Markets are becoming increasingly competitive, meaning standing out against your competitors can be difficult. Nowadays, it’s not good enough to just have a website. Every page needs to be optimised if you want to increase your visibility. It’s for this reason that there is an ever-increasing number of businesses opting to collaborate with a specialist SEO agency to help them see the return they deserve.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of editing your website to make it more favourable in the eyes of Google’s algorithm. Essentially, the more of their theoretical boxes you tick, the higher your website will rank on the search engine results page (SERP).
When it comes to digital marketing, SEO is one of the most reliable methods to drive website traffic. Moreover, 61%of B2B marketers say that SEO marketing generates more traffic compared to any other method! This means greater visibility and ultimately, more enquiries and sales for your business.
How is My Website Ranked on Google?
This is something our SEO agency is often asked, but the answer is quite technical. Firstly, Google prioritises user-friendliness and their experience. This includes fast loading speeds, as well as engaging and relevant content. To determine which websites meet the specifications, Google will follow a three-step process: crawling, indexing and ranking.
Google uses bots, known as “crawlers”, to scour websites across the internet. These determine how well your website meets their algorithm requirements. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t share this criterion outside of the organisation, nor how many factors are included. Just to make things even more difficult, the algorithm is constantly changing. As you’d expect, this can be a hefty challenge to keep on top of. Nevertheless, this is made possible when you work with an SEO specialist like those here at VerriBerri.
Keyword Mapping
If you want to rank higher on the SERP, using relevant keywords is arguably the most important thing to consider. A keyword is a popular search term or phrase relevant to your business. It’s essential that you do your research and find out what keywords both yourself and your competitors are ranking for. This will give you an indication as to what your customers are interested in. The experts at our specialist SEO agency use a specialist keyword planning tool to plan more thoroughly.
Assigning targeted keywords to specific URLs on a website is called “keyword mapping”. Website pages can have numerous keywords assigned to them, including both primary and secondary terms. However, each URL needs to be correctly optimised and relevant to the target keyword to rank highly on Google.
What are the Benefits of Keyword Mapping?
The ultimate goals of keyword mapping are to help you discover where to build content, which pages to optimise further, and where new pages could be added. It will aid you in defining your SEO campaign as well as provide an overview of your website’s health.
- Organise content effectively – keyword mapping allows you to visually keep record of your content. This will make content writing easier, save time in the long-term, as well as identify whether a new content page needs to be added to your website.
- Prevents keywords overlapping – if you have more than one page ranking for a specific keyword, you’re in competition with yourself! This can negatively affect your website’s position. Mapping allows you to clearly assign each keyword to its corresponding page URL, preventing any cannibalisation.
- Measure your SEO strategy – having different keywords assigned to various pages across your website allows you to see the overall picture of the performance of your content. This will help you to determine where you should prioritise your optimisation efforts.
- Identify internal linking opportunities – including links from one page to another helps the “crawlers” to index your website. It also improves the user experience as visitors can more easily find what they’re looking for.
How to Improve a Website’s Ranking
SEO takes years of hands-on experience to perfect the art and fully understand the process. It takes dedication, persistence, and time. This is why many businesses opt to work with an SEO agency to take the stress of their hands. That being said, here are a few top tips to help you get started…
- Make your website mobile-friendly – over 92% of people access the internet from their mobile phones. This emphasises how crucial it is to ensure your website is user-friendly for these devices to avoid missing out.
- Use meta descriptions – these are short extracts on the SERP that explain what your page is about and encourages them to click on your website. A meta description should be no more than 150 characters in length and contain one of your target keywords to rank more highly.
- Improve website loading speed – the loading speed of your website is one of the most important factors to consider. Undeniably, most of us don’t have the patience to wait nowadays. You’re able to check your speed by carrying out a website audit, which shows your current loading time as well as which areas may be slowing it down.
- Include backlinks – these are links from another website to yours. If they’re high-quality, backlinks can have a positive effect on your search visibility as they improve your authority and add value to your content.
Contact VerriBerri
With SEO, there is little room for error. Website health is fragile and if you don’t get it right, it can have a detrimental impact on your ranking and visibility. That’s why we would strongly recommend using a professional SEO agency, such as VerriBerri, to ensure you see the best possible results and ROI. Give us a call today on 01376 386 850 or click here to speak with the team directly. We would love to hear from you!