In the past, businesses focused on SEO (search engine optimization) as a means of optimizing sites for Google and other search engines – obviously, since SEO stands for exactly this. But it is important to consider that, now, SEO is just as much about creating and maintaining an effective user interface and user experience, and building a strong digital brand. These efforts will help your site be more valuable for your audience and therefore better understood by search engines. This will build your search ranking – and grow your business.

But where do you start? Check out these SEO Basics to initiate your SEO campaign and start your search engine optimization process going in the right direction.

1. Get Your Content Organised

Content is hugely important for SEO and there are ways in which you need to organise your content so that it is effectively optimized. Look at your on-page titles. Each page should have a h1 tag that describes the content you have on that page. The title should also contain the important terms that relate to your content. A meta title should contain your important keywords at the start, and the meta description should also describe exactly what the user will find on the page. Your page content should also be well targeted and in line with what your users look for in your page. It should be high quality and not “written for search engines”, since poorly written and irrelevant content will be penalised by Google. Make sure your content is easy to read and laid out using short paragraphs and relevant diagrams, images, and sub headings. Make sure there is no duplicate content across your site.

2. Strengthen Your Technical Base

Your site should, above all, be easy to use and quick to grab users’ attention. This means it must load quickly. Your site speed is critical, since a slow-loading site will drive people to a competitor. Your site must also be secure. Google uses site security as a ranking signal and therefore your site must be optimised for security. Your site also needs to be mobile-friendly. Google uses the mobile version of your site for rankings more than it does your original version. Create an XML sitemap so that Google can find and crawl all your website’s pages.

3. Create a Better User Experience & Interface

Make sure that your site is easy for users to access and enjoy. Some of the SEO basics you need to consider for this purpose include looking at the navigation menu to ensure that it gives enough clear information about how the site is structured. Make sure that users can clearly see where they are within the ultimate structure of the site and that they can easily move between different sections, including being able to easily get back to a previous page.

Effective SEO is not always easy, and it can be difficult to see where to put your efforts and how to make a real difference to your site. External consultancy, such as lemonpulse.com, can make a real difference to your SEO success.