By implementing these 12 DIY strategies, you can improve your website’s Google ranking.
1. Conduct Keyword Research:
It’s crucial to perform keyword research relevant to your business. Identify popular keywords in your industry and strategically incorporate them into your website content. You can use free tools like google keyword planner to identify keywords.
2. Install a free SEO plugin such as Yoast
SEO plugins allow you to add keywords, meta-descriptions and SEO titles to each page and post. The free version of Yoast gives basic SEO analysis telling you how you can improve your SEO score, for example increasing your keyphrase density in your content, improving your meta-descriptions, adding inbound and outbound links etc.
3. Create Quality Content:
Relevant and high-quality content is key to improving your Google ranking. Make sure you have content including keywords on your homepage, a beautiful homepage with an image gallery and little text is not going to help you rank high up in google. Regularly publish articles, blogs, and other types of content that are useful to your audience. Naturally incorporate your keywords and provide valuable information.
4. Keep Your Website Updated:
Ensure that your plugins, theme, and WordPress version are up to date (make sure you do a backup before doing updates!) This will help keep your website performing well, which in turn positively impacts your Google ranking. Regularly update your website with fresh and relevant content. Google values websites that stay active and provide up-to-date information to users, creating a blog is a good way to do this. If you need help with monthly backups and updates including blog post creation, adding news, events and new projects I can help, please get in touch!
SEO is not an overnight process, It typically takes between 3–6 months to see results. Consistency, patience, and a holistic approach are essential for long-term success.
5. Optimise Your Images:
Images are important elements on your website, but they can also impact performance and Google ranking if not optimized properly. Ensure that your images have appropriate sizes, are compressed, and have descriptive ALT tags including keywords. Use tools like TinyPNG to compress your images.
6. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly:
Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites. Ensure that your design is responsive and properly adapts to different devices and screen sizes. Check out how responsive your website is here. If you need help to improve it please get in touch.
7. Harness Social Media:
Social media can play a significant role in promoting your website and generating back links. Share your content on relevant platforms and encourage your followers to share it as well. Here is a blog post where I talk about ways to harness social media.
8. Build Quality Backlinks:
Inbound links from high-quality websites can significantly improve your Google ranking. Create business profiles on Google and LinkedIn containing a link to your website and look for opportunities to obtain links from other relevant and trustworthy sites in your industry, offer to link to their site if they link back to yours, this will mutually benefit both sites google ranking.
9. Create a Blog and share posts on Social Media
Doing a monthly blog post on your website and sharing it on your social media channels not only increases your brand/product awareness it also creates valuable back links to your website. Make sure you that you add keywords to each post. Include images in your posts with keyword rich Alt texts (you can add this within the WordPress media library). A blog is a great way to add keyword rich content to your website without overloading the other pages on your website.
10. Use Video on your Website (Embed video hosted on YouTube)
Using video on your website increases user engagement as visitors engage more easily with video than text. User engagement is increasingly being recognized as a crucial ranking factor for SEO success. With search engines like Google prioritizing the delivery of the best possible user experience, how well a website engages its audience can directly influence its positioning in search results.
Don’t host your videos locally as this can drastically reduce the performance of your website, in turn affecting your ranking. Create a YouTube account with your logo and branding and embed video from here on your website. This creates back links that contribute to your website’s authority, improving your website’s organic search rankings. As YouTube is owned by Google, it is far more likely to prioritise YouTube hosted video in its rankings than video on other platforms such as Vimeo.
11. Use Proper Heading Tags & Optimise your Meta Tags:
Heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) help structure your content and make it easier to read for both users and search engines. Use heading tags appropriately and strategically, including your keywords when relevant.
Meta tags, such as titles and descriptions, are crucial elements for Google ranking. Ensure that each page of your website has unique, descriptive meta tags that include your target keywords. Here is a useful article on this subject.
12. Optimise Loading Speed for your website:
Loading speed is crucial for a good user experience and Google ranking. Optimise images, minimize code, and use tools like browser caching to speed up your site’s loading time. Check how your website is performing with tools like GTMetrix.
You can check your SEO score with this free tool. If you need help with image optimisation, meta tags, content creation, monthly updates, optimising loading speed or making your website mobile friendly I can help you, please get in touch.
