Top 5 SEO hacks to get your website ranking on Google

Search engines calculate their rankings using complex algorithms and it can take a lot of perseverance before your website begins ranking highly. Understanding the key principles of search engine optimisation (SEO) can help your website to get noticed by the major search engines and begin to climb the search rankings.

If you’re unsure, it’s a good idea to hire a local web designer to talk you through SEO and to make sure that your website is set up for search engine success.

Here is my top five SEO hacks to get your website ranking on the search engines.

Optimise page titles and meta descriptions

It’s easy to overlook your page titles when thinking about SEO, but they’re one of the most important factors.

The purpose of a page title is to help the user to understand what the webpage is about, so you need to make sure it does just that. A good page title should be brief whilst accurately describing the page’s content.

The page description meta tags of your webpages are also critical for SEO. Meta descriptions give a summary of your webpage to both users and search engines.

A good meta description will be around 200 characters. You should try not to repeat the page’s title in the description and avoid keyword-stuffing. Think of your meta description as a way to advertise your page to the reader, to tempt them into clicking through.

Create quality content

Content is critical when it comes to search engine optimisation. A website with original, quality content sets itself up for long term success when it comes to SEO.

People use search engines when they need to find an answer to a question. Your content should aim to answer the questions that your customers are asking.

When thinking about how often you should post content on your website, there’s no set answer. You should aim to post content as regularly as possible, without the quality of your content slipping. Provide references from research or studies to add authority to your content and provide both external and internal links where appropriate.

Many people ask “how long should a blog post be?”. However, there is no straight answer to that question. Short content can rank just as well as long-form content, so you should aim to answer your customer’s question without adding extra words just for the word count – no one wants to read unnecessary words. When it comes to content, aim for quality over quantity.

Optimise link structures

The URLs of webpages are often overlooked. How often do you see a website with a URL which looks like this?

http://www.example.com/1627283827

The link structure of your pages should briefly describe the page in an easy to understand format for both search engines and users. Use hyphens to separate words whilst keeping it short and to the point.

Check your page load speed

The aim of a search engine is to provide the user with the answer to their question in the fastest possible way. For this reason, Google and other search engines prioritise websites which have a fast load speed.

If your website takes too long to load, typically less than four seconds, it’ll be demoted down the search rankings.

Build relevant links

Link building is a key part of search engine optimisation, but what is link building and how do you do it?

Inbound links are regarded by Google as votes of trust from other websites. The more incoming links that point to your website, the more it’s trusted by the search engines and the higher it will rank.

Off-page SEO plays a big part in Google’s ranking algorithm so it’s important to get it right. Publishing great content on your website will naturally attract links as people share your content. You can also reach out to bloggers who may link to your website or allow you to publish content on their website in the form of guest posting.

Link building is a gradual process, don’t expect it to happen overnight. However, it can make a huge difference to the search engine ranking of your website.