5 things most people forget that make a big difference for SEO

As promised in my last article, I mentioned that I would run through some of the top things you can do to help improve your overall SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking. But first, we need to go over a few basics on what Google is looking at when they index your website. 

So, what is going on in the background when Google indexes your website? What really goes into determining where you should up on the Google search page?

Well, Google has a few things they look at called Ranking Factors. These factors range from how quick your website loads to how secure it is, all the way through to how accessible is it. So when designing your website or simply adding extra content to it, you need to keep these few things in mind. Now I will go over in a bit more depth what these ranking factors are in a future article, but for now, it is enough to know that they don’t just look at the words on your website in isolation. 

Now, into the good stuff. What can you do to ensure you’re are doing everything you can to rank as high as possible… hire me 😊 or...

1. ) Make sure you have your title tags appropriately set.

A title tag is the name of the web page that shows up, you know, up there ↑, on the tab, you have open right now. It is one of the first things Google looks at when they index your page, and the primary piece of information people see on the search results page. 

See, they are the same.

There are a few different ways you can do this, depending on your platform of choice, so here are a couple of how-to guides that you might find handy.

For Webflow

For WordPress

For Wix

2. ) Set your Metadata.

Metadata is data that describes other data, real inception like hey. But basically, it helps Google and people searching through Google know what is on that specific web page. Each page on your website should have its own individual metadata tag set, and the tags should be duplicated where possible. So your homepage and your blog pages both shouldn’t have the same description, or when people click on your search result link, they might get a bit confused about where they end up and just bounce back to the search results and move on to another listing. 

3. ) Image alt tags

This is one of the most overlooked SEO components on websites I audit. So many people just upload a photo to the web page, and off they go. But there is one very quick and easy step you should complete before getting distracted by the shiny new content you want to upload. 

Set your alt tags.

You know that old adage, a picture tells a thousand words, well it does to humans, but Google isn’t human… yet. So you need to help it out by using image alt tags to describe what the image is about. 

Say you upload this image to your website. We know that it’s a shark with a frickin’ laser beam, but Google doesn’t, so you would need to tell it, and the way you do that is with the good old image alt tag.

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4. ) Image size, when smaller, is always better.

Continuing on with the Image trend, another essential thing to consider when adding images to your website is their size, both in terms of pixel width by height, as well as their size in MB or, preferably, KB. 

The larger an image’s file size is, the slower it and your website will load, and the slower your website loads, the lower down the search engine results page you will be. One of the best tools I have come across to help reduce an image’s file size is TinyPNG and TinyJPG. But if you pair TinyPNG/TinyJPG with an application called Bamboo, then you have magic. 

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5. ) Quick or the dead

Finally, as I have mentioned a few times so far, your website's loading time is super important. In fact, it is one of Google's Core Web Vitals, so they put a lot of emphasis on how quickly your website loads when it comes to your position on the search results page. But one important thing to note is that they don’t just measure your website's loading speed for desktops. Making sure your website loads quickly on mobile devices surpasses desktops as a priority for search providers as Mobile and Tablet devices have taken over the leading devices for internet traffic.

What can you do to make sure your website loads quickly? Well, that all depends. If you are on WordPress or Shopify, then auditing your plugins and addons and turning off any that aren’t required is a good start. Still, you can also make sure that you have a content delivery network (CDN) connected up to cache your website around the globe. If you really want to know how your website performs and what you can do to increase the overall performance, I would highly recommend getting a website audit done. Audits are a great way to find all the little things that may have been overlooked and get actionable suggestions on what to do to fix them. 

If you would like to know what else you can do to help you rank higher on Google’s search results page, why not book a call, and we can discuss how I can help.