Basic on-page, off-page and technical SEO tips for your website

An added advantage is that by knowing what the algorithms are looking for you can improve your website and better strategise your marketing initiatives going forward.

But first, let’s look at the differences between the three types of SEO:

1. On-page SEO: As the name suggests, it is all the positive SEO things you can do on your actual website pages; making use of the right keywords, writing unique content, and saving & naming images correctly.
2. Off-page SEO: This you can do on other relevant and authoritative websites that can enhance the credibility of your own; writing a guest blog for example.
3. Technical SEO: All the technical ‘Google-approved’ aspects your website must adhere to; security, stability, mobile responsive, etc.

Top on-page SEO tips:

• Create high-quality, relevant content: Whatever content (copy, videos, images, vlogs, infographics, etc.) you have on your website, ensure they are unique, interesting, informative, and relevant to your audience.
• Write significant meta descriptions and title tags: The meta description is the short paragraph that displays with your meta title tag in search results. Highlight the best information and most relevant keyword/s here.
• Use relevant keywords: Research the terms or phrases that best describe what each page is about and use these in your headers as well as in your images’ alt text area.

Top off-page SEO tips:

• Create valuable, insightful and shareable content: Create great podcasts, videos, blogs, infographics, guest blogs, ebooks, surveys, and white papers for multiple platforms.
• Manage your reputation: Obtain reviews, be visible on social media, send out newsletters to your subscribers, hold and/or attend events, join forums, get an influencer, etc.
• Build local SEO: Create a Google My Business account and make the most of this free platform. Add photos, answer questions, and encourage your customers to write reviews on it. A local domain name like .joburg, .capetown, or .durban, can also assist with this.

Top technical SEO tips:

• Invest in a secure connection: A Secure Socket Layer (SSL) will encrypt communication between your website and any visiting browser. It will also build trust as your URL will showcase as “secure” with a padlock or as “https”.
• Make sure your site is responsive: How does your website display on mobile devices? Did you know Google has a Mobile-First approach to indexing results? Get your web developer involved and ensure your website doesn’t get penalised.
• Check your page loading speeds: A website that takes longer than two seconds to load may have high bounce rates. People don’t like a slow site therefore neither do search engines. Improve loading speeds by investing in the best in local web hosting and making sure your image files are resized for the web.

SEO can become quite complex, so it’s a great idea to get an expert in once your business can afford to do so.

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