Five Ways to Improve your Site's Ranking (SEO)
Follow these suggestions, and watch your website rise the ranks to the top of search-engine results... Okay maybe its not THAT straight forward as with anything SEO can be a long, built up process. But the following tips will sure help you get ranked much higher in search engines!
1. Publish Relevant Content
Quality content is the number one driver of your search engine rankings and there is no substitute for great content. Quality content created specifically for your intended user increases site traffic, which improves your site’s authority and relevance.
Identify a keyword phrase for each page. Think about how your reader might search for that specific page (with phrases like “mechanical engineering in Tauranga,” “best applied physics program,” or “Tauranga Tech degrees”). Then, repeat this phrase several times throughout the page—once or twice in the opening and closing paragraphs, and two to four more times throughout the remaining content.
Don’t forget to use bold, italics, heading tags, and other emphasis tags to highlight keyword phrases, but don’t overdo it. Never sacrifice good writing for SEO. The best pages are written for the user, not for the search engine. I have seen so many web pages sacrifice good writing for the sake of key word stacking, in some cases it can be cleverly worded to make sense, but more often than not from what I have seen, it's just a jumbled unreadable mess. DONT DO IT!
2. Update Your Content Regularly
You’ve probably noticed that we feel pretty strongly about content. Search engines do, too. Regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best indicators of a site’s relevancy, so be sure to keep it fresh. Google LOVES websites that are always updating and adding new content. Such as blog posts for instance, Google views this as new information and think "oh they have added new information, lets bump them up higher in rankings" A stagnant website will never last against such a competitive place like first page of Google! A lot of people will build their website and be done with it. This is BAD! A website needs constant love and care. This is one thing we do here at Webhead, all websites we have built are made sure they never get old or out dated. If you think you need some help with this, please do get in contact with us!
3. Metadata
When designing your website, each page contains a space between the <head> tags to insert metadata, or information about the contents of your page. If you have a CMS site, the UMC web team will have pre-populated this data for you:
Title Metadata Title metadata is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser window. It is the most important metadata on your page. For those with a CMS website, the web team has developed an automated system for creating the meta title for each webpage.
Description Metadata Description metadata is the textual description that a browser will use in your page search return. Think of it as your site’s window display—a concise and appealing description of what is contained within, with the goal of encouraging people to enter.
Keyword Metadata Keyword metadata are the search phrases that people type when they want to find your page. You’ll want to include a variety of phrases. However, don’t get greedy: if your list becomes excessive, the browser may completely ignore the data. As a general rule, try to keep it to about 6-8 phrases with each phrase consisting of 1-4 words. A great example would be "computer science degree."
4. Have a link-worthy site
Focus on creating relevant links within the text. Instead of having “click here” links, try writing out the name of the destination. “Click here” has no search engine value beyond the attached URL, whereas “Tauranga Tech Enterprise Program” is rich with keywords and will improve your search engine rankings as well as the ranking of the page you are linking to.
5. Use alt tags
Always describe your visual and video media using alt tags, or alternative text descriptions. They allow search engines to locate your page, which is crucial—especially for those who use text-only browsers.
These are only a few of the many methods for improving your search engine ranking. If you have any questions or need additional help with your websites SEO then please get in touch with us here and we will do our very best to get your website ranking!
