Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making your website rank better in search results. The process requires getting organized and better structured in order to improve your website traffic organically. Organically means not having to employ any form of paid advertising on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft bing. A website that has good search ranking will appear on the first page of search engine results whenever a search for keywords it's optimized for is made.
To many individuals, brands and businesses, the question after building your own company website is how can it be visible online, how can it best advertise your business, how can it best display your works formally and professionally? One of the solutions to answering these questions is search engine optimization. Another is Google advertising and the third is digital and social media marketing. Today we focus on search engine optimization as a way to gain a return on investment from your website.
Why your Business Should Use Search Engine Optimization to improve its Search Rankings
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and which medium an audience uses to access a search engine or web browser. Examples of such mediums include smartphones, tablets or laptop computers.
With good search engine optimization, the performance of a website improves and it will receive more visitors from a simple search with a higher rank in the search engine results page. These visitors can then be converted into customers.
Website owners and designers now recognize the value of a high ranking and visibility in search engine results, since it will create more traffic and opportunities for businesses that continuously work on their SEO.
Having a properly ranked website on google is one of the factors that will definitely enable your business to succeed. This can be done without spending a single dollar on search engine adverts. If you use the following SEO techniques to improve your website visibility online.
A variety of methods can increase the prominence of a webpage within the search results.
Search Engine Optimization techniques that will get your website ranking on the first page of Google Search Results
1. Keyword optimization
Placing important and relevant keywords to a website's metadata description improves the relevancy of a webpage’s search listings on Google, this will in turn, drive more traffic and generate more sales for your business. Using relevant keywords in your post or content titles also improves your website’s search listing
2. Website Indexing
Indexing your website will certainly go to great lengths to improve your website search engine optimization. Indexing your website is a simple step that a number of website owners and developers normally tend to forget. Indexing your website is the process of registering your website with a search engine like google. The advantage of indexing your website with one search engine is that they are all under one global network therefore when you register with one, you get indexed by all other search engines like Yahoo and Microsoft bing.
3. Content Quality and Updating.
Constantly editing and updating the content on your website with frequently used and frequently searched keyword terms will make it relevant to a variety of search results, this in turn will lead to more traffic and eventually more clients that will provide more revenue to your business.
Adding new content to your website continuously by offering new product packages, promotions and content will keep search engine crawlers crawling through your website frequently which will eventually improve the rank of your website.
4. Original Content
Google also downplays content duplicated from other websites and other online sources. It is a known fact that websites have copied content from one another which may look like the easiest way to get things done however most search engines highly condone plagiarism of people’s works and have implemented system which reward sites with original and unique content. The search engines can match a certain sentence or paragraph that is unquoted on your site to its original author where it was copied from. The search engines would also like to get rid of irrelevant content and spam to improve their user experience, so producing high-quality content that is unique and trustworthy can also improve a website's ranking.
5. HTML optimization.
Improving your website's search listing and ranking also involves optimizing and modifying a website’s HTML code. This will increase its relevance and remove barriers to the indexing activities of a search engine. Including keywords in title tags and meta descriptions via HTML makes it faster for your website to get indexed by search engines, therefore, increasing its search ranking.
6. Image and video quality.
The images and videos you use also improve the search listing of your website. Original videos and images the internet have not yet seen before taking first priority with SEO. So your photography and videography will be key since your website will be the first platform to publish them. Downloading and using videos from other sources without links, tags and citations can make search engines penalize your ranking by dropping your listing in the search results.
7. Mobile optimization.
Mobile web search has become a big talking point since May 2015, when it surpassed desktop search. Optimizing your website for mobile view will significantly improve your search engine listing and ranking. Since the world is now mobile-first, the mobile version of your website should be a priority when it comes to your web design and it will be a starting point for search engines to index your website.
8. Speed optimization.
The speed and clock time your website takes to load when a user clicks on your domain name is one of the factors that can improve your search listing and rank on your search engine. A fast loading website provides a good user experience, which in turn will get your website a good ranking.
9. Web design.
A good web design, user interface, and user experience also improve your website search listing and ranking since it promotes better and easier accessibility. A good design is a technique that search engine companies recommend this tends to produce results and generates longer traffic and a low bounce rate.
10. Cross-site linking and referencing.
Using crosslinking between content on your webpages and providing citations, backlinks, URL canonicalization to access other websites, webpages and multiple other URLs, can increase your search listing and ranking since the multiple sources of your content that you provide makes your content trustworthy and well researched.
These are a few of the basic techniques that will help get you to the first page of google for various searches. Next we will discuss in-depth how to rank better in geographically searches specifically for Ugandan searches.
