How To Make Your Website SEO-Friendlier

Your website is effectively your marketing and sales teams all rolled into one – it needs to actively sell your business.

To ensure people find your website, you need to implement SEO strategies so that search engines will list your site and display it in front of prospective customers.

A high-performing website should be fast-loading and easy to navigate to ensure your visitors have a frustration-free experience.

Google is by far the largest search engine online, and it processes over 40,000 search queries every second. And with the first 3 listings on the result page getting as much as 75% of all click-throughs, it pays to be on top.

What is search engine optimisation (SEO), exactly?

SEO is a complete framework of processes and guidelines that optimise a website for search engines considering user’s search intent, user experience, and site usability.

To maximise your ranking potential, you need to target your content around relevant keyphrases, as well as ensure your website has a strong SEO foundation.

For example, your website needs to be easy to crawl, fast-loading, secure and mobile-friendly as these are all major ranking factors too.

SEO involves optimising not only your content but your entire website design.

Let’s look at some of the basic things you can do with your website to attract more customers:

1. Make navigation fool-proof and the website minimal

Site architecture and navigation is the foundation of a good website.

It’s tempting to fill your website with fancy bells and whistles, sounds, and flashes.

Don’t.

All this extra unnecessary coding will slow down your website and negatively affect its search engine ranking.

Not only is a minimal website easier to navigate for users, but it’s also faster and more responsive, which are two of the ways the Google algorithm measures the viability of your website.

On average, visitors spend under 15 seconds on a website before moving on, so you have a short time to hook their interest and lead them to your funnel. 

To achieve this, you need an excellent website that has a good balance between content/information and movement/navigation. A web design and digital marketing agency like https://www.redspotdesign.com/ can help you to create a website that nudges the right visitor toward the main action.

2. Create emotionally appealing content

Scientific research about the human brain shows that 95% of decisions are driven by emotion rather than logic, which is why we always try to create emotionally appealing content.

The best converting content speaks to people’s emotions rather than rationale.

If you deeply understand your audience’s emotional experience at each stage of the buyer’s journey, you can consistently create high-quality content that not only sits at the top of Google but also drives sales.

The key is to identify automatic reactions that tend to be universal across all human beings as well as understanding your market’s deepest hopes, fears, and dreams.

3. Make the lasting first impression

First impressions are hard to change. This means that if your website blends in with competitors, is slow and confusing to use, people wouldn’t return to it.

A good website design needs to create a positive user experience.

Above all, a good website needs to create a positive user experience. Studies show that up to 79% of people wouldn’t repeat buy following a negative website experience.

Today’s consumers are tech-savvy buyers who enjoy a wide choice online – they don’t have to put up with bad experiences.

Your homepage is the first thing customers see. Introduce your value in a sentence or two, and make sure it’s above the fold and visible. 

If you have reviews or testimonials, showcase some of the best ones on your homepage.

Make sure you do not use too busy or clashing colors schemes, or ambiguous, almost literary style of writing, as the goal is to get straight to the point and make it understandable for everyone.

Also, avoid puns and witty talk and save it for your social media if you need.

Your homepage needs to convey a clear message without any misdirecting assumptions. 

4. Make it easy to buy or contact you

Make it easy to buy by making your product pages irresistible. Use social proof like reviews/ influencer endorsements etc; to relieve the buying anxiety by answering all customer pre-existing questions like shipping costs, approximate delivery date, money-back guarantee, returns, and refunds policy, and other questions customers may have.

If you are a service provider, make sure it is easy to contact you.

Make sure your contact information is within sight, and spare your customer’s time. For example, you can make your email and phone number visible at all times at the top of your navigation, which means that wherever on the website your customer is, your contacts details are always visible.

You can also make it’s in a different colour to the rest of the website to make it stand out even more.

5.  Earn high-quality backlinks

Links are continuing to be one of the main ranking factors.

High-quality backlinks are an important ranking factor because Google treats them as a vote of confidence and endorsement. If other high-quality publications link to you, it is an indicator to Google that you are reliable and relevant.

Reliable and relevant content is likely to rank higher.