Why Your SEO is Important + How to Update it Yourself
We always want to make sure we’re keeping our website up to date, both on the front and back end. To maximize your brand’s visibility, we’ve put together a guide to 5 Easy Ways to Update Your Website’s SEO. Although SEO (search engine optimization) can be a scary phrase for our clients, it is easily managed when broken into steps.
As a branding and web designer, we strive to ensure that our client’s SEO is at it’s full potential when it’s time to launch. However, it’s crucial to maintain your SEO even after your site goes live.
Photography by Madeline Harper
Here are 5 ways to update your website’s SEO:
To begin, add a sentence to your website footer stating what you do, utilizing your top keywords. For example, we use “Branding, web design and content creation for boutique lifestyle brands. Based in Austin, designing world wide.” This ensures that your top keywords appear on every single page of your site and that site visitors can easily see what services or products you offer no matter what page they land on.
Update any links on your site and blog. It is super beneficial to link to other websites with related content to your posts, but sometimes links change. Nothing is a bigger bummer as a user (or as Google) when you click on a link that doesn’t go anywhere.
Cross reference old blog posts to see if you can link to any related posts that are more recent. The more times you can encourage a visitor to click within your website, the better!
Make sure your images are labeled (even if you don’t show the caption) on both your main website and your blog. Google uses your image titles and alt tags to “see” what the images look like. By using the keywords associated with your website, your company name, and an accurate description of what is in the image – Google and Pinterest can quickly identify what’s on your website.
Double check that your logo is labeled in your header and on your landing page with your business name and a sentence with those keywords. Many Squarespace, Wix or Showit5 templates let you upload a logo. If you never name the image, you’re missing a huge opportunity for Google to pull that information and put it into search results.
Photography by Madeline Harper
I know what you’re thinking. “Great, I totally get SEO! Now what the heck are my key words?”
Remember, it doesn’t have to be as complicated as it sounds. Just think backwards. What would someone Google to hire you or shop your products? For us – you’d probably Google “Austin Web Designer” or “Web Designer for Female Entrepreneurs”. Hint: Don’t waste a keyword on your business name. That will appear enough in your site for Google to pull it.
If you’re looking for a website refresh, or need to make a website for the first time – we can help! Click here to learn more about our design process.