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How do I create backlinks for my lawyer website?

Serious professional female advisor consulting client on creating backlinks for her lawyer website

For many, SEO is a complicated notion, and backlinks are the hardest part of it. However, it’s a very simple concept that can give your lawyer website an invaluable boost and could help your site rank better on search engines. This means more people will see your site; and the more people who see it, the more clients you will get!

Before you work on getting people onto your site, you need to make sure that you have a stylish and professional website for them to visit – studies have shown that around three quarters of web visitors judge a site’s credibility within 3.42 seconds. If you’re worried your design skills aren’t up to scratch, try Go Sitebuilder; our website builder has beautiful ready-made templates designed for your industry, so you can have a great web design up and running in moments. 

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are part of an off-site SEO link-building strategy. The basic idea behind it is building a reputation for your lawyer website; the more people who link back to your site from theirs, the more valuable Google thinks your website is. 

It’s not just good for SEO; as an example, if a blogger writes an article on “The best online law firms” and cites your website as one of the best, this is good for your reputation and will bring more people onto your site, as well as boosting your Google ranking. 

One of the most important things to remember is that your backlinks have to be from related, high-authority sites. In previous years, people would use “link farms” where they would pay a provider to get other sites to link back to their site, but they were generally unrelated, low-authority sites. This used to work, but Google’s algorithm has since updated and now realises when link farming is taking place and penalises you for it. 

Creating backlinks is an invaluable part of your SEO strategy. It might take a bit of work, but it is definitely worth it. 

First backlink steps: online legal directories and social media 

These aren’t the highest authority sites, but they are directly related to your field, and will give you some quick and easy backlinks. 

Online legal directories such as FindLaw UK, Find a Solicitor and Infolaw are just a few directories you can get backlinks from; just contact them with your details and as long as you meet their requirements they will mention you and your lawyer website on their platform. 

Social media marketing is becoming an invaluable tool for businesses across all industries, so make sure you have profiles on all relevant social media, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Linkedin. Put your website domain in the profile for each social media, and you’ve already created your own simple backlinks!

Create valuable, shareable content

Don’t rush your content creation! If you spend the time to write a long-form, evergreen article that is genuinely useful to your audience, then you are much more likely to get shares and people linking back to it. A guide on how to hire a lawyer, or what paperwork you’ll need for certain situations will be useful for many readers and will retain its value for a long time. 

This may mean writing 3000-word blogs, or curating stylish infographics (you can use a free tool like Canva), and then share it on your social media and send it to your contacts in case they want to share it as well. 

Guest blogging

This is where you write content for free for another website, but they publish your name and website domain along with your blog, to create another backlink and bring more people to your site. This is time consuming, but it can be very valuable if you choose the right websites to contact. 

You can also do a similar thing by presenting yourself as a resource. Contact podcasters, your old university or the HARO network (a resource that connects journalists with useful people to interview), and offer your services as a legal professional. Each time you are mentioned on a podcast or a relevant online site, you’re creating another organic, high-authority backlink to your lawyer website.

Be a resource on forums

There are often questions posted on forums like Quora that are asking for legal advice. By searching for questions relevant to your field, you can present yourself as an expert and answer them, giving a link to your website in the answer in case they want more information. This is providing useful, valuable information for a potential client and giving you a backlink!

Look for blog communities around lawyer and attorney issues and get involved; the more active you are on the internet, the more opportunities you will have to link back to your site and build authority for your lawyer website. 

The most important part of building backlinks is having a beautiful website to link to! At Go Sitebuilder, we know you’re busy with your law firm, so we’ve made it as easy and quick as possible for you to get a functional website online. Try our 14-day free trial today to see what we can offer you!

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How do I make images load faster on my website?

A male and a female business owners stood in a shop looking at a tablet device. Both are wearing aprons and smiling

Everyone hates a slow website – according to an Akamai Technologies survey, 47% of customers expect a page to load in less than two seconds. When it comes to the internet, we’re used to getting results quickly, and we don’t like to be kept waiting. If the images on your site don’t load quickly, it’s likely that traffic to your site will simply click off, potentially preventing you from making a sale. 

Not only is this bad for business, but it is also bad for SEO – if high numbers of people are clicking off your site, Google will pick up on your bounce rate and deem your content to be of low value, consequently lowering your ranking on its search engines. Don’t worry – speeding up the load time of your images isn’t as complicated as it seems. We’ve broken down some of the best ways to make your images load faster when building your site.

1. Remove unnecessary images 

According to a report from the HTTP Archive, a typical website should request between 28 to 32 images when it loads the page. Of course, some images are necessary, as if you have an ecommerce site you’ll want to display the products you’re selling. However, if you have multiple images of the same product, or added in unnecessary images simply for web design purposes, you might want to consider removing these. 

When considering what images you want to keep on your website, ask yourself the following to help you form a criteria of what to keep and what to remove:

  • Does my image send out a message?
  • Does it evoke any feelings?
  • Will it help sell my products?
  • Does it emphasise a point?
  • Does it add to my brand?

Pictures of text, or stock images, should be on the first of your list to remove: even if you think they really add something to your site, the likelihood is that they are of little value, and actually lower the impact of your images by slowing down their load time.

2. Size matters

When building your site, you need to be conscious of the size of the image file you’re uploading into your website builder. Whilst an image might seem relatively small on your website, it could have an unnecessarily large file size, meaning it can slow down not only the load time of the image, but also your website’s. 

Compressing your images is a good way to save bandwidth and improve site speed: running your image through a free image compressor, such as compressor.io, reduces the file size and is a good way to speed up the load time of your page.

3. Don’t focus too much on image resolution

OK – so you don’t want to be uploading pixelated, blurry images onto your page when you’re building your site. Clear, good-quality images are important as they add to your web design, and also show site visitors that you’re a highly professional business. 

Nevertheless, you don’t want to overcompensate on image resolution: most computer monitors display a maximum of 72 dots per inch (DPI- a measurement of an image’s quality). Anything over this and your image is taking up unnecessary space without really making a difference to the quality of your image, consequently slowing down the speed of your site. 

To check the resolution of your image on Windows, we’ve broken down the steps you need to take to ensure your image resolution isn’t higher than it needs to be.

4. Build a website for all devices 

When building your website, you’ll need to make sure your site is responsive so that users can access it from any device. Considering that 57% of site traffic is now from smartphones and tablets, you’ll want to make sure that your images are responsive: even if it looks great on a desktop, if it isn’t responsive then the image can be slow and of low-quality on a mobile device. 

If you aren’t using a website builder, or your website builder doesn’t include a responsive web design in its bundle, you can make your images responsive yourself. If you’re a whiz at coding, you can provide the browser with a list of variants for a single image and you can tell it which image size to use for different screens. The browser will then load the right image size for  a particular device, based on the layout and device dimensions you’ve provided it with. 

However, if you don’t have the time or the intricate knowledge needed for coding, you might want to consider using a website builder that offers a responsive site. Go Sitebuilder provides ready to go sites which are already responsive on any device, meaning you don’t have to worry about your images loading slowly on different screens.

Our website builder offers fully optimised sites, meaning you don’t have to do all the hard work in ensuring your site loads quickly. Our free 14-day trial lets you experience just how easy-to-use our website builder is – try it today!

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The importance of localised SEO for restaurants

Modern office researching the importance of localised SEO for restaurants

You’ve perfected the interior design, you’ve tweaked the menu until you’re happy with it and your staff is ready to go. But how are you going to get the new customers you need for your restaurant to thrive? We’re going to look at how you can use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to help your restaurant’s website get noticed with people in your local area. Local SEO can increase your brand reputation, drive more customers to your restaurant, provide cost-effective marketing and increase customer engagement!

What is local SEO?

SEO is a way of applying elements to your website that makes it easier for search engines to index and rank it. This means that robots scan your website and decide what it is trying to do or sell. If it seems relevant or useful to people the robots will push your website up the search engine results so it gets noticed by more people. You can do this in multiple ways, using keyword implementation, optimising your web design, or using a good website builder with some SEO techniques built in. 

This is fine if you have a company that is global or national, but if you have a geographically specific company like a restaurant or a bar, then it doesn’t matter if your restaurant is the first result on Google in the Marshall Islands; that isn’t going to get you any more customers. Instead, you want to use local seo techniques to make sure people in your area are more likely to see your restaurant’s website.

Think about when you’re looking for a new restaurant in your area – what do you search for? If you’re anything like us, it will be something along the lines of “restaurants near me”. Let’s look at how you can make sure your restaurant is one of the first results they see.

Set up a Google My Business page

Google is the most used search engine and it is very adept at showing people what they are looking for close to where they are. This is due to the fact that many companies have a Google My Business page, which means they show up on Google Search and Google Maps as a certified business. 

When creating your Google My Business page, be aware that this is likely to be the first thing a potential customer will see of your restaurant. Choose high quality pictures – of your restaurant and your food – and add a description of what you offer. Make sure all the information you include is up to date, especially the address, opening hours and phone number. 

Use your social media pages

Social media is an important marketing tool for local businesses. You can use beautiful images to showcase your food and restaurant, publicize offers and discounts, and drive engagement with your potential customers. Make sure in each account you have your website address, physical address and phone number to make sure they can contact you. 

Publish your menu on your website

How many times have you visited a restaurant’s web page and there isn’t a menu to peruse? Don’t be that restaurant. Typically people search for the menu when they’ve decided on a specific restaurant, so if you can take them to your website immediately and show them a well-designed menu then you are likely to increase your conversion rate. 

Make sure your site is mobile friendly

The vast majority of people searching for restaurants will be using a mobile device when they are already out and about in a certain area. If your website isn’t optimised for mobile usage then people are likely to quickly lose patience and choose another option. In fact, Google ranks responsive websites higher, so make sure you choose a website builder like Go Sitebuilder that ensures that your website can be used across desktops, tablets and mobile devices. 

Get local citations

A local citation is anywhere on the internet where a website (that isn’t your own) mentions the name, address and phone number for your business. Google My Business is a great place to start, but consider branching out into other areas like Yelp and Trip Advisor, as well as more local options. Does your area have a local restaurant listing website, or is there an online local magazine that has a section on places to eat in the area? The more places your website and business information shows up on the internet, the better. 

Your restaurant is local, so make sure your SEO is as well! If you’re looking for a website builder to help you create a beautiful web design to show off your restaurant, why not try Go Sitebuilder? We know you’re busy, so we provide pre-made templates custom-made for industries such as restaurants so you can get back to what you do best.

Try our 14 day free trial today and see how a website can help you grow your business!

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What is Backlinking and How Do You Do it For Your Website

Diverse culture people using mobile smartphone outdoor backlinking to eachothers website

How often do you take recommendations? If you know somebody has used a product and given a positive review of it, you are much more likely to trust and use that product. Essentially, this is the idea behind backlinking; it’s a vote of confidence in your site from an unbiased source. Backlinking is a great way for your site to improve its reputation online, and can help your website establish its authority on a given topic. 

What is backlinking?

In simple terms, backlinking is when a site links to your website – this can be via a blog or a review. For example, say you own an ecommerce business selling lawnmowers: if another website writes a list of the best lawnmowers and lists one of your products, then they will add a link directing the site user onto your page: for you, this is a backlink. 

Why is it good for SEO?

SEO – search engine optimisation – is where you optimise your site so that Google sees your website is relevant and useful to users, and thus ranks you highly on its search engine pages. A good way to improve your SEO is by getting backlinks to your site: if a high ranking website has given you that vote of confidence and linked your website on its page, then Google’s algorithms will see that your page is of high value to the user, which means it boosts you up its search engine results. 

What are the different types of backlinking?

There are two different types of backlinks; Nofollow and Dofollow. As a user, these tags are indistinguishable; if you see them on a website you can click and follow them regardless of their tag. However, there is a big difference for SEO. 

The best backlink is a Dofollow link. This means the search engines can see that an authoritative source has externally linked to your site, which will boost you up the rankings. 

However, if an external website puts a link to your website with a Nofollow tag, it tells search engines to ignore that link. That means this backlink will have no effect on SEO. It’s not the end of the world though; if a site with millions of views mentions your website – even with a Nofollow link – it will still enable users to click the link and visit your site; bringing more traffic, and more brand recognition.

Are all backlinks good for SEO?

Unfortunately, Google’s algorithms are now so updated that having too many backlinks from disreputable or low-value sources can actually harm your SEO ranking. It is better to have fewer backlinks from high ranking sources, than hundreds of backlinks from websites with no reputation at all. 

Nowadays, you also can’t spam comments sections on high value content with links to your own site – nobody likes spam, especially Google. Not only might it harm your site’s reputation, but Google could also pick up on your spam habits, and penalise you by lowering where you rank on its search engine.

What if a low-value source has backlinked your site?

If a low-value source has backlinked your site then you will want to remove this link – remember, disreputable websites can negatively affect your SEO ranking. Google Webmaster Guidelines require you to ask website owners of toxic websites to remove their links to your site: fail to do this, and Google can penalise your site, reversing all the hard work you’ve done to build a website that is fully optimised for SEO.

Luckily, there are free tools available online to track what sites are linking to your website: Google Search Console, Ahrefs and SEMrush all allow you to check every backlink so that you can remove any links from discredited websites. 

To do this, simply contact the website owner and ask them to remove the link. If this doesn’t work then you can also disavow the link with Google tool.

How to get backlinks to your site

One of the best ways to get backlinks to your site is by reaching out to popular bloggers or influencers in your industry, offering to write for them or maybe simply telling them about certain content on your website that they may want to link to. 

Or, perhaps you can try to get an interview with influencers or bloggers who have knowledge in the same field as you – this can be via video or podcast, or you can even create a blog post, including keywords in your blog as another way to improve SEO ranking. By getting your guest to link your interview on their site, you have gained a reputable backlink to your site.

An even simpler way to get backlinks to your site is by searching a post that is already ranking well, and then improve and expand on it. By creating a blog post with high-value content, then you are not only showing Google that your content should be ranked highly, but you are also encouraging other websites to add links to your site, without you even having to contact them! Structuring your blog post as a list tends to be the most popular, or including ‘how-to’ or ‘why’ phrases can improve your chances of getting more backlinks from reputable sources. 

If you want to create a site where you can write high-quality blogs for your business, you should pick a website builder that makes this process as smooth as possible. Go Sitebuilder has ready to go website designs, making us one of the best website builders if you want a website ready in a few clicks, but with a beautiful, professional finish. Our free blogging feature lets you post endless amounts of blogs, so that you can improve your chances of getting more backlinks to your site.

Our free 14-day trial gives you all the freedom to build your own website within minutes – try it today!

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Why do you need a responsive website?

Portrait of handsome young man using his mobile phone in the kitchen choosing his responsive website design with Go Sitebuilder

A responsive website design is a must-have when building your own website. Essentially, a responsive website adapts to the size of any screen that it is being viewed on – this is different to a mobile-friendly site, which is a separate, simpler version of your site designed solely for mobiles, which might have glitches and is difficult to navigate when viewed on high resolution devices. 

Nowadays, it is hard to deny that the internet is reshaping the way we typically buy goods: in 2013 internet sales of non-food products in the UK grew by 19.2% compared to the previous year. With 7 out of 10 people in the UK now owning a smartphone, it is hard to deny that there is a strong link between ecommerce shopping and mobile phones. If your website isn’t responsive, and therefore has to have two different versions of one website for different devices, you could harm your business’ growth. If you’re still not convinced, read on to discover just how a responsive website can boost your website’s chances of success. 

Reduce your costs 

Starting up an ecommerce business online can incur many hidden costs, slowly pushing up the expenditure for your website. To build your own website from scratch without a website builder means you’re already spending a lot of time and money on necessary features such as your website design and site coding. If your website is responsive then you only need one version of your page, but if it isn’t then you’ll need another version, with a different URL, so that it can be viewed on a different device. 

With a responsive website, you can cut down the costs of running your website, as you won’t be paying for two versions of the site. It also halves the time you spend doing maintenance on your site, meaning you can concentrate your time more efficiently in other ways to grow your business. 

Increased conversation rates 

As an unresponsive website usually distorts the way your website appears on mobile devices or tablets, that affects multiple aspects of your website design, such as your layout or your font sizes. Imagine you’ve spent hours perfecting your site design, only for it to lose all aesthetic when it’s not viewed on a desktop. 

Understandably, a website that isn’t easy to navigate is going to put off potential customers, damaging your ecommerce site or tarnishing your reputation. As 67% of mobile users are more likely to buy from a website with a responsive web design, you need to build a website which doesn’t exclude a large chunk of your target market. 

Having a responsive website also markets your image as a professional: with only one URL, users who share your content on their social media only have one link that they can share. With two URLs, a site user might share your link on their desktop, which is then seen and clicked on by another person who is viewing your website from a mobile device. As the link won’t respond well to their mobile device your website will seem clunky and poorly designed, prompting them to lose interest in your business before they’ve even properly explored it. With one URL, you can avoid this issue completely – your site will be ready to view on any device. 

Improve your SEO ranking 

Boosting your SEO ranking can boost your business’ success dramatically: considering that Google recommends a responsive website pattern, it’s best to follow its guidelines to make sure you rank as highly as possible on search engine results pages. Having a responsive website isn’t just good for SEO because Google likes it – there is actually a method behind it. By using a single URL structure, you’re giving Google’s spiders less work, as they don’t have to crawl and index both versions of your site, and then decide which version to show on its search engine results. 

Building a website with a responsive site design also improves your SEO ranking as it means site users are more likely to stay on your website for longer. Having a low bounce rate tells Google that your site is valuable and should therefore be listed higher on its search engine results, whereas a site with a high click-off rate suggests to Google that your website is of poor content, and should therefore be lower on its index. 

If you want to build a website, but don’t have the time to spend hours coding, or the money to hire a professional website designer, Go Sitebuilder offers ready to go site designs at an incredibly affordable price. One of the best things about our site? It delivers responsive websites so site users can access from any device, and you can even update or make changes to your site anywhere you want. Our website builder provides a professional finish, without the premium prices – to find out for yourself, start our free 14-day trial to discover all the benefits we offer, and more!

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Can you do SEO yourself?

Female florist wearing a pink t-shirt and apron is working on her laptop to improve her business website's SEO

The words “search engine optimisation” may sound overwhelming to you, but they don’t have to. There are numerous resources available both on and off the web that are here to help you create a successful SEO strategy; one that you can execute yourself! So, yes – you can do SEO yourself – and here are some reasons you should.

Learn a new skill

SEO is a skill, and there is no doubt about that. You’ll learn how to study trends in optimisation and find different formulas to help you achieve top search results. Tips and tricks can be found in every nook and cranny of the internet, and you get a chance to play around with them all. The best part is, once you find something that works well – you’ll be the one reaping the benefits.

Save money

Taking on any task by yourself can save you money, whether you’re fixing your sink or learning how to write blogs for yourself. By taking on your SEO, you’ll be able to save money on strategists, copywriters, editors and more!

DIY SEO will help you save money from the start, along with in the future. Once you’ve established yourself with your core keywords and have learned how to write incredible content, you can sit back and relax and watch your sales roll in. 

It doesn’t have to be scary

With all of the resources available today, you’re in good hands. Many online communities are buzzing with people willing to help and share their experiences. Whether you join an online forum, sign up for daily newsletters or buy a couple of books – you’ll hit the ground running in no time. 

Hiring an expert 

While DIY SEO is an excellent option for many new businesses, some people simply don’t have the time. That’s where the professionals come in. SEO specialists are here to drive traffic by ensuring that your website gets the best ranking on search engines. SEO experts understand the needs of their clients and promise to deliver, which is why they make a great alternative for those who aren’t looking to take this on all by themselves. Another reason to hire an expert would be to expand on a strategy you’ve developed or for some new and fresh ideas. 

Ultimately, doing SEO by yourself is exciting, and it is your business, after all! We love learning new things and developing new skills, and you should too.

You can achieve great results with DIY SEO or with some help from the experts. No matter what SEO route you choose to take, make sure you have a great site to do it on. Sign up with Go Sitebuilder today to create a beautiful website. 

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How do I get my website to rank higher on Google?

Female small business owner working at home and using her laptop to help her business rank higher on Google. She is sat on the floor of her living room, leaning against a grey sofa.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the best organic (FREE) marketing tools your brand could be employing. In short, if you do it well, then you will appear higher in Google’s rankings which, in turn, should drive more internet users (who have searched a term surrounding your business/product) to your website. This should help people ultimately, become a customer with you!

There are lots of tips and tricks that businesses have tried to employ to help them rank higher on Google. Let’s take a look at some of the most effective:

1. Improve your website or user experience (UX)

Research by SEMrush suggests that there are four main ranking factors that influence a website’s ranking on Google:

1. Website visits
2. Time on site
3. Pages per session
4. Bounce rate.

It is all four of these factors that directly relate to the people that are visiting your website and the experience that they are having. If they’re struggling to navigate it or there are a few broken links, then it’s likely they are going to bounce or possibly find business elsewhere.

Pretty simple? Carry out regular health checks on your website to ensure everything is working as it should be, and, if anything can be improve! You should even ask friends and family to give you advice on what parts of your site you can work on to make the experience better.

2. Back-links

These are links from other websites to yours – and Google favours them very highly when it comes to ranking your website! But don’t just use any old website to link to you. The Google algorithm sees high-authority domains as a trustful source, so trying to gain links from reputable companies will do great things for your SEO. You can do this by networking or messaging like-minded brands directly.

3. Use H1 and H2 tags on every page

When Google indexes your website, it searches for the use of header tags in your content to easily categorise and store the text. By structuring your content with clear headings, Google will know that your site is easily readable for site users too, again, adding to a better search engine ranking for you. This simple step can make all of the difference.

4. Write regular content

Having high-quality blogs or articles on your website is a great way to increase traffic. Writing around topics that target your key terms will add to your authority on the topic and in turn, increase your site traffic. Make sure your content also contains links to internal pages on the website – it helps Google to make connections to your other web-pages and gain a deeper understanding of your brand.

5. Optimise your images

If your website uses imagery, make sure the files are optimised for Google. Compressing your files, having descriptive names and alt-text will help not only with the loading speed of your site (boosts SEO) but is another way of telling Google what features on your website. The more things you can show to Google to prove you are an authority in your business, the likelier you are to rank higher.

If you haven’t started building your website yet, or you’re still looking for the right tool for you, check out our free trial of Go Sitebuilder. Go Sitebuilder has been created with busy small business owners in mind so you won’t need any previous website building experience. Try it today and see just how easy it is!

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How can I get my website on Google search?

How to get your website on Google

Submitting your website to the Google search engine is an important part of increasing your traffic. Once it is submitted, your site will appear on the Google search results page, but what you should be striving for is getting it to rank highly in your potential customers’ searches.

“Lots of my customers have commented on how easy it was to find and use my website – that wouldn’t be possible without Go Sitebuilder and my own domain name.” Polly Evans – pollyevanshypnotherapy.com

Here is a guide on getting your website to appear in Google searches:

Search Engine Optimisation

Better known as SEO, this is the process of optimising the content of your website to make it rank highly in Google search results without having to pay for it. It is good practice to optimise your website before submitting it to Google, but really it is an ongoing process that needs to be nurtured in the long run to see the best results.

Submitting a website to Google

Make sure you have covered all the basics of preparing your website to be indexed by Google. SEO is important, but it’s also essential to ensure there are no errors or broken links, and that content is ready to be shared on social media. When you’re good to go, you can submit your domain to the Google Search Console URL Crawler.

Every time they crawl the web, Google adds new sites to its index and updates existing ones. Tell them about your new URL through the link above. Please note that not all submitted URLs will be added to the index.

Google will also want your website sitemap. The purpose of this is to enable the Google robots to scan the structure of your site and index it to the search engine accordingly. If you’ve built your website with Go Site Builder, it will already be available to them and you won’t have to do anything extra to submit it.

Google Search Console

business owner with custom domain name

This service replaced the old Google Webmaster Tools to provide site owners with the means to monitor their site’s presence in the Google search results. Joining requires a Google account and a personal domain address. You simply add these as your property on the console and follow the steps to verify your site ownership.

The simplest method is to choose ‘URL prefix’, which should provide you with a code. Copy the code and paste it in into your website, and you should see a confirmation in Google Search Console shortly after.

The bottom line

Getting your website onto Google search should be a simple process. If you follow the steps in this guide, you will be up and running in no time. Go Sitebuilder provides the tools to make it even easier, and you can get started for free today.

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The absolute beginner’s guide to SEO for new website owners

Male working from home Dad holding his baby whilst working on this laptop

If you’ve recently built a new website, or you’re still tossing up the idea, there’s one topic you that’s worth brushing-up on – SEO. In a nutshell, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of making certain changes and optimisations to your website so that it ranks higher in search results. This quick beginner’s guide should help you hit the ground running.

1: On-page SEO

The first step in optimising your website for search should always happen on your website itself. This is known as “on-page” SEO and refers to all of the things you can control and tweak in order to boost your site’s visibility on search engines such as Google and Bing. There are many different types of on-page SEO, but here are the big-hitters you should work on first:

  • Page titles: Each of the pages on your website should have a title that reflects your target keywords.
  • On-page content: The words on your website are all-important when it comes to SEO. Not only should they tell your brand’s story and appeal to your visitors, but you should also make sure they’re optimised towards your core keywords.
  • Title tags: The content on your website should be broken down into sections with headings, all of which are strong SEO signals for Google. Again, these should be optimised towards your target keywords

Part 2: Off-page SEO

Once your on-page SEO is done and dusted, you’ll need to consider “off-page” SEO. As the name suggests, this refers to things you can do to enhance your search visibility outside of the website itself. The most common form of off-page SEO is probably ‘backlinks’, which refers to the idea of other websites linking to your content. Google will see these links and thus give your site more authority and bump it up the rankings. Backlinks aren’t easy to build organically, but that’s where the next step comes in…

Part 3: Your long-term SEO roadmap

The golden rule of SEO is that it’s not a one-and-done solution – it’s an ongoing process of tweaking and monitoring. As part of this, you’ll want to build an SEO roadmap or content strategy which will help you stay on track. Google loves fresh content, and will always give a rankings boost to sites which publish regularly, so having new blog posts, landing pages and other forms of website content being added regularly is always a smart idea. You should also plan to monitor what’s working (and what’s not) using a free tool like the Google Search Console.

As you can see, there are a few things to think about when it comes to SEO, but the positive results will all be worth it. Thankfully, if you built your website with Go Sitebuilder, handy SEO features such as site and page-level tagging, will make your life a lot easier. So, what are you waiting for? Sign up for a free trial of Go Sitebuilder today!

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The step-by-step guide to SEO audits for new websites

Female sitting on the floor up against her sofa working on her laptop

Creating a new website for your business is an exciting, rewarding, and motivating experience. Once you’re happy with the look and content of your website it’s time to launch and start bringing in new leads and customers. One great way to start off strong is with a Search Engine Optimisation audit.

To some small businesses Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can sound scary and complicated, but you’re more competent than you think you are! We’ve broken down a list of things you can do to examine the SEO of your new website (without too much stress!).

Step 1: Review your page titles and structure

SEO is all about ensuring that your website ranks highly in search results for your target keywords or terms. For this reason, you need to make sure that your page titles or browser titles include specific keywords (e.g. if you sell golf clubs you might want to use the keyword: “golf club store”) and that they’re structured in a way which includes these terms on every page.

Step 2: Ensure page content is optimised for SEO

Even more important than the titles of each of your website’s pages is the text content they contain. Not only should this encourage visitors to want to engage with your business and check out other pages, but it should also be clearly geared towards the keywords and phrases that you’ve decided on. Remember to never “stuff” your content with these words, but definitely ensure they’re the focus within the content.

Step 3: Check that your site is secure

Back in 2014, Google made it clear that it would give a slight SEO boost to websites which use SSL. Essentially this is a form of security which encrypts the data users enter on the site. It’s especially useful for e-commerce websites, but all sites should really be using SSL with the “https://” prefix if they want to maximise their SEO results and build credibility for their brand.

If you’re wondering what SSL is or why your small business needs it, click here for an easy to follow guide.

Step 4: Create (or verify) your sitemap

Sitemaps are a core part of the ‘back-end’ of SEO and are – as the name suggests – a list of all the pages on your website. They usually come in the form of .xml files and can usually be found by simply adding “sitemap.xml” to the end of any domain. If you already have a sitemap on your website, double-check that it’s up to date as part of your SEO audit.

Step 5: Submit your site to Google’s index

One critical step that a lot of new websites forget is to actually submit their URL to Google. This can be done via the free Google Search Console tool which anyone can sign up for. Once your site is verified, you’ll be able to submit your URL to Google for indexing, at which point Google could visit at any time to add you to the search results. The Google Search Console is also a critical tool in the toolbox of any good SEO practitioner – so give it a go.

Follow these simple steps and your new website will be well on the way to search engine success. Still in the planning stages for your new website? If so, Go Sitebuilder can help you launch quickly with SEO features built right in. Start with a 14-day free trial and see just how easy it is to build your own website and get started with your SEO basics.