5 SEO Tips to get your website noticed

When making a search online, how often do you go to the second results page? Many of us would say rarely, if ever.

According to Hubspot, 75% of people making searches never look past the initial page.

In an age overrun with content, it’s getting increasingly more difficult to meet that standard.

That’s where SEO comes in.

SEO, meaning search engine optimization, includes methods to boost your website and improve your rankings. Learn about some of the top SEO methods that can help you accomplish this.

1. Think About the Search Intent

When potential customers make a search, they have a specific reason in mind. Some people want to research a product they’re hoping to buy, and others want to learn about a related topic. Knowing the search intent will help you target your language better.

There are four types of search intent: informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional.

Informational is just that. People are looking for an answer to a specific question. These searches are the ones about what the weather will be like or a word in a different language.

Navigational is when the user is looking to find a specific location on the internet. This would be someone searching your business’s name to find your website.

Those are pretty straightforward. The commercial begins to get into market-based searches.

Commercial searches are when a person will potentially buy a product but want to research their choices first. With these, the results page will see keywords like “the best” or “top products”.

The last intent is transactional. This is when a person knows what they want and are looking to buy.

When you're trying to make your pages for the greatest optimization, keep the intent in mind. If you are targeting your page to viewers who haven’t made up their minds about purchasing, you will use different language than you would for people who know what they want.

2. Have an effective headline and description

Another way to get your web pages noticed is through title tags and meta descriptions.

Title tags are the headlines, and typically are the first thing people see about a page. Google describes them as “the primary piece of information used to decide which results to click on.”

Headlines should be an original description of the page in 60 characters or less, or else it won’t be entirely visible. It should be informative and contain keywords, but don’t overdo it. You should also keep in mind the search intent when creating it.

Under the title tag, there is the meta description. A meta description is the one to two-sentence summary. Some describe this as a sales pitch to get a user to visit your page.

This can be up to 160 characters and should be different for every page you have. Like the headline, don’t keyword stuff the meta description. Too many keywords can seem tacky and unauthentic.

3. Incorporate Image Optimization

Optimizing your images can improve your SEO and the user experience.

The simplest way to optimize your images is through the file types. The files you use can impact the loading speed and quality of the images.

When it comes to photographs, JPG is the way to go. But for drawings and text, PNG ensures the best quality.

Recently, Google created the WebP file type, which has the best of both JPG and PNG. However, it’s not supported by other browsers, like Firefox and Safari.

The next optimization method is image compression. When files are larger, they take longer to load, so compressing them makes your site faster and more efficient. TinyPNG and ImageOptim are two tools that can be used to compress images.

Another is the alt text that is attached to the images. The text allows you to provide context for your images to help search engines better recognize them. You can do this by providing keywords.

Be careful not to keyword stuff because the Google algorithm might mistakenly read this as spam.

Lastly, you can install plugins to lazy load your images. Lazy loading is when your images load as the viewer needs to see them on the page and not when the page is opened. This stops all the images from loading at once and slowing down the loading speed.

4. Increase Your Page Speed

Google has created a software called PageSpeed Insights that tells you how to better optimize your speed.

But you can start optimizing it yourself by compressing your images, disabling plugins you’re not using, and decreasing how much you include redirects on the page.

5. Take Advantage of Internal Linking

Internal linking is when you provide a link to another part of your website for the user to be redirected to. By including internal links, you’re giving your site structure. Search engines favor websites with more internal links, and it can increase your ranking on the SERPs.

SEO is a broad topic and continually changes over time. As algorithms get smarter, companies must adapt to how they use SEO and put out content.

But these simple tips can help get you started on gaining headway in the digital marketing world.