10 Tips to Improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

If you want people to find your website through Google then search engine optimization (SEO) needs to be at the top of your priority list. When someone makes a search, the top result on Google has a 33% chance of getting clicked. Why are other websites ranking higher than you on google? Because they’re taking the time to improve their SEO. 

There are tons of ways you can increase your chances of getting ranked higher on Google searches, here are 10 ways to improve your SEO. 

Tips to Improve your SEO:

young woman surfing internet on laptop in cafeteria - tips to improve your SEO

Tips to improve your SEO

Improve page loading speed 

Your load speed is really important to the success of your website. If your load speed is too slow, Google will recognise this, and decrease your ranking. Readers are also more likely to abandon your website if it has a long page loading time. 

Research suggests that 40% of visitors will abandon websites if the page takes longer than 3 seconds to load. If you want to test the speed of your website, Pingdom will test your load speed for free. Here are some simple steps you can take to increase your load speed and improve your SEO:

  • Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
  • Reduce redirects
  • Remove render-blocking JavaScript
  • Leverage browser caching
  • Improve server response time
  • Optimize images

I recommend taking Lyrical’s speed boost course to talk you through understanding your site speed and the practical steps you can take to improve it.

Improve your content 

To drive more traffic to your website and increase its popularity, you need to give visitors a reason to keep coming back. Another factor that impacts your SEO ranking is so-called dwell time. This relates to how much time people spend on your website per visit. If your content is fab and users bookmark your website, it can help your SEO ranking.  

Long-form content ranks far better than a typical 500-word post. Improve your SEO by looking over your past content (that’s under 1,000 words) that’s good but never lived up to its full potential and spend 30 minutes “beefing it up” by adding more content, charts, graphs, visuals – google will love it! 

You can use a SEO tool such as Semrush to get lots of helpful information to help you improve your on-page content. These plugins can keep you on the right track when it comes to basic SEO, readability and generate search engine compatible XML Sitemaps for your website automatically.

Focus on the mobile version of your site 

Mobile internet usage is on the rise! In fact, over 60% of Google searches come from mobile devices. Google is well aware of this and ranks sites accordingly. 

Your website may look great on one mobile device (like your own personal cell phone), but you really need to test it on a wide range of screen sizes to know if it’s truly responsive. Google has a free mobile-friendly testing tool that will tell you whether your site qualifies as “mobile-friendly” or not.

Optimise images 

Pictures and other images are great for your website. But optimised images properly will improve your SEO ranking. Resize or compress your images to optimize them (large bulky images will slow down your page speed). You can also sneak keywords into images by labelling the ALT text with with relevant titles. For example, instead of naming an image something like “book1,” you could name it “a harry potter book”. 

Please bear in mind that the ALT text of your image is primarily to assist those with visual impairments – so ensure that you are properly describing the image rather than keyword stuffing.

Backlinks are probably the most effective way to increase your SEO ranking quickly. The more high authority websites that link back to your website the higher Google will rank you. You could try pitching your story to an online newspaper or magazine, collaborating with other bloggers or striking up a partnership with a brand.

It’s also worth creating a profile across as many social channels as possible to generate more high authority backlinks to your website. Some high authority backlink opportunities include:

If you’re looking to build backlinks you could use my blogger outreach service to buy backlinks in bulk.

You can increase the credibility of your website by linking to trustworthy and authoritative sources. Added tip: make sure you’re linking to recent content too; outbound links to resources from 2009 are irrelevant and won’t be as effective for your SEO ranking. 

Within your content you should also be including internal links. Internal linking is a great way to improve your SEO and keep visitors on your site for longer and it shows that you have content worth referring back to. 

A link may become broken when the author of the site you’re linking to removes the page. Broken links can be detrimental to your SEO ranking – this is because Google doesn’t want to send users to sites that have broken links.. I run a broken link check on my website once a week and fix/redirect them all accordingly. 

crop unrecognizable woman working on laptop

Broken links make for a bad user expereince. Improve your SEO by improving your user experience.

Properly format your page 

Each page needs to be neat, clear, organized, and uncluttered. Consider using bullet points and checklists as these make it easy for visitors to scan through your content. If your website is cluttered with unorganised content, it can appear untrustworthy. 

Keep this organised approach to your titles and URl’s too. The best rule when it comes to page titles is to keep it predictable and get your keywords at the start where possible. When it comes to URL’s you want to keep them short, snappy and to the point. You will also need to look into writing a clear meta description too!  

Encourage social media sharing 

Social media is a great way to promote your business or website. But social sharing is also a great way to improve your SEO ranking. One of the best ways you can do this is by including social sharing icons on all your content and share all your own content on social media too! 

My favourite social sharing plugin is MashShare; it’s main features include Twitter and Facebook posting as well as the option to subscribe to your newsletter.

Set up on Google Business 

Spending a few minutes setting up an account on Google Business is well worth your time to improve your SEO (local level). Once set up you’ll be able to edit the info on your business (verify contact info, add images, monitor reviews, etc.). 

Take a SEO online course

If you’re serious about improving your search engine optimization as a blogger or digital business owner it might be worth considering investing in a SEO course. I have taken Lyrical’s SEO course and found it really useful when creating my blog.

More Tips for Bloggers

Blogging Tools: 5 Tools Every Blogger Needs

Ways to Automate Your Blogging Business

Ways to Optimise Your Blog Advertisements

How to Make Money from Your Blog

5 Places To Find Paid Blogging Work

I hope that these tips to improve your SEO are helpful. Let me know if you have found any brilliant search engine optimisation tools that have helped give your website a boost.