With more shoppers searching on Google for products or services or information, search engine optimization, commonly known as SEO, has emerged as one of the most important digital marketing programs for any small business. SEO entails the process of increasing a website’s search ranking using technical on-site implementations and creative and effective content writing.

If you are looking to boost your website’s search ranking on Google search results, use these eight SEO tips!

1. Use lazy load

   Lazy loading is a technological practice of delaying load of resources or objects until they’re actually needed.This saves system resources and improves the pagespeed. For example, if a web page has an image that the user has to scroll down to see, you can display a placeholder and lazy load the full image only when the user arrives at its location.

   The benefits of lazy loading include:

   • Reduces initial load time: Lazy loading a webpage reduces the page weight, allowing for a quicker page load time.
   • Bandwidth conservation – Lazy loading conserves bandwidth by delivering content to users only if it’s requested.
   • System resource conservation – Lazy loading conserves both server and client resources because only some of the images, JavaScript and other code actually needs to be rendered or executed.
   
   

2. Include relevant keywords in the title tags

   Title tags specify the title of a webpage. For example, if a webpage’s title is “digital marketing agency Toronto”, the title tags should also be “digital marketing agency Toronto”. Google uses a webpage’s title tags to understand the page contents and will display the webpage accordingly in search results . For example, if a webpage’s title tags say “Toronto SEO Audit”, the webpage will rank for search queries related to “Toronto SEO Audit”. It’s important for your webpages to include keywords that are closely related to the product or service that’s shown on the webpage so the webpage can appear on relevant search results.

3. Include alternative text for images

   Alternative text is a textual description of an image. Alternative text was designed to help individuals who are visually impaired to listen to a description of web images via an eBook reader. The eBook reader can  read the image’s alternative text aloud to the listener. Google uses alternative text to better gain a textual understanding of an image. If an image’s states “2022 Toyota RAV4”, Google will understand that the image is related to the 2022 Toyota RAV4. More importantly, Google will understand that the webpage that the image is embedded on is related to the 2022 Toyota RAV4. The webpage will then rank higher for search queries related to 2022 Toyota RAV4.

4. Embed videos from 3rd party platforms

   When displaying a video on your website, first upload the video onto a third  party video hosting platform such as YouTube or Vimeo. Then embed the video onto your website for optimal pagespeed. When you embed a YouTube video onto your website, you’re displaying a video that’s hosted on YouTube’s server instead of your own, which makes the video lighter and faster to load, which optimizes your website pagespeed. Website pagespeed is vital to your search ranking because pagespeed affects a website’s user-experience (UX) and Google takes UX under consideration in its rankings.

5. Compress images to under 100KB

   Another way to increase your website pagespeed is minimizing image file sizes so the images are lighter for the browser to load. In general, it’s best to keep  each image file to under 100KB. To limit an image’s file size, you can reduce the dimensions and image quality using Photoshop.Then, export the image and upload it to your website. If an image becomes pixelated or blurry when you compress it to under 100KB, you can go with a higher resolution and bigger file size because it’s more important for your brand to have presentable images on your website.

6. Perform internal linking

   Internal linking refers to hyperlinking text on a page on your website using a link from another webpage on your site. For example, when we hyperlink “SEO Toronto” using the URL www.rwdigital.ca/seo-services/toronto-seo, we’re performing internal linking. This SEO approach helps Google gain a better textual understanding of the webpage that’s been linked to. For example, if we hyperlink “SEO Toronto” using the URL www.rwdigital.ca/seo-services/toronto-seo, Google will understand that the webpage is related to “SEO Toronto and rank that page on search results accordingly.

7. Earn quality backlinks

   Backlinks are incoming hyperlinks from one webpage to another website. For example, if an online newspaper links to a digital marketing agency in a news article, the link is a backlink for the digital marketing agency.

   The number of quality backlinks a website remains one of the important elements of SEO. The number of quality backlinks a website earns is an indication of the website’s credibility and authority, which are key indicators of  a  website’s search ranking. For example, if a reputable news site or a business organization links to a website, Google will interpret that as a boost to the website’s credibility.

   There are a few effective ways to gain more backlinks. This includes submitting guest blogs or other written content to another website in order to earn a backlink. Or you can present at webinars in order to earn a backlink from the speaker bio section of the webinar’s website.

8. Create dedicated landing pages

   Develop a dedicated landing page for each product or service that you want to promote and include relevant keywords, such as the product name and category, in the title tags. For example, if you’re an insurance company, create a dedicated landing page for each insurance service that you offer. For example, you can create a dedicated landing page for “property insurance” and then again for “liability insurance”. You can also create a dedicated landing page for each industry such as “construction insurance” or “healthcare insurance”. Developing these landing pages will help your website rank higher for a variety of search terms.

SEO is the difference between having a website and having a profitable web presence. Every business can take steps to optimize their online profile with these SEO guidelines. While you can start applying the above strategies right away, it is ideal to also have a professional perform an SEO audit so that every aspect of your website can be optimized to give your business its best chance online. Not only can it increase your rankings, your organic traffic, and the potential for converting customers, but most importantly, it will make a strong statement about the credibility and authority of your brand profile.