GoogleHaving spent all that money on your website, getting the search engine optimisation  (SEO) basics right is fundamental or your lovely new website won’t be found and all that effort (and money!) will be well and truly wasted. You should consider the top 5 tips below whilst building your website but if you haven’t you can improve post launch but it’s always easier to consider these at the outset.

There are two key optimisation areas you need to consider. These are ‘On-page’ and ‘Off-page’.
 
On-page (not surprisingly) covers what you do with the content and coding on your website. Off-page is what you do away from, or off your website.
 
My Top 5 Tips for on-page SEO are:

1. Select your keywords after careful research to find out which phrases are most often used to search for products and services like yours.
 
2. Use your keywords in your URL (website address), page title (that appears in the web browser tab), page headings and body text.
 
3. Do not overuse your keywords as this will be penalised by search engines. Aim for a keyword density of between 3% to 7% (i.e. ratio of keywords to other words on the page).
 
4. Your Page Description appears with your entry on the search engine results pages. Make sure it is a clear and accurate description of what you are offering, ideally including some keywords and your location (e.g. town and / or county) and don’t forget toa dd your telephone number. With the growing use of smartphones this means website visitors on the move can call direct from their phones.
 
5. Put keywords in the meta data of your page HTML coding but only use those keywords that are most relevant. 

You should prioritise your on-site SEO but don’t forget off-page. Once you have that under control, start to think about off-page work. Check back soon for my top 5 tips for your off-page optimisation.