Below I have written my Top 5 tips in helping you to achieve a higher position within search engine rankings. The best way to start is by choosing one or two keywords that you would like to see your website achieve higher rankings with, e.g. “Web Design” and “Web Design Essex” it’s important that these words are relevant to the content of your site. I’ll be using the terms “Web Design” & “Essex Web Design” as examples in this guide, please substitute them for own chosen keywords when applying these methods.

1. Optimise your Title tags

The <title> tag of your website is the best place to include your chosen keywords. Search engines such as Google will determine a websites relevance based on the words and phrases used within it. It’s important to know that when writing your own <title> tag that you do not repeat your keywords too often, as you could been seen as over-using the term or spamming which may result in your website being penalised. A good rule to go by is to use between 10 – 15 words or 63 characters in your title tag and place the most relevant keywords at the beginning. I’m using the term “Essex Web Design” in the example below to show you that the title starts with the targeted keywords. Naturally repeating your keywords is fine, just be sure not to constantly repeat a phrase; a good example of how to structure your title is below:

<title>Essex Web Design – [company name here] are the top leading Web Design company in Essex </title>

2. Search Engine Friendly URLs (SEFURL)

Search engines will take into account the relevancy of your website to the search term based on the naming of files and folders.

For example:
A website that is un-optimised would have the following structure:

www.[yourwebsite].com/aboutus/index.html

You will see there are no relevant keywords used, so this website is going to have a hard time getting their website to rank higher than a website which is optimised. A good example of how you should name your files and folders to help increase your sites relevancy is:

www.[yourwebsite].com/web-design/essex-web-design.html

3. Regularly updated content

Search engines prefer websites that have relevant and regularly updated content on their pages. You can achieve fresh content yourself easily by either maintaining a blog or by writing small news articles. These don’t have to be hundreds of words, a paragraph would be sufficient, just remember to include relevant keywords and phrases within them.

Note that:
Unique, quality and consistency are the key things to remember when writing content for your website.

4. Relevant Back Links

Having links from other websites to your own will be beneficial to your ranking, especially if the websites are relevant. It’s important to get as many links as you can, what you will find is that if you have something worthwhile to offer, e.g. write interesting content (see tip 3), providing a fantastic service or offering unbeatable value, etc. then people will link to your website naturally over time. It’s worthwhile mentioning that having relevant related keywords in your backlink like “Essex Web Design” will be more beneficial in ranking higher within the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) than having a term like “click here”.

5. Heading Tags

Make sure all your headings/titles within your website are encased using h1 tags. Inserting targeted keywords within your heading tags such as h1, h2, h3, etc. will specify what the page is going to be about and make your page more relevant to the subject.

An example would be:
<h1>Essex Web Design Services</h1>
<p>Text about your company here….</p>

Name:Jonathan Brealey

About:As a Director and Co-founder of Heart Internet, Jonathan developed the company based around innovative features, user-friendly functionality and excellent customer support. Jonathan has been a key player in shaping the UK web hosting industry since 1997, having co-founded WebFusion with Tim Beresford.

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