SEO: we’ve all heard the term. We all know it’s important. But to many of us, it’s somewhat of a mystical dark art, understood only by coding experts, website gurus, and the ‘spider’ bots that crawl cyberspace, indexing content across the web.

As Amy Broadfoot of This Is Human explained during our recent client workshop: the mistake many of us make is separating websites and search engines from their users. Once you bring it all back to user experience, SEO starts to look less like a list of arbitrary rules, and more like a guidebook for good content creation and website design.

Here’s our top three ‘ah-hah!’ moments from the workshop, and how they can help you optimise your website for better SEO performance.

1/ Make sure your content is valuable and accessible

“We need to remember that Google ranking factors are essentially seeking to find and order information in a way that best serves the user,” says Amy, Managing Director of This is Human. “So while the algorithm and ranking factors are constantly evolving, if you approach your content and website design with the intent of making it as valuable and accessible for your audiences as possible, you’ll be off to a good start.”

First things first, it’s important to check that your website and page functionality is up to scratch with basic user experience expectations. This involves making sure your site:

• Loads quickly (no one likes watching that loading symbol spin round and round!)

• Has a responsive design that is optimised for mobile users

• Has a sitemap to make it easier for users and Google’s spiders to navigate your website

• Features size-optimised images with relevant alt text, captions, descriptions and file names

Once you’ve got your website up to scratch for optimum performance, you can assess your content using two important questions:

• Does the content answer the user’s question in a way that is useful, reliable, up-to-date and detailed?

• Is the content written and presented in a way that is easy for the user to find and consume?

This means copied content, keyword stuffing and other cheeky shortcuts are out, and well-written, user-focused content is in.

“When people think of SEO, they often think of the old practice of keyword-stuffing, where you try to overload your page with the keywords, at the expense of content readability,” says Amy. “But today’s algorithms are much more advanced. Trying to game the system won’t get you anywhere - instead, you need a solid content strategy.”

Which brings us to our next point:

2/ Just like brands, websites need to build trust with their audiences (and with Google)

We live in the age of fake news and clickbait - and in this context, our audiences crave trustworthy, accurate content more than ever. But in a sea of websites competing for clicks, how can they find the most reputable source to answer their question?

Google’s answer is to rank each website and page with an ‘authority score’ - basically, a measure of how trustworthy and popular the site is with users. There’s a range of factors it uses to do this, and different types of websites might require more proof of authority. For example, it is vital for organisations dealing with health advice to prove their information is expert and reliable if they want to rank well.

“You can check your website’s authority ranking using free tools such as Moz, and track the improvement in your score over time,” says Amy.

A good way to build your website’s overall authority is by creating more inbound links from pages with high authority scores, such as respected industry news sources, influencers, or peer brands. 

Essentially, you want to prove to Google that your audiences and other organisations in your sector trust and value your information.

3/ Not sure where to start with your SEO improvements? Take a look what the page ranked #1 is doing.

One of the most valuable insights revealed by This Is Human during our workshop was a simple, yet highly effective strategy for starting to improve page rankings using a concept called ‘skyscraping’.

“Skyscraping is the practice of analysing what your highly-ranking competitors are doing when it comes to content,” says Amy. “You can then use their success as a guide for improving your SEO approach.”

This strategy works especially well for what’s known as ‘long tail keywords’ - which are longer search terms that your target market might use when looking for your content. For example, “what’s the best purpose-driven branding agency in Melbourne?”

To practise skyscraping, Google your long tail keyword, analyse the top-ranking results, and compare them to your own content targeting the same keywords. Look at factors such as:

• content length

• keyword density 

• user interactivity

• page authority

• inbound and outbound links

• anything else that might add value and accessibility for the user

This exercise will help you understand what Google values when ranking content as you build a roadmap for improving your website. Offer more value, more accessibility and more authority than your competitors, and over time your rankings should improve.

“It’s important to remember that SEO is a long-term project - one that pays dividends,” says Amy. “Investing in improving your website and content over time might not offer the immediate gratification of social advertising, but it will generate sustainable, cost-effective increases in organic traffic.”

Need support with your SEO strategy?

It can be hard to know where to start when looking to build an SEO strategy that focuses on the human side of web design and content development. The good news is - This Is Human and Cúpla are here to help! Why not drop us a message today to find out how we can support your organisation.