10 fundamentals of SEO: our comprehensive list for a tremendous Google-friendly website
Rachael looking gorgeous in her cream blazer with seasonal flowers - when you get your website SEO right, you should be smiling too!
How to improve your website’s seo by making it more google-friendly
As a website design studio in Devon, designing stunning websites for creatively-inclined businesses across the UK, our latest session with our Website Club members was part one of how to get started with SEO - specifically, how to make your website more SEO friendly to Google (or search engines).
In a sentence, being good at SEO ultimately is not about focussing on Google, but instead focussing on what is really helpful for your ideal clients or customers.
When you create, write and optimise content on your website or blog with people in mind, it’s likely it’ll tick the boxes for Google.
The reason for this is because SEO is about making great content really accessible to real people; content that answers their burning questions, provides helpful information and speaks to their needs.
This is why Google exists - to make the most relevant and authoritative information readily available to people through search results.
There are some technical aspects to SEO, but for the vast majority of businesses out there, the best way to make inroads is through laying things out logically; making content accessible; and answering the damn question!
This is the first part in our wee guide on how to get started with website SEO, specifically for beginners, and we’re going to focus mostly on areas off page that will make your site more Google-friendly.
In the following part, we’ll then turn to on-page SEO, which is about the content itself - working out what people want to read, gathering ideas and putting it all together in great blogs posts.
A short definition of website SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (shortened to and popularly known as SEO) is the practice of making improvements to your website with the aim of appearing higher in a search engine’s organic search results, most popularly on Google (others are available!).
The desired outcome is an increased volume of click throughs to your website as a direct result of your improved rankings. Read more on what is SEO / Search Engine Optimisation by SearchEngineLand
How to understand website SEO with a social media analogy
To help you understand SEO and how it works in an ideal world, think of a social media platform - for this analogy we’ll use Instagram.
If you’ve been on Instagram for a length of time you’ll have heard Instagram experts talk about the gold standard of building a warm, engaged audience in an organic way. Primarily that is through excellent content that delivers value to your audience and understanding that every post should have a purpose (to improve the life of your client). Off the back of that there is the ongoing audience nurturing through comments, direct messages and other interactions.
Buying followers, using bots or spamming people with automations is severely frowned on. Regardless, this doesn’t necessarily produce sales or real engagement, plus Instagram is quick to throttle your reach (a shadow ban), making further activity futile.
In terms of your website SEO, it’s much the same: good website SEO is about growing your organic reach; growing a following; encouraging people to visit your site; and then reaping the rewards through sales or enquiries.
It’s not about buying traffic or visitors or any shady practices that try to trick Google or potential visitors.
The core principle of good website SEO is to create pages and content for people: content that people love, which in turn Google picks up on. This encourages more people to visit your website through search results, creating a virtuous circle.
The truth behind common website SEO myths
If you're not on xyz platform, you can't rank on Google
This is probably the top one we come across and usually goes along the line that if you're not on WordPress you’re not going to rank in a search result, which is not true at all!
In short, Google is platform ambivalent. What Google really cares about is great content.
And the reason for that is because great content answers people's questions and meets their needs. So if you're producing really great content on your blog and have a well-structured site, that's what Google wants to see. It doesn't really matter, in a sense, what your platform is.
On the other hand, if you really want to get into SEO on your website, get really competitive and go after keywords in searches, then there comes a point where you will need more granular access on your site and be able to do technical tweaks.
For the vast majority of us, we can do perfectly well with website SEO, as long as we're producing really good content.
Can you get me to the top of Google as soon as you launch my website, please?
This is a common offering in spam e-mails, but sadly it's just not going to happen.
Website SEO is a long game and takes persistent work. It's about producing really great content; understanding the questions your potential visitors are asking; and serving them up with good answers.
Equally, Google takes time to digest website content, adjust its rankings and then serve it up to users. Realistically, the minimum time to see results with SEO is three months, but if you can only do a little SEO work at a time, then it may well take longer.
The other thing to bear in mind is that users don’t all necessarily get a standardised set of search results for the same keywords. Google takes into account a whole variety of factors when it comes to search results.
Location is a key one, so Google is likely to offer up results that are more tailored to a user’s location (depending on their search terms). There will be many variants of a search result that depend on the specific person asking a question.
The related point here is that you need to know what you want to rank for in a search result, otherwise how are you going to purposefully target that result - it doesn’t happen automatically! Only then can you produce content in order to get results.
If I've launched my website, my SEO work is done!
A great website is one that's continually updated and that has fresh content on it.
Once your website is launched, that's when the work begins - publishing blogs, updating your portfolio and so on.
Google wants to see that your site is relevant and accurate. It rewards websites that have that quality, fresh content, because that's the stuff that helps people. That's why we update them regularly, so that ultimately we're serving our users.
Websites are a little bit like The Great British High Street.
It's all very well having a shop premises or physical location on the High Street. But unless you're dressing the window, getting in fresh stock and putting new things within it, what's actually going to keep people coming back or thinking about going in to get an item?
You don't just build the premises and then put nothing in it. You've got to treat your website in the same way: get the content in there! Websites need lots of relevant content that interests your audience.
If I figure out Google’s secret sauce and game the algorithm, I can unlock it to get untold riches.
Again this is classic e-mail spam content - if I figure out the formula, then Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your Aunt; you’re top of the Google pile: sales and enquiries coming out of your ears!
What we’d say is, again, focus on users and visitors. Google's pretty open about saying make your website for real people. As such, it's important not to obsess about the technical aspects of the formulas, algorithms and secret sauce.
Simply focus on really great content on your blog really and that will help to move you forward.
How to check if your website is on Google
If you launch or relaunch your website or make major updates, you need to let Google know about that. Why? In order to minimise the time Google is in the dark about it or serving up outdated results.
What you can do is submit a sitemap, which is quick to do, and tells Google your site is there and ready to be indexed.
Over time, Google will do this automatically, but if you’re launching your website for the first time, make sure you've submitted a sitemap which will get your started.
Page titles and meta descriptions: why they are important for website SEO?
Before getting into the content of a page or blog it’s important to create the canvas and get things set up well, starting with the page title.
Your page title is the short snippet that appears in a search result as the headline text with a short sentence beneath it (the meta description which we’ll come onto). This is important because it’s pretty much the first thing someone will see before landing on your site.
Equally, it’s what Google sees first when it crawls a page on your site. As such, what we want to do is tell Google clearly what the particular page is about, whether that’s your services page or your about page. Your page title, in a few words, succinctly and helpfully tells Google what it can expect to find on this page.
Practically we need to keep the page title to between 50 to 60 characters, which is not long. It needs to be concise and each page should have a unique page title too.
In terms of the meta description for your page, this is the longer snippet that appears below the page title in search results as we mentioned. This is a further chance to summarise what the page about and what people can expect to see. The ideal is to incorporate a search keyword in the title and meta description. With meta descriptions you get between 150 to 160 characters, so conciseness is the order of the day!
If you forget to add or optimise your meta description, Google will generate it automatically for you in its search result. It will choose a strong of text that it judges to be most relevant from your page. However, this can be hit and miss - depending on the content on your page, it might be nonsensical or not your preferred snippet.
As such, it makes sense to optimise your page’s meta description as best you can. Read more on how to write the perfect page title with SEO in mind by HubSpot plus what are meta descriptions and how to write them by Moz.
Page headings and how they can improve your website SEO
The next step deals with headings and subheadings which give structure to the page itself, building on your page title and meta description.
Headings and subheading help us think about the structure of the page itself. In the same way that we might write an essay or an academic paper, having our points worked out beforehand, the approach is the same.
Headings allow us to structure the content of a page well, creating the framework for the paragraphs and the key things we want to say. The same is true for your web pages, including your blogs.
What we want to do is create a really strong, clear structure that helps people understand the content, perhaps skim it if they need to, to get to the the the relevant points. As such, it's helpful just to think of your page as a skeleton before you get down to writing content: an outline with headings and subheadings and then the content within those.
When you're setting out a page and thinking about headings, make sure you include helpful words within the headings. So perhaps a keyword that relates to what the page is about. Don't use heading tags for emphasis within your text. If you want to highlight something within a paragraph, use bold or perhaps italics.
Avoid messing with the order of your headings too. Keep your heading structure in a logical hierarchy: heading 1, heading 2 and then heading 3.
If you interfere with this, mixing up the order of your headings (e.g., heading 2, heading 1, heading 3), Google will get confused and that's when you can start to lose ground. It makes it harder for Google to understand what you're trying to say; it may assume that your content is not as helpful for people as it might be.
Read more on how to use header tags: SEO best practices by SearchEngineJournal.
How to structure your website page URLs for SEO
The next stage that follows on from your headings is the URL of the page. This is the address that appears at the top of the browser window, starting with https:// or www.
For the purpose of this blog, we’ll focus on the part of the URL that follows your domain, known as the slug (e.g., /slug in example.com/slug or wildings.studio/slug).
Again, think of this as a bit like a handrail or a signpost that both helps Google make its way around your site when it's crawling it and thinking how it'll index it and also for people. The page URL acts as a helpful signpost.
Tips for your page URLs include:
Keep them short, not long sentences - no more than six words as a rough guide; as few as possible
Keep them specific - think about who the page is for and its purpose
Use hyphens to separate multiple words in your slugs
Avoid bundling words together in one long string
Aim to include a keyword from your page too - the absolute top thing the page relates to
To recap, when you optimise your page URLs, you’re feeding Google helpful information and helping people understand what the page is about and what they can expect to find.
Pay attention when you duplicate a page to act as a template for a new page you want to set up. Avoid leaving slugs such as /new-page-1 or /services-copy. Ensure all of your URLs are really nice and tidy - it looks professional and it will help your SEO!
A key aspect of website SEO, which applies to all the areas we’ve covered above, as well as your on-page content, is to avoid duplication and duplicate content. The reason we want to avoid duplication anywhere on your site is because it basically makes life hard for Google. Google wants to know that a particular page will be really helpful for a particular person and their search query.
When there is lots of duplication on a website, you’re basically forcing Google to work harder to understand which page has more authority over the others. Google doesn't want to do that. It wants to know really quickly and easy what’s most relevant for its users. This is why we aim for unique elements at every turn.
Read more on how to create SEO-friendly URLs (step-by-step) by Ahrefs.
The importance of the navigation in SEO on your website
The navigation on your website is another way to help both Google and users understand and move around your site. The navigation is what you see at the top of every page, often with dropdown menus.
Your navigation is like a set of folders, showing people how they can get to particular information. It tells Google and your users what they can find and what's most important on your website. For users, the navigation is vital, as it creates their user journey, helping them go from an enquiry to getting to a specific answer on your website.
Think of the navigation like a family tree or a flowchart in which there’s a clear sense of structure and things build off each other in a logical way. Your navigation should help Google and users get to where they want to go as quickly as possible.
The aim with your website navigation and hierarchy is to avoid too many sub-folders. This makes it harder and longer for users to find important information because of the extra clicks involved.
Too many clicks makes it frustrating and gives off the impression that the info or answer is not as important is it might have been. Why bury information if it is actually very important?
Why dealing with broken links improves your website’s SEO
When you run and look after a website, broken links are a part of life. A broken link arises when, for example, you change the address on a page, update it or an external website has linked to one of these pages that you’ve changed.
You may also have deleted a page - we highly recommend that you never delete website pages, but redirect them or improve their content instead.
The principle with avoiding broken links is that we want to give people really good journeys overall on our sites, as well as help Google crawl them, grabbing all the content that's helpful for people when it comes to search results.
Broken links result in roadblocks, which are frustrating for your users and signal to Google that your site is perhaps not as relevant as it previously thought.
How to use a 404 page to improve your website SEO
If people try to find a page on your site and for whatever reason it's been deleted or moved, they'll see what's called a 404 error. This basically means the website has not be able to find that page (page not found).
What we want to do with this in terms of SEO is help people continue their journey on your site instead of falling away when they hit that brick wall. The solution to this is to set up what's called a 404 page. This simply tells people, oops, there's been a mistake here, but here's a way to get you back on track.
A few helpful things you can do with your 404 page is to anticipate what a user may have been intending. If they were in information gathering mode, a link to your blog would make sense, as they may have been looking for a piece of content to do with a question they had. A link back to your homepage makes sense to allow them to start their journey again. Or perhaps include a search bar so your users can have a closer look at content on your site.
You can also use humour in your 404 page, as it’s a way to bring in your core brand messaging again and demonstrate your brand voice, making light of what might have been annoying for the visitor, but ultimately getting them back on track and back to the things that they really want to see.
Privacy & safety in your website’s SEO equation
Keeping people safe on your website and their data private is important because Google wants people to have a good experience when they use its search results. If your website is compromising people’s data and privacy, Google is not going to be happy about it. Insecurities and data breaches will severely impact your SEO performance.
Thankfully there are a couple of easy ways you can ensure you're looking after your visitors. Ensure you use secure hosting and have an SSL certificate for your site.
If there are any insecurities on your website, Google will flag up a warning (on the Chrome browser), telling people to go back or think very carefully if they choose to go ahead. If a user sees this and there’s a chance that hackers could access sensitive or private information, they’re going to click away, which is bad news for your site.
If you’re on Squarespace you get secure hosting and an SSL certificate as standard which then means visitors will see the locked padlock in the top of their browser.
So there you go - ten key areas to work on to make your business website more Google-friendly and so improve your SEO performance in search engine results. Watch our for Part Two, in which we’ll focus on on-page content, especially on your blog. It’s your secret weapon for SEO! If you’d like to learn more from us on website design or get visual inspiration, follow @wildings.studio on Instagram or read more of our blogs on website design too.
