Resources for Makers
5 quick tips to help improve your SEO ranking and make your site more relevant for customers.
What is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation?
SEO is optimising the content of your website to improve the order in which it is displayed in a search engine’s search results. Search engines look at all the content available on the web and then display the most relevant and reliable in a ranked order. The better your SEO, the more likely your website is to be seen by customers.
"To give you the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors, including the words of your query, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources and your location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query – for example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions.” - How Search algorithms work, Google.
Let’s look at an example. For instance, let’s search ‘Ceramicist Melbourne.’
You will see Google bolds my search terms as they appear in web results on desktop. This is useful to see how my search words ‘Ceramicist Melbourne’ have been layered into the web pages page titles, meta descriptions and URLS displayed.
Here you will see the top 5 results that came up from my search ‘Ceramicist Melbourne’
What can you tell from these top 5 results? Look at how they have approached their practice and the details they have included.
‘Ceramicist Melbourne’ shows different results for me on my mobile versus when I search on desktop. This highlights the importance of comparing SEO rankings on the same device (mobile to mobile, desktop to desktop). As SEO rankings are unique, to get the most accurate portrayal of SEO ranking it is best to search using a private or incognito browser (which doesn’t include your search history) or even better to use a SEO ranking tool.
Don’t forget, SEO rankings can look different for each person depending on a number of factors including:
- Geo location - Search engines will prioritise content that is geographically close to you.
- Your device type - Search engines always prefer content that is mobile friendly, but your device type will also contribute to the ranking of results.
- Your browsing history - Search engines will prioritise web content you have previously engaged with and sites you visit frequently.
- New content - SEO rankings take into account new, fresh content and in some instances this will contribute to the order of search results - This is more prevalent for news results or search terms that include ‘available now’ etc.
- Popular web content - SEO rankings want to show content that users enjoy, very popular websites that are visited frequently will often appear higher in search results.
After you have explored the search results of popular search terms related to your practice, make a list of keywords that you noticed and that relate with the content of your business. Enter these keywords through Google’s KeyWord planner to research other ideas, related terms and opportunities you can consider for your own SEO.
Useful and engaging meta descriptions
What is a meta description? The meta description is a snippet of text (approx. 155 characters) which summarises a web pages content. The meta description appears underneath a web page in search results when it correlates to a customers’ searched for phrase/word. (like in my example at the top of the page ‘ceramicist Melbourne.’
A good meta description is crucial as the more relevant the meta description is to a customer, the more likely it is they will visit your web page, which in turn, will increase your CTR (Click Through Rate) A high CTR tells search engines that your content is popular and useful to customers and will move your page up in the rankings.
Tips for writing a meta description:
- Include a call to action (CTA)
- Make sure your meta description reflects what is on your web page
- Include relevant keywords. A great tip is to look at the frequent questions that customers email for inspiration. For example If customers are always wanting to know when your workshops open, include this in your meta description.
- Don’t use the same meta description for every page
Clear formatting with humans in mind
Search engines prefers content that is clear, concise and easy to explore. The more relevant the content is, the higher it will appear on a search. The higher it appears on a search, the more likely a visitor is to click and explore your site. Make sure that large chucks of text are broken up into readable paragraphs with meaningful headings.
Upload images that are web resolution (KB rather than MB). High-res images you would use in print will take more time to appear, meaning unnecessary wait times for the viewer and a lower SEO ranking.
Remove barriers to engagement
Don’t make customers download large files to read about you and your business. Instead include this information clearly and concise on your website. Having information readily available in an appealing, easy to read format is not only helpful to keep customers exploring and engaging with your site, it also makes content and copy far more accessible for a search engines algorithm to scan and prioritise. You can of course, include files as additional downloadable options - for instance; your CV or artist bio, but make sure this is also communicated in some part on your site.
Optimise for mobile
Most websites will find that users visit their sites or search engines using a mobile device. Desktop versions of a site are difficult to view and navigate from mobile devices. (Anyone tried to top-up their Myki from a mobile phone? Users will notice the site is not at all mobile-friendly and is a great example of what not to do!)
Mobile optimised content is preferred by search engines for ranking and generating results, as their algorithm prioritises the most useful, assessable content for users.
Is your web platform mobile friendly? We look at some frequently used website platforms below.
Squarespace:
Squarespace sites automatically adjust to a customers’ devise using responsive design and mobile styles (when using Squarespace templates on version 7.0) But users are recommend to test how each Squarespace template appears by clicking the ‘Device View’ tab and exploring it’s appearance on different devices.
Wix:
Wix websites are not fully optimised for mobile, but they are becoming more responsive. Users with a Wix website are encouraged to use full-width elements as much as possible (for example; strips and columns, full-width galleries, horizontal menus, lines and full-width slideshows. (these will expand to the fill the width of the customers screen).
Wordpress:
Users with a Wordpress site can use the Wordpress theme customiser to preview what a site will look like on mobile devices from the Wordpress dashboard under ‘Appearance > Customise’. Most new Wordpress themes are responsive, but before enabling a theme first check the appearance on different screen sizes.
Google has a quick and easy tool to see if your site is mobile friendly:
Relevant URLS (Web address) and images
Use short, relevant and meaningful URLs when creating pages on your website. The best practice is to limit your URLS to no more than 2 – 4 words for example; www.joe-bloggs-ceramics/artistbio. This makes them memorable to the user and easy for search engines to scan.
When uploading images to your website make sure the file names are clear and correlate to the image, e.g. Joebloggs_porcelean-vase.jpg. When people enter search terms, the algorithm searches the names and image descriptions of all images on the web, and then displays the most relevant ones to viewers. Images titled ‘test-1.jpg’ will not help customers find your beautiful work!
Consider using Alt Text.
What is alt text? Search engines also use alt text or ‘Alternative Text’ to identify the content of an image and display it in relevant searches. Alt text is also used for people who have disabled images in their browser settings, or who use assistive screen readers. Adding alt text into your site is a great way to not only improve your SEO, but to make your content more accessible to a wider audience. When writing alt text remember to write with humans in mind, keep it short, descriptive and helpful. On web platforms where you don’t include alt text, image captions are pulled by search engines to display relevant images.