have created.
• Code- Clean well structured code will make it much easier for the search engines to understand your site.
• Accessibility-As mobile searches continue to dominate the market, it’s vital that your site is responsive and accessible on all devices.
• Speed- Quick loading of your pages can help make the user experience better, which can be a key factor in your rankings.

Step 2 – On-page SEO

The next step is to ensure that your content is continually addressing your target market concerns and the keywords that help to make your content relevant and valuable to the search engines. There are various steps along the way when optimising your website on page content:

• Keyword research- It’s important to identify the terms that your target audience is searching for. You should incorporate these strategically into your content and regularly review them to ensure that you are keeping up with market demands.
• Titles and Headers – It’s vital to craft titles and headings that are enticing, to make your audience want to read them. They should, however, also be informative so that browsers don’t simply click away.
• Quality content – It’s vital to be seen as authoritative and helpful. In short, you should ensure that you provide your target audience with in-depth engaging content. It should answer questions or pain points that your audience has and keep them on your site.
• Optimised images- Compressed images for faster loading and descriptive alt text can help improve your SEO too.
• Internal links- In order to keep your target audience on your website, internal linking can be useful. Think of it as a roadmap for your target market to follow, so they can learn all about your business and how you can help them.

Step 3 – Off page SEO

Finally, off page SEO means creating a good reputation for your site. You need to harness other spaces on the web to create authority, and there are a number of ways to go about this. 

You can start by getting high authority websites to link to your site. This can help give the search engines the information they need to show you are trustworthy.

In addition, you may want to think about using social media to engage with your audience and promote your content, and listing your business in online directories and monitoring the web for mentions of your brand so that you can try and turn these mentions into links.

Putting it all together

SEO is somewhat  akin to spinning plates, as it requires consistent attention and adjustments. If you’re worried about whether you will be able to keep these plates in the air, or unsure exactly how SEO works, we will be happy to help you. Our dedicated SEO experts are consistently ahead of all the technical on-page and off-page SEO trends, and will ensure that your website is consistently providing a great experience for search engines and users alike.