How do you optimise a website for search engine performance?
In 2024, companies are all focusing on showing up as one of the first results in Google search results. This is due to a shift in consumer behaviour, with most users now searching the internet to find products, services, or information. Optimising a website for search engine performance is a long-term strategy, that when done correctly, can offer your brand an excellent return on investment.
Optimising our website for search engine performance is a time consuming and complex process, that involves staying updated with the latest trends and algorithm updates, while ensuring your site remains user friendly, easy to crawl by search engines, and brimming with valuable content that shows you as an authoritative in your industry. But where do you start?
We have put some tips together to help you optimise your website for search engine performance:
Before you can optimise your website for search engine performance, you need to analyse it. This data can include how many visitors your website receives, how long they spend on your site, how many pages they view, along with your bounce rate.
When you analyse the website data available, you can identify trends and patterns that you can use in optimising your site, as it shows you what areas need your attention.
These days more people are using mobile devices to access the internet. In fact, Google announced that close to fifty percent of all searches are from mobile devices. This means ensuring your website is responsive, showing your website correctly, no matter what screen size your visitor is using, not to mention whichever orientation they choose.
Responsive websites can be viewed on desktop computers to smart phones or tablets. In 2024, Google now uses mobile first indexing when crawling and indexing websites. This means your site needs to be responsive, ensuring you are visible to your audience when they carry out an online search.
You may not realise that your website speed could be impacting your SEO success. Websites that load quickly and run seamlessly will help to keep visitors engaged, encouraging them to return in the future. When your site takes too long to load, those potential customers get frustrated, leaving your website and heading to a competitor site. This increases your bounce rate, which can have a negative impact on your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).
This small step can make a massive difference to your SEO success. Sitemaps are files that lists the indexable pages of your website. It helps search engines crawl and index your website effectively. Once created, you submit it to Google through Google Search Console, ensuring your website is crawled and indexed accordingly.
Keyword research is one of the most essential steps to optimising your website for search engine performance. In order to rank well in SERPs, your site needs to be optimised using the right targeted keywords. There are plenty of free online tools to help you research your keywords. Once identified, they should be naturally placed within your website content, titles, headings, meta descriptions, and URL's.
If you want to optimise your website for search engine performance, you need to remember that Google loves content. When you publish high quality, unique, relevant, and engaging content, you improve your ranking, while keeping your visitors engaged on your website for longer. This improves your dwell time, reduces bounce rates, and helps to improve your ranking in SERPs.
Optimising a website is a time consuming process, but it is worth it. If you feel overwhelmed at the idea of optimising your website for search engine performance, give the expert team at Genie Crawl a call, we can help you optimise your site for search engine performance.
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