8 tips to make your website SEO ready

There is no point driving traffic to your site from people who don’t know you, and don’t even like you yet, if your website is not optimised to convert users into warm leads.

Before you start driving traffic to your site by engaging in an SEO campaign, follow these 8 tips to optimise it.

1. Check that your website is working well

You can check your website manually by reviewing each page and check that all main features are functioning well such as download and register features, calculators and backlinks.

If your website has too many pages to check manually, you can use tools that will do the work for you such as: 

Responsive web design testing tool – to test your site on different mobile devices

Cross-browser testing tool – to test your website on different web browsers

Error page checker – to identify if any pages have no content and show ‘404 errors'

Website speed test – since speed is one of the Google ranking factors, the sooner you get it fixed the better chance users and Google are happy using your site. Here are some key website speed killers:

• Images that aren’t optimised for the web
• Animated file formats that could easily be created in HTML/CSS
• Lots of background textures and background images
• Too many Javascript, jQuery, or other fancy front end library files

Work with your web designer to reduce the load time of your site.

Broken links checker – to check if any pages on your website that have links aren’t working

2. Amend your website design

To satisfy potential customers, every company must make their site easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye by:

• Making contact details visible and clickable. Website users are not patient. If you want to use your mobile to book on the go, the last thing you want to do is click around a website to try and find a phone number - so frustrating!
• Making the site responsive. Test your website for desktop computer, laptop, tablet, and mobile phone. Highlight the areas that don’t work or are difficult to read and fix them. There’s a way of building your website that allows it to be fluid and fit your content to any device. A responsive web design will present information in a readable way immediately, forgoing the need to pinch and zoom to see information clearly.
• Having a well-structured layout. Make your most important products and services stand out. Move the products key selling points and main calls to action higher on the page so they can't be missed.
• Having trust and credibility elements. Logos of partners, clients, media mentions, third-party reviews, certifications, associations, accreditation and customer reviews.
• Having a clear identity. Make your colour scheme and logo consistent so consumers can easily recognize your brand at the first glance.
• Inspiring imagery and graphic quality. The eye is attracted to pretty things so make your website attractive. 

3. Optimise your site for mobile devices

To optimise your site for mobile devices, consider the following:

• Simplify the conversion functions on your mobile site to enhance customer’s experience by reducing the number of clicks to 1-click check out, the number of fields to fill out or by implementing a visual calendar instead of a numeric one for example. 

• Implement a call to action to each page such as “Enquire now” or “Get a free quote”.

• Allow customers to continue check out on another device at a later stage by sending them an email with their cart so they can resume any time in the future, from where they left of, and from any other device.

• Go straight to the point by displaying the important content only. A mobile screen isn’t as wide as a desktop, so the simplicity and single focus are the key to boosting your conversions.

4. Get content ready

Check your website and make sure it includes the following:

• A clear statement of what the website is about and what you have to offer 
• Your location and contact phone number are easily accessible 
• A strong value proposition – why should your consumers buy from you over your competitors?
• A detailed description of your products including your product or service specifications
• Some video content to showcase your product or service. If you provide services, your video could revolve around case studies
• Endorsements – include reviews or testimonials 
• A different page for each product or service you offer instead of trying to combine them. Ensure all questions regarding that particular product or service are answered within this page

5. Focus on conversions

Traffic is increasingly expensive and the cost of attracting customers to your website is getting more competitive. Therefore your site should aim to convert as many visitors into $$ as possible, to give you better value for your dollar.

Start by understanding confusion in your conversion funnel using solutions like Webengage or Qualaroo, which offer templates designed to investigate conversion optimisation. This will tell you why your website visitors aren’t converting or what parts of your website they find confusing. 

Add a Google Analytics plugin to review the CTR of every clickable banner, title or image of your website.

Use that data to drive changes to your website. Create A/B tests (testing version A with version B of a webpage) using Google Optimize and ensure you run these tests until they are statistically significant.

Focus on getting big conversion wins, by making drastic changes to your certain pages, then closely monitor the effect of those changes.

6. Optimise your imagery for better site conversion

Image and video content not only add life to your website, they also make it convert better. Using the right visual content will drive greater user experience and in turn increase conversions to get the most out of existing traffic to your website. 

Here is what you should ask yourself when reviewing visual content:

• Does it convey emotion?
• Is it showing a human touch?
• Is it showing products properly using 360 images?
• Do the images included look like old stock images?
• Has the image engagement been tested ?

7. Create meaningful blog content

You should start a blog because great content will do wonders for your website. Don’t expect miracles within a month - give it some time and be consistent. Your blog should be kicking butt within a year if you are writing interesting content. If you start a blog early, by the time you engage in an SEO campaign, your SEO results will be impressive.

Make sure you demonstrate expertise in your field by providing your audience with adequate knowledge, interesting finds and useful tips. If you don’t invest time and effort in your blog, it won’t grow as fast.

 8. Build your social media

Start building up your social media channels and fan base early so you have an advocate community spreading the word and generating engagement in preparation for your SEO campaign. Social signals are used within search engine algorithms so start your social media presence straight away. Don’t try to be on all social media channels - just focus on the ones that make sense for your business. 

SEO is not cheap and before you engage in this process, I strongly suggest you get your website up to speed in terms of functionality, design, content, images, graphics, social media presence so it's optimised for conversion and SEO ready.