SEO or search engine optimisation, here in South Africa, is the process of improving the quality and quantity of unpaid web traffic to a website or a web page from search engines, as well as facilitating a website to rank higher in search engines.
If there’s a place online where you cannot afford to be overlooked, it’s Google. In order for your website to climb to the top in organic search, you need to do search engine optimization (SEO).
These tips will take you a long way to the top in Google search.
In this article, you can read more about why search engine optimisation is important, why your business should be visible in search engines, and how you should work with SEO.
Do you want help with your company’s SEO? Contact us at Big Web Media for a non-binding and free chat about analysis and SEO measures we can help you with.
Get ready to learn more about:
- What it takes to climb in search
- What words to rank for
- What requirements Google places on your website
- What your website should contain
- What tools you should use
What is search engine optimization?
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” In simple terms, it means the process of improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business in Google, Bing, and other search engines. The better visibility your website and web pages have in search results, the more likely you are to draw attention from and attract prospective and existing customers to your business.
Think about it—how often do you use Google? 90% of all information gathering today starts with a search, while 74% of all purchases in South Africa begin with someone searching online.
In South Africa, Google is by far the largest search engine, and it is essential that your brand is clearly visible on it. When was the last time you did not click on one of the first results? Today’s consumers make extremely quick decisions. Being on page two in Google has no purpose. To put it bluntly:
“The best place to hide a dead body is page two of Google search results.”
Let us show with an imaginary example why it is important to rank in Google:
The graph shows the percentage distribution of clicks on Google’s results list*. On desktops, 36.6% click on the first result, while 18.1% click on the second.
*Figures from Advanced Web Ranking.
A car dealer in Cape Town makes a sale half the time a client test drives a car. Users search online for the car you are selling 1000 times in one month. Your website is number one on Google.co.za.
As you can see from the graph above, you will get 366 clicks to the website. If two percent of those who visit your website book a test drive, you will have seven confirmed test drives. That gives you 3.5 cars sold a month. In comparison, the person who is number five will only sell 0.5 cars a month.
Tips for SEO – Search Engine Optimisation
Google wants to deliver the best and most relevant results to users at the top of the search results list. In order to be at the top, you must make sure that your website is of interest to the user, that he or she finds the desired information and can make an informed decision.
Remember that before you start SEO, you need to do a thorough analysis of your website. Then you need to fix all the technical errors and shortcomings that make your website perform worse.
You need to think about this:
- Great titles, headlines, image descriptions and meta descriptions.
- Google reads text, not images.
- Find out what words people are actually searching for.
- Use Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Keyword Planner.
- The website must be responsive.
- Work for relevant inbound links.
- SSL certified pages rank higher.
- Create the best user experience that matches the intention behind the search.
- The website must be fast loading, especially on mobile.
Do SEO on existing page or create new one?
Our experience indicates that the majority of our customers benefit from re-writing and optimising all the current website content. In some cases, creating a new website before starting to work with SEO can be the best solution. The main reason is that old pages without good SEO have already been branded as bad by Google. This will make it harder to climb the rankings. With a new page or new content on that page, the old history will be deleted.
At the same time, it is important to take care of pages and content that are relevant and provide you with traffic and enquiries. Our SEO experts will help you find the best solution for your brand.
How to choose keywords
What are people really looking for? It does not help to be number one on Google for “family car” if most people search for “big car”. Do most people search for “slalom shoes” or “slalom boots”? A good tip is to use Google Suggest and see what Google suggests. Then you also see which supporting words you should include. The keywords help you get a better ranking.
Use Google Trends to find out what people are actually searching for. Here you can compare keywords to see which words are most used.
Google Keyword Planner can be used to see the search volume. You must have a Google AdWords account to access this tool.
An often overlooked source for keywords is your clients and sales people. After all, who will have a better idea of what people want, need, and search for? So ask them.
Create meta descriptions
Metadata is data that describes other data. Sounds confusing?
Simply put, meta tags are snippets of text that describe a page’s content. The meta tags don’t appear on the page itself, but only in the page’s source code, and are absolutely essential for good SEO.
Meta tags are essentially little content descriptors that help tell search engines what a web page is about. It is this information that appears on Google and in social media. A good meta description makes it easier for the user to understand the content, and makes more people look at and share it.
What content must the website contain?
A rich article is a good article! The website and web pages must contain images, and if possible a video. The content of the page should be structured according to the level of importance, where the title is most important. The title must be the same as the URL, and must contain the word you want to rank on.
It is important that the text is relevant, informative, and makes you want to read on. The title must be tagged <h1>. Then structure the text in descending order of importance. A subtitle should be tagged <h2> and should contain support words in the same category. The text must be tagged <h3>.
The image file must be named with the word you are trying to rank on. For example, DSCP113 means little to a search engine, but toyota-urban-cruiser.jpg is descriptive and highly targeted. The image must also be ALT-tagged, with a description of the image. ALT tagging is good for SEO, but is also a requirement for websites due to universal design for the visually impaired.
Let the experts help
If years of experience have taught us one thing, it is that results from content created by a professional copywriter deliver far better results. A customer likes to use words and expressions that are professionally correct, but not necessarily words that most people use. We can do SEO analysis and base the text on the words that rank best. If you work at the same time with content marketing, you also have a very good basis for further marketing.
Google Analytics
Every website should use Google Analytics as a measurement tool. It does not directly affect the ranking, but is still valuable. Analytics is a free measurement tool that is added to the site. This means that Google knows what a customer is doing on your page, how long they have been on it, and how many pages they are visiting. This is a very good indication of how valuable the content is to the user. Learn more here: Google Analytics for Beginners.
Google wants to show relevant pages where the user gets the information or help they are looking for. With the help of Google Analytics, we can find out what is the user’s next natural step and then help them further with a Call-To-Action (CTA). This is gold worth for SEO.
The website should also have Google Search Console, a tool that notifies you if there is something wrong with the page. It is also very useful to find out what words you rank on and how many clicks it gives.
What should the domain be:
- Google prioritizes local domains. If you want to be visible in South Africa, you should have
.co.zawith South African English or Afrikaans text. A website with.comwill often lose against.co.zain local searches. - The latest Google Algorithm updates clearly show that mobile and desktop versions of a website must be the same. Sites without the same content on both versions can be penalized.
- All content should be on one web domain. If you have your own mobile site with duplicate content (e.g.,
www.m.domain.co.za), traffic is split, reducing visibility. - The website must live on one domain. For example,
https://bigwebmedia.co.zaandwww.bigwebmedia.co.zaare different domains but point to the same place. Use a 301 redirect to unify them. This is especially important when launching a new site.
Inbound links
Inbound links are important for good SEO, but if you build links only for the sake of building links, you risk being penalised by Google. All links should come from relevant and authoritative external web pages. Create good content that people want to share naturally. Links from partners, industry-related sites, and authoritative sources are the most valuable.
The best links are “anchor text links” — keywords that link to a URL from sites or domains with high authority in Google.
How fast does your page load?
Page load speed impacts ranking. It’s the time between clicking on a link and when the page is fully loaded and interactive. While making a fast site even faster might not help rankings, slow sites are penalised by Google. You can test your page speed using Google PageSpeed Insights.
SSL certificate
A website with an SSL certificate ranks higher than one without. SSL ensures the site is genuine and that the information you send is secure. SSL sites start with https:// and display a padlock icon in the browser.
Breadcrumbs
Google values breadcrumbs, and they improve user navigation. Breadcrumbs show the path of pages leading to your current location, making it easier to navigate back. Learn how to implement them using Google’s structured data guidelines.
