The Intermediate Guide To SEO

Thinking of taking the next step in your journey to being a marketing whizz? With so many options out there, where would you even start? SEO is a maze to try and figure out, and for someone that’s trying to learn it, it can be overwhelming. But if you’ve mastered the basics, let’s take your knowledge to the next level. See how the boost to your rankings can be improved even further with off-page SEO. We can help improve your SEO in Surrey today.

 

How to improve your SEO in Surrey – Backlinks 

 

Backlinks are links on other websites that link back to your own. These are crawled by Google and show the search engine that your site is relevant to the content written; as well as showing that your site is popular. The more backlinks you have the more Google sees that your site is trustworthy and important. Backlinks vary in quality, it is a hidden secret in marketing that having a few high-quality links are much more effective than hundreds of low-quality links. But how do you get other sites to link to yours? A great way to get good quality links is through whitepapers. These are informative articles that you can write to educate the public or a select audience on a certain topic. Companies will use these to boost their products and attract new viewers; so are happy to take on your knowledge in exchange for a backlink.

 

Domain authority

 

A score from 0-100 can define how well your website will perform on search engine rankings. This logarithmic scale is made up of many factors including backlinks, internal links, content creation, traffic from organic, direct and paid, bounce rate, time spent on site and click-through rate. The better your score out of 100, the higher your site will rank on Google. Why does Google take this into account? These factors contribute to Google knowing that your site has a good reputation, it uses this to make sure that you are providing high quality and engaging content on your site that is relevant to your industry. 

 

Site speed 

 

Did you consider this aspect of your SEO in Surrey? Maybe not, but it’s important. How do we know? Well ask yourself- ever tried to load a site and got so bored waiting that you gave up? Imagine if people were doing that on your site. How many people could have bought something on your site if they hadn’t given up? How many would have contacted you for a quote? You’re losing customers as well as search ranking. If your site is slow, Google’s spiders will detect this and assume that the site is behind on updates and that your content is old; lowering your ranking as other sites will provide the information more quickly. 

 

301s 

 

You may well not have heard of these nifty little fixes. Have you ever been on a site and you click on a link but the only thing displayed is a big 404, with along the line of “this page cannot be found”? If Google’s spiders find this broken link it lowers your search ranking. This is because it thinks that other pages could be broken and doesn’t want to direct viewers to a broken site. To fix this problem you can use a 301 redirect. This tool can be found on the back end of your site, it changes the target URL for a viewer when they click on a faulty link, directing them elsewhere and fixing the link. This keeps the spiders happy and viewers on your site. 

 

Featured snippets 

 

Featured snippets are a great way to attract organic traffic and boost awareness of your site/brand. A featured snippet can get up to 8% of all click-throughs. They can create a no-click search where your snippet answers the question before they even click on a page. This in turn greatly boosts the CTR of your site as they trust your site to answer any further questions that they have. This, in turn, increases your domain authority and your overall position in the search rankings. 

 

Contact us for SEO expertise in Surrey

 

Thunderbolt Digital is an award-winning digital marketing agency & Google agency partner in Surrey, we’re only a phone call away from improving your digital marketing campaign and your SEO in Surrey! Get in touch today by calling 01252 413757 or email howdy@wearethunderbolt.com – we can’t wait to hear from you.