Let me ask a quick question, how often do you scroll past the first page of Google when searching for a product or service, maybe once or twice in every ten times you’ll go to the second or third page? As it turns out, 75% of people never click past the first page of their Google, Yahoo or Bing search results, meaning that if your website is not on the first page, you could be losing 3 out of every 4 potential customers at minimum!
Ranking well in search engines these days really is a must, but what is the best way to get your website ranking as highly as possible and staying there?
The answer: A solid Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy that competes with your competitor’s strategies, and evolves with Google algorithms.
Since 2007, KMO a premier Brisbane web design agency, has been developing SEO strategies to push our client’s websites up in Google, keep visitors engaged and turn traffic into exciting new leads and sales.
Here’s a little KMO secret sauce:
1. You Need To Frequently Publish New, Engaging Content
When Google first came onto the scene, web designers (including the nice folks at KMO) discovered they could influence the rankings of a website by overloading, or stuffing it with keywords. Since then Google, Yahoo and Bing have adjusted their algorithms to only reward websites with useful content, and punish websites that have poor content.
I think it’s worth echoing that fact: Google punishes websites with poor, outdated, stuffed keywords or too little content.
So as it turns out, what Google (and other major search engines like Yahoo and Bing) now want us to regularly publish new, high quality content, usually on a Blog if we want good SEO rankings. These days it’s best to keep your website itself nice and simple, and really show Google your expertise through your blog.
Now if you’re wondering about that keyword stuffing, it really is frowned upon now and your website will seriously drop in rankings if you do it, but naturally we still include keywords like ‘Web Design Brisbane’ and ‘Brisbane Digital Agency’ in our articles, but we focus more on providing helpful information people love, and this is what keeps pushing us (and our clients) up in search engines.
If you got to this point in the article and just have some questions, please feel to get in touch for a friendly chat.
2. Your Website Structure Needs To Be Spot On
One important aspect that’s often overlooked by web designers and inexperienced Australian SEO companies, yes there are a few, is having a well-structured website. Google’s algorithms heavily uses this information.
If your website is hard to navigate, people will spend less time browsing which negatively impacts your SEO rankings. However if your website is well organised and super easy to navigate, people will spend much more time browsing, which increases your SEO rankings.
It sounds simple we know, but your website structure is not only for users, it’s also Google crawlers that regularly examine your website. If your website is poorly structured the crawlers can miss important pages and they won’t appear in any Google search results, this my friends, is not good. Image if Google never saw your products or services page!
3. You Need To Provide An Amazing User Experience
Website structure is only one thing that affects how long people stay on your website. Providing a great user experience (UX) is also essential for keeping people engaged and you guessed it, increasing your SEO rankings.
The first UX factor is making sure your website is intuitive with clear, prominent and well-labeled menus and calls to actions (buttons and forms). It’s also imperative to focus on a design that is clean and simple, with visuals that help guide the user rather than distracting them. You can see a few examples here: You should never frustrate a user by blasting them with popups and forcing them to provide unnecessary information. Finally, make sure your content is logical and easy to scan, with headings and subheadings just like this article!
4. Your Website Needs To Be Responsive
It’s likely no surprise that the number of Australian people accessing the internet from a mobile device has now well and truly surpassed the number of people accessing it from a desktop, and the divide is only growing. Google has of course recognised this fact, and incorporated mobile devices into their SEO algorithm.
In essence, Google rewards websites that are mobile friendly and punishes website that aren’t!
There’s actually two different ways to make your website mobile friendly. One way is to have a separate mobile version that is displayed on smartphones and tablets, and this is often used if you have an older website that in really in depth. The other, far better way is to make your website responsive, meaning it’s a single website that automatically adapts the layout depending on the smartphone or tablet device viewing it.
At KMO all of our websites are fully responsive, easy to use, fast for Google to crawl and avoid the problems of having duplicate content, which is another thing Google punishes websites for. Google sure is a task master, but we do love them!
5. The Technical Side Of Your Website’s SEO
Most of the things we’ve mentioned so far involve optimisation of the visual and interactive elements of your website, but it’s also critical that your website’s technical elements are fully optimised, including your website’s code complying to Google’s high standards.
With SEO, your title tags, header tags, image alt tags and the meta tags all need to be correct. Then there are page load times, bounce rates, 404 pages, broken links, sitemaps, and the list goes on. All of which affect your SEO rankings.
You Need The Right SEO Strategy If You Want Leads And Sales
If you’re interested in getting your website higher up on Google, we’d love to chat! KMO are leading full-service digital agency who’ve helped hundreds of Brisbane businesses boost their search engine rankings: Speak with us today
