Why is SEO important?

This guide has been written specifically for you to garner clients and increase your company’s online presence. SEO is important because it enables Google to index your website and gradually build your ranking amongst the searches. With appropriate and popular keywords, your website can be ranked high in Google’s search engine. By following the tips listed below, the team of spice™ Digital assures the growth of your business in the digital realm and an increased chance of your website gaining more recognition amongst the competitors.

Important tips you should implement

1) Accurate Title page

Creating a unique and accurate title page is essential for your business because that essentially indicates what your website is about. Keep in mind, this is the title that appears on the tab of the browser screen. It should be unique to each page within your website that the user is browsing through. Therefore, it is important that the landing page essentially indicates the company name and varies with different pages after that.

For example: Homepage should be called “CompanyXYZ” and perhaps the about us page should be as simple as “About Us” to make navigation easier for the user.

So, the optimal choice would include describing the content as accurately as possible by creating unique title tags for each page. These should not be long sentences, rather brief yet descriptive titles.

After the title is accurately implemented, you can now provide a description of that page in short summary otherwise known as a meta tag. Make sure these are the best description as Google can sometimes use snippets from the summary to display them in the search results.

2) Improve Structure of URL

Having an easy to remember URL is also an important factor in retaining and gaining more customers. Users will automatically be more interested in a website that is less complicated and to the point. Avoid using long repetitive and hard to remember URL’s. Make sure the URL you are using has similar words that are associated back to the page the user is on.

For example: www.companyxyz.com/about-us/

This way the user is aware of the page and can easily access the information due to the URL relating to the content of the page.

3) Make your site easy to navigate

This is perhaps the most important factor in attaining traffic on your website. Once you have users browsing through your website, you want to make sure that their user experience is not eye straining. What’s worse than a poorly designed website? Nothing. Nothing can possibly be worse than that. You could have the best content on your website, but if it lacks navigation and design aspects then you will experience a high turn out rate. So, we recommend you have an easy menu/navigation bar that state the different pages your website entails. An effective practice is also internal linking, these will be links to your other pages inserted sparingly across your website. Such practice provides an easy pathway within the website and essentially leads to smooth navigation. A simple 3-5-7 rule is what we suggest. The user should not need to click more than 3 times to get to their desired destination on your website. The website should not have more than 5 subpages to each menu item and the navigation itself should not exceed more than 7 menu items.

So, the optimal choice for you would be to use direct words in your URL and create a simple URL that lands users on your homepage.

4) Offer quality content and Services

Make sure the services you offer have great quality and the content on the website is up-to-date. Almost all businesses have moved onto a digital platform to offer their services globally and increase their client base. So, in order for your business to challenge competitive advantage over others it is important to make use of other social media platforms that will eventually backlink to the official business webpage. This will not only increase your ranking but also bring traffic to your site. To manage all this effectively, businesses should invest sufficient time to understand the needs of their customers and provide exclusive content to cater their needs. The best way to tackle this is to provide services that you know your competitors are lacking. Our suggestion also entails that businesses make good use of blogposts, social media sites and e-mail marketing to increase their brand identity.

5) Optimize your use of images

A great deal of people are visual learners, this means people will be attracted to websites that use images sparingly. For example, depending on your business you would need to make use of images on your website to better portray your content. However, often time because of different servers and internet problems the users are unable to see the images on the website. This is where it becomes important to assign appropriate “alt texts” and “captions” for the images you have chosen to upload. This text will describe to the user, who is unable to see the image, about the picture on the website. Our suggestion includes creating an easy pathway on your desktop for your images, so it is easy for coding purposes. Also, always make use of supportive images like PNG and JPEG to cater to all browsers.

6) Use heading tags

Similar to users being visual learners, they are also not too fond of scrolling through pages of heavy content. To make it easier for your audience, we suggest including heading tags to better categorize and organize content for your target segment. By doing this you will experience a lower turn out rate and an increase in activity within your website. You can use different styling to emphasize on your headings but make sure to not overdo them. Few of the stylings you can use include, <em> and <strong>. These will make your text either italicized or bold

7) Make effective use of “Robots.txt”

There will be times when you would not want to be associated with certain websites. You can limit yourself from such sites by restricting access and inputting robot.txt file in your root directory. Often times, reasons include not wanting to be associated with an irreputable website or websites that are a threat for passing viruses. A robot.txt file enables your website to recognize the sites you have restricted and utilize it in the future restrict access.

8) Notify google of mobile sites

With the technologically advanced world, people are always on the go and will most likely access your website through a mobile device. The traditional way of accessing a website through a computer at home has significantly lowered with the invention of smartphones. So, there are more chances of your website being viewed on a mobile device as opposed to desktop. Therefore, it is essential that your mobile site is indexed by google so that it can be configured accurately. Similarly, ensure that your site has both the desktop and mobile versions of the site. This way whichever device is used can effectively display the content.

9) Promote on the right social media sites

Because digital marketing is gaining fame and more social media platforms are being utilized as brand representations, it becomes important to wisely choose the platform that would best represent your business to the world. Many individuals make the wrong decision by picking a wrong platform that fails to market them appropriately. Therefore, we suggest you switch positions for some time and imagine yourself as a client. Now with that in mind, ask yourself: “Where would I go to search ServiceXYZ?”. The first platform that comes to your mind is probably the best choice for you to invest your time on. The following are the platforms we suggest for businesses listed below.

• Fashion retailer = Instagram
• Music/entertainment industry = YouTube and Instagram
• Sporting goods = Facebook & Instagram

Note: ** These are Social Media Accounts that should be invested upon, apart from an official website **

Connect with spice™ Digital 

This is a great SEO guide to use for your start-up. Although, this may seem like an exhaustive list of tips there is much more to Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Management than what we have briefly outlined for you above. For more information and a consultation, you can reach us and talk to our SEO consultants for further clarification. You can email us at: marketing@staging.spicetg.com. We have worked with thousands of brands and retailers helping them with digital marketing.