Expert Guide to Improving Your Website's SEO in 2021

A corporate website is nothing without strong SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

Even the most impressively designed, user-friendly and performance-optimised website will do very little for your organisation if it isn’t ranking well on Google.

For that reason, we have worked with our SEO experts to put together a simple guide for website owners, covering the following aspects:

Read on for tips on how to boost your website’s search ranking and performance, drive more traffic and reach more of your audience!

Optimising your website’s content with the right keywords is vitally important.

A carefully considered keyword strategy will bring engaged and desirable traffic to your website and increase conversion rates. In this way, it will improve your website’s overall performance, therefore bringing you a greater return on investment.

Here are some expert tips from our SEO specialists on how to improve your keyword strategy through research and planning:

Create a keywords list for your organisation
1. Add any and all relevant search terms that your target audience will be using to locate your products and services
2. Research your competition to see which keywords they are ranking well on and make sure you haven’t missed any
3. Use a Keyword Suggestion Tool to expand your keyword list with related phrases
4. Localise your keywords to target specific audiences
Use the keywords list to optimise your content
1. Select the most valuable pages on your site to optimise for targeted keywords first
2. Use Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) to identify how you can improve your content
Review the performance of your optimised content and refine your keywords list based on each one’s effectiveness

Regularly reviewing your keyword strategy will help you to keep up to date with what is popular within your industry and what is important to your audiences.

“In short, SEO is significant because it makes your website more visible, and that means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers.”

David Gelb, Managing Director at JBi Digital

Your website’s SEO is made up of a multitude of elements, each of which play their own part in making your website more visible, bringing more traffic and, ultimately, increasing conversions.

It is vital that your website is structured in an SEO compliant way so that it can be properly indexed and crawled by Google.

Consider the following elements:

Website Architecture: SEO is principally based on having an optimised sitemap which provides visitors with access to the information that they are looking for. Review your website’s sitemap and information architecture to ensure that both users and search engine crawlers can easily find the content that they need.
On-Page SEO: Improper internal linking, slow page load speeds, URL errors, user access prompts and noindex values can all prevent your site from surfacing in the search results. You should also be wary of presenting web crawlers and users with conflicting content.
Site Performance: Your site should load quickly, regardless of the device being used to access it. Load speed is a Google ranking factor so faster sites will have an SEO advantage.
Responsive: Mobile-friendly doesn’t just mean that your site is viewable on phones and tablets, it means that your site is built for the users that own those devices — and they should be able to access everything that desktop users can access.
Competitiveness: It is important to monitor what competitors are doing, how they are ranking and how you can beat them in search.

In order to maximise your website’s performance on the above aspects, we have compiled a list of fifteen quick fixes and checks that you can make.

Take steps to optimise your website’s speed – the faster the better!
Move your website to HTTPS (especially if you collect the personal data of users)
Ensure that your website is optimised for mobile devices
Optimize the titles, page headings and body content of your pages using targeted keywords
Create search engine friendly URLs, file names, subdomains, etc.
Optimise the internal linking structure of your site
Use SEO-friendly 301 redirects when you change your website’s structure
Inspect your site for broken links and missing anchors
Use Google Analytics to track traffic and behaviour
Consolidate your tracking setup using Google Tag Manager
Update your business’ Google Maps listing, including branches and affiliate offices
Research competitor rankings, social activity and keywords
Track competitor traffic
Use Schema Markup to attract more visitors to your website
Frequently provide updates on your COVID-19 practices

“SEO comprises a multitude of different elements – knowing what they are and how they work is key to understanding why SEO is so important. It is vital to ensure that the site is SEO compliant so that it gets indexed and crawled as expected.”

Oscar Huglin, Account Manager at JBi Digital

Expert SEO Guide - Social Media Optimisation

Social media is becoming increasingly necessary for modern businesses and often acts as an effective catalyst for building an online presence.

Depending on your industry and audiences, there are a wide range of platforms which could be important to perform well on if you want to maximise your success, from LinkedIn and Twitter to Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and Vimeo.

Despite the growing importance of social media, the majority of companies go no further than setting up accounts on each major platform and posting sporadically.

Social media optimisation is the process of creating and maximising your social media strategy in order to expand your reach and connect with your key target audiences.

The lines between SEO and SMO are becoming blurred. Traditionally, the two have been classed as separate and distinct aspects of marketing, but in reality SEO and SMO have become increasingly interconnected.

Take the following steps to boost your social media performance:

Connect your website and/or blog to your company’s social media channels
Add social networking features to your website and/or blog, such as sharing functionality
Research what content is trending among your key audiences and competition
Create engaging, shareable content and post it across your social media platforms
Ensure that your use of hashtags is relevant and optimised across your content

Getting other websites to link to yours is one of the most crucial steps in boosting your search engine rankings.

Some of the key benefits include:

Boosting Domain Authority: The amount of relevant links pointing back to your domain will determine your domain authority. Having more high quality backlinks for your site will therefore boost your domain authority and increase your chances of being promoted in response to a suitable query.
Generating Referral Traffic: When reputed sites link to your website within their content, users will be likely to click through and check out your website.
Building Brand Authority: Link building is a great way to build your brand and come across as a thought leader in your industry. Sharing high quality content is key to making your brand stand out from the crowd.
Long Term Benefits: The more links that you have built up for your site, the better its long term rankings will be.
Improving Conversion Rate: If you can partner with influencers to publish your content, you will instantly be able to expand your reach dramatically. It is very important, however, to qualify your influencers and ensure that their audience suits your service or product.

To help with this, we have put together an A to Z of steps that you can take to boost your crosslinking and, ultimately, your search engine performance.

a) Submit your site to the Yellow Pages and other search engines to gain local search visibility
b) Write high quality guest blog posts for authoritative blogs in your industry
c) Post a free, downloadable online report or whitepaper on your website
d) Write press releases and submit them to press release distribution services
e) Ask clients to review your product or service
f) Ask industry experts and influencers to review your product or service
g) Collaborate with bloggers in your industry to write guest posts
h) Ask tech and industry bloggers to use your product / service and review it
i) Donate your skills to a charity in exchange for appropriate promotion
j) Donate your skills to not-for-profit websites in exchange for appropriate promotion
k) Use social media and comment sections to engage with community blog posts
l) Join forum discussions relating to your industry
m) Create a thread about your business on a local forum
n) Propose a demo version or a free trial of your software on your site
o) Make an offer of free / discounted samples of your product or service
p) Get a referral link from your local chamber of commerce
q) Check if your local business partners might be willing to link to your site
r) Generate citations to supplement your local listings
s) Recognize and award employees through social media
t) Create a PR strategy based on your business objectives and audiences
u) Create a helpful online tool that others might bookmark and share
v) Create an interactive quiz on a popular topic and make it available on your website
w) Offer regular promotions and special offers on your website and social media
x) Write a free e-book on a topic in your industry and offer it for download
y) Hold a webinar and publicise it using social media channels
z) Spike your engagement and sales with social referral marketing