Tips on how to enhance your SEO

Every business needs a website; and the next step you would need is to market your brand online, either through advertisements or making your website appear on the top of search results. This is called search engine optimisation, otherwise known as SEO.

SEO increases website traffic for your webpage, and it is a way to increase your online presence on various search engine results. That said, SEO is not solely based on search engines – you’ve got to target keywords that people are searching online, as well as curating content that they are seeking for. It is part of a digital marketing strategy, and there are many ways to enhance your business’ SEO.

Before we dive into the various tips on how you can enhance your website’s SEO, let’s get familiar with a few terms pertaining to SEO:

1. Crawling
   The process by which your webpages are added to Google search engine (this will depend on the meta tag you use for your web pages – either ‘index’ or ‘noindex’ – and Google will crawl and index the pages accordingly)
2. Indexing
   The process by which your webpages are added to Google search engine (this will depend on the meta tag you use for your web pages – either ‘index’ or ‘noindex’ – and Google will crawl and index the pages accordingly)
3. SERP
   Stands for ‘search engine results page’, a page that you’re directed to after entering your search query
4. ‘Organic’ search results
   These are results that aren’t paid for – hence you could achieve better result with enhanced SEO
5. Meta Description
   A brief description on the content of a webpage which is displayed on search engine results

After understanding a few important SEO terms, let us get started with the tips on achieving better SEO for your website:

1. Earn your links

Do not attempt to buy a link in any way. Paid links will not be counted into your SEO, and instead of helping you, it may actually backfire. Moz, a marketing software, urges businesses to obtain links through endorsements, and not by paying for them. This means that you could boost your business’ SEO by getting external link directs to your pages.

2. Ensure that your site is loading fast

 Search engines would want to deliver satisfactory search to users. One contributing factor to ranking higher on SERPs is the speed in loading your page. Using Flash or poorly implemented codes could result in slower loading time. To rank higher on SERP, you need to have better response time, which is defined as the time needed to obtain the first bit of content to the web browser (not the time taken to load the entire page). Moreover, a better response time could help to enhance user experience, driving greater traffic to your site.

3. Targeting long tail keywords

Long tail keywords are searched keywords that are uncommon, and they usually make up more two words or more. Startup owners like you should consider targeting these words as they are usually easier as compared to frequently searched keywords such as “marketing”, which will be difficult to rank higher in SERPs. However, remember not to over-include these keywords on a page as these could cause a content penalty from Google.

Now, these are just the basic techniques of SEO (there are many other techniques to uncover) but hopefully with the above techniques, you will obtain better outcomes than ever! If you find it a hassle to ‘DIY’ SEO, you can look at our list of partners here who specialise in SEO.