On 6 August 1991, Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist working at CERN in Switzerland, published the first ever website. As websites started popping up there was a need for a system to sort and categorise them to make them easily accessible. Thus, search engines arose and with them the need for SEO.
To increase your online visibility for current and potential customers you need to utilise SEO (search engine optimisation) tactics to get noticed and drive traffic to your website.
What is SEO?
When you look for something on the internet a search engine, such as Google or Microsoft Bing, will sift through trillions of web pages and documents to find the best matches for your query. Search engines use algorithms to evaluate what is being searched for and which results are the best fit. SEO tactics are your way of telling search engines what your website is about and where it should rank in the search engine’s results pages.
What changes have been made?
In the early days of the internet, optimising your web presence meant on-page activities such as creating relevant content, using the right domain names, HTML tags, links and using the right keywords. And, then repeating those keywords enough times throughout your web pages. It was less about quality and more about quantity. So, in order to outrank your competitor you would simply double up on the number of keywords you used and increase the number of links to your website. However, search engines have since realised that webmasters were manipulating the search results by stuffing their pages with irrelevant keywords and have since developed more complex ranking algorithms to combat spam.
Early search results were very general and didn’t take into account the location of the user, and didn’t have algorithm variations. A search result in England would have resulted in the same results as one conducted in New York. Now, search results are highly specific and dynamic to each user. From 2004 – 2007, local content got a boost when search engines made adjustments and improved their results based on where the queries were coming from in the world. And, with a whopping 900% increase in “near me” searches between 2013 – 2017 you can’t afford to not optimise your website’s SEO for local searches.
In the early 2000s, Google introduced paid search ads in the form of AdWords. An advertiser pays to have their advert appear on the Google search engine’s results pages alongside the unpaid organic search results. But remember, you don’t need to pay to appear in the search results. By tailoring your website for your customer, paying close attention to SEO, correctly structuring your website, and including relevant content, you can improve your website’s chances of appearing in the search results.
Search Engine Optimisation for Mobile
In 2015, search engines included speed and mobile friendliness in their webpage ranking. This was as mobile searches overtook desktop searches for the first time. With this, Google once again adapted their search engine to allow people to search on their mobile phones and tablets and adopted mobile-first indexing in 2018. This means that Google rank and index websites primarily using the mobile version. As of 2019, this became the default for all new web domains.
A person’s search behaviour differs from mobile to desktop due to how they experience it. On a mobile, a person may be in town and quickly need to find a place to fix their flat tyre; they need the website to load quickly. A mobile phone’s screen is also a lot smaller and displays fewer results before the user needs to swipe. Therefore, they are more likely to choose the first few results rather than continue to scroll to the bottom of the page. In contrast, a desktop user is likely to have more time to browse through the search results – reading the information and different listings before making their final selection.
You need to adapt your SEO strategy to cater to both desktop and mobile users. Your website needs to have a responsive and user-friendly design and should load quickly (keep your website’s elements small to allow for this).
As ever, you need to ensure you are incorporating the right keywords, but you now also need to consider voice search keywords. An astounding 27% of the world’s online population is now using the voice search feature on their mobile phones. This means you should be using conversational language, long-tail keyword phrases (search queries which are more specific) and optimise for Rich Answers (the blocks of information normally found above the search results on your Google SERP) by including short, concise answers of thirty words or less in your content.
How does social media impact SEO?
With the advent of social media, a company’s SEO can be indirectly affected by its social media presence. By sharing links across your social media platforms and getting current customers to share your links too, you can increase your brand’s awareness and exposure. Search engines will pick up on this increased social activity and come to the conclusion that your posts must be useful to your target market. In turn, this will lead to an improvement in the search rankings of your website.
In Conclusion
Going forward user experience will be critical. The longer a visitor stays on your website and the more frequently they visit will positively impact how search engines rank your site. By focusing on SEO, content creation, and social media, a business can increase traffic to their website. If you want to find out how SEO can help improve your website’s traffic, contact the team at Chromesoft.
