Sounds too good to be true, right? It’s not, but it’s not a magic bullet that will have an enormous effect either. Here’s what you need to know. Because search engine algorithms are so smart now, the two best ways to improve your ranking are:
- post interesting, relevant, carefully-written, keyword-related content to your site on a regular basis
- cultivate online relationships (often built on strong content, as above) so influential sites will link to you
Both of those things are time-consuming and have to be done regularly and carefully. The idea below won’t let you skip those steps if you want strong SEO, as good content and inbound links will likely always be much more important. That said, for some sites, this may make a significant difference in both search performance and overall user experience:
Make your site load faster
For several years, Google has factored page loading time into its algorithm for ranking sites, i.e. determining which will appear in the top 1-3 (or 10, or whatever your goal) of a results list. Page load is determined by several things:
- is your site optimized for speed?
- are you using a high-performance server and other relevant IT infrastructure to deliver data quickly?
- are you correctly uploading images and other bandwidth-hogging assets (or implementing tools to help you do it automatically)?
All of the above are easy to accomplish and may reduce loading speed significantly—which may translate into better search engine placement. The first and second steps take no effort on your part, as it’s as simple as asking me to do them. The cost will likely be low and the speed benefit will be appreciated by all of your users, regardless of how much it affects your search ranking. The third step may also happen via a technology fix that I implement, or it may come from a short training session, in which I give you tips about the most common pitfalls based on user/administrator content creation.
If you’d like an audit of your site to see if one or more of these will help your site, please call or message me, and I’ll see what we can do easily and affordably.