Not sure what all the SEO fuss is about? We're going to dive into the basics of on-page optimisation!
What is SEO?
Let's start with the basics - what even is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)? We're keen to keep this article informative and as easy to understand as possible, so let's break it down.
As the name suggests, SEO is the process of optimising your website for search engines and ultimately to climb the rankings on them. It's reported that over 92% of all searches are made on Google, that leaves little room for other engines such as Bing and Yahoo. That means that most people will refer to SEO as 'getting ranked on Google'.
There are two main parts to SEO;
On-page SEO - the process of making your content search engine friendly.
Off-page SEO - the strategy of building backlinks and citations.
So, in layman's terms, SEO is the process of making your website as easy for Google to discover as possible which in turn enables your business to appear higher within search results.
In this article, we're going to explore the basics of on-page optimisation.
On-Page Search Engine Optimisation
If you've ever built your own website, chances are you've never even thought about SEO - your main objective was to make it look as good as possible and to promote your business in the best light, right?
Having a website that looks great is all well and good but if it's not performing to its potential when it comes to SEO, how is anyone going to find it?
There are a huge range of processes that make up on-page SEO but we're going to cover a few of the key ones that you should be aware of.
H1, H2 and H3 Headings Tags
Google's robots can certainly 'read' your page and content but they can't necessarily identify what text is a heading and what is a paragraph. In other terms, they can't understand what the important parts are very easily.
That's why a website developer will use headings tags. In short, they rank each piece of text content on your webpage, making it easier for Google's crawling robots to understand what's what.
H1 - This is usually going to be the title of your webpage.
H2 - This might be used for titles of products or services.
H3 - This could be used to break down descriptions.
Image Alt Text
In recent years, Google's algorithms have become increasingly advanced, allowing them to scan images and detect what's in them whilst crawling a website.
However, there's still a place for alt text on your website. For example, if you've got a picture of a dog licking an ice cream, your alt-text should say something along the lines of "Labrador dog licking ice cream from a cone".
Be careful though, Google's bots are becoming very smart when it comes to comparing alt text with images and can now recognise when alt-text is misleading or used to 'cram' keywords.
Schema Markup
The idea of schema markup is to place a snippet of code within your website that crawlers can read and collect data from. It's in a text-based JSON format and it's pretty easy to understand. In fact, there's a handy tool called Schema Markup Generator that will take the hard work out of it.
When using the generator, you should select the relevant type of business that you are and include as much data as possible within the parameters. It will ask for things like your business name, contact details, price range and more.
Schema markup helps to create 'rich results' on Google which can display images, review scores and more.