SEO, short for search engine optimisation, is easily one of the marketing world’s greatest tools. As you likely already know the high street is dead. Consumers seldom turn to their local town and city centres when in search of products and services.
Instead, they use search engines, like Google for example. When the owner of a brick-and-mortar store wanted to attract attention (back when high streets were populated with consumers) they would decorate the outside of their business and put signs up offering promotional discounts. SEO is the internet’s answer to such pageantry.
When consumers conduct Internet searches looking for businesses or services the first websites that appear at the top of Google, Yahoo, or any of the major search engines’ listings are ones that have invested money into SEO.
In the simplest of terms, SEO is manipulating the algorithm of search engines to ensure that one's website ranks higher than the websites of one’s competition. Unfortunately, SEO is nowhere near as simple as decorating the outside of a brick-and-mortar business.
In this post, you will learn about one aspect of SEO, page speed optimisation, and find out why improving it can boost your store’s search engine ranking.
Optimising your site’s performance
Before delving into the reasons why high domain authority hinges on your individual page speeds, further explanation needs to be given relative to the importance of SEO. Firstly though, have you considered hiring an SEO consultant to aid you in your daily optimisation efforts?
Expert marketer Mike McKearin stresses the importance of hiring help on his website. A consultant will be able to manage all of the complicated, monotonous elements of SEO on your behalf, so you can focus on other things like making sales or even marketing yourself in other places, like social media.
In terms of SEO’s importance, the reason it is important is because search engines are the modern world’s town squares and SEO tactics are the bells and whistles that attract attention to businesses within the confines of these digital squares.
If you do not have strong SEO practices in place, achieving success will be almost impossible for you to do. A lot of people underestimate the importance of it and as a consequence, their businesses fail. Until you truly understand quite how necessary SEO is and how essential it is for success, your business won’t ever achieve it.
The main reason that SEO helps businesses though is because all of the individual processes that go into it revolve around improving one’s website so that it is easier for consumers and visitors to use. Whether it’s improving page speeds or compressing images, SEO practices are how you make your site more useable.
Nobody is going to want to use a website that is not user-friendly. If you do not understand the importance of having a user-friendly website then now’s the time to take a step back and take a few courses on the significance of the internet and how much influence your website has on customer outcomes.
Improving user experience
When you speed up your website’s individual page speeds, users will have a much more comfortable experience browsing your website. Years ago when the internet was relatively new, people were tolerant of slow page speeds.
Now, however, they are not. It’s not hard to see why they are so intolerant when you consider how common fast websites are. People have gotten so used to fast websites that if they come across one that is not fast, they will not give it the time of day. You, therefore, need to do everything you can to ensure that your website loads quickly.
Going back to hiring consultants, if you want your website’s page speeds to improve and you do not have the technical expertise to improve them yourself, hiring support is a good idea. An expert’s help will prove invaluable, in fact.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that they can improve their websites alone but seldom are they actually able to. It requires real technical expertise and experience to be able to optimise a website’s page speeds. A consultant will be able to use their knowledge and experience to help you.
When you are looking for a consultant, reviews should be read. A consultant’s reviews can tell you a lot about them and help you to decide whether or not they are right for you. Some people make the mistake of ignoring reviews when they are looking for a consultant or SEO technician to hire.
A professional’s reviews tell you a lot about them and give you a glimpse into what it is like working with them. You should always read them prior to hiring so you can get a picture of what the experience of contracting them will be like.
Facilitates customer purchases
When potential customers visit your website, they want convenience. If your site isn’t loading quickly then they are going to find another business to buy products from. What you have to understand is that even if you are the owner of a relatively unique business, there is nothing especially unique about what you are offering.
In other words, there will be thousands of other businesses selling the same products and services as you. You, therefore, need to make sure that your website is in good working order so visitors do not feel inclined to find another place to spend their money.
Studies show that if websites do not load quickly, consumers will leave in a matter of seconds. As mentioned above people have a low level of tolerance for websites that do not load properly. If you are the owner of such a website then now’s the time to make improvements to it.
Leaving your website in a state where it is loading slowly will negatively impact your store’s sales and deter people from wanting to do business with you. Improving sales should be one of your main concerns which is why you need to invest so much time into improving page speeds.
Other strategies for Improving SEO
Improving website content
Another strategy for improving your website’s performance is to post more content on it. A lot of people completely overlook and underestimate the benefits of posting regular, authoritative content. You do not have to be a skilled writer to have content posted on your site, fortunately.
All you need is enough money to hire a content writer. Content writers can be found all over the internet. Some are better than others so do your research and find one with a good reputation among business owners in your industry. Always ask to see a writer’s portfolio before hiring them. A writer’s portfolio can tell you a lot about their work ethic and the quality of the copy that they produce.
As far as content writing goes, portfolios are equivalent to reviews. It is rare to find content writers with reviews unless you are searching for them on dedicated platforms. A content writer’s portfolio can give you a good idea about how committed they are to their work and give you an idea of how high a level they can write at.
Acquiring backlinks on blogs
Another way of improving your site’s ranking is to acquire backlinks. A backlink is a link that is inserted inside content posted on somebody else’s website. Backlinks can be a highly effective way of improving your site’s ranking as they give you more authority. Search engines like websites rank highly to have significant authority.
If they do not, users of their search engine will lose faith in them and will not trust that the sites they rank know what they are doing and are talking about. You do not have to worry about obtaining backlinks yourself as there are services that exist which will help you to acquire them.
Alternatively, you can work with a consultant like the kind mentioned earlier. Consultants specialising in improving page speeds can still use their knowledge and expertise to help you obtain backlinks and improve SEO in other ways.
Ensuring mobile optimisation
The vast majority of people using the internet today do so on their mobile phones. If you do give such individuals access to your website, you are alienating a large number of potential customers. Search engines know this and as a consequence will not rank websites that are not optimised for mobile use highly.
You need to do everything you can to improve your site’s performance for mobile users because of this. Mobile optimisation is something you need to spend time thinking a lot about. Of course, if you do not have technical expertise you will not be able to optimise your site.
Instead of optimising it yourself though you can hire somebody to do it for you. Hiring a professional to optimise your site for mobile users will not be difficult or hard to do. In fact, it is something that can be done with relative ease.
Improving website page speeds can do wonders for your SEO performance. As a business owner improving your SEO should be your main priority. You can do that by taking the guidance given here and implementing it on your site. Hire a consultant if you are not confident making changes to your site yourself.