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What is the best tool to optimise images for the web?

Male wearing a short sleeved blue shirt is sat at a desk typing on this laptop. He has a black watch on his right wrist and a notebook and pen is next to the laptop

Optimising your images before you post them onto the web could be the make or break of your online business. If your image isn’t optimised then your file size is larger, slowing down the speed of your website. This could dramatically affect your search engine optimisation (SEO) ranking – the slower your website, the more likely your image will become congested in google image search traffic. 

Failing to optimise your images is also a huge turn-off for those who do find their way onto your website. Forbes quoted an Aberdeen group study that a one-second delay in website load time could cost you 7% of sales, result in 11% fewer page views and a 16% decrease in satisfied customers. The following tools will help you optimise your images, making sure your website is highly attractive to those who visit your site.

There are lots of ways to optimise your images for your website, and those that optimise for SEO like adding alt text and making sure your images are named correctly can be done within your website builder. However, other important factors like image size, type and dimensions will need to be altered using external software. 

Adobe photoshop

This premium software is a well known classic. It allows you to save your files in different image formats such as JPEG, PNG or GIF. Once you have selected your options, your file size will also be displayed. This is a great option for those who are new to optimizing their images on the web, as it is easy to follow and fairly simple. 

JPEG Mini

This software reduces image sizing without diminishing any of its original quality. The fact that you can compare your original image against the compressed image is also a big plus, as you can test whether any quality has been lost. Whilst the computerised programme comes with a price tag, you can use their web version for free – another bonus!

Image Optim

Image Optim is a software specific to Mac. It removes unnecessary colours and finds the most suitable compression parameters to ensure no quality is reduced. It pretty much does all the hard work for you. And, luckily, Windows users don’t need to despair – Trimage acts as a promising alternative. 

Now that you have the knowledge needed to optimize your images, it is vital that you utilise these skills when starting your online website. If you’re also unsure how to build your online website then try Go Sitebuilder. Our responsive website builder is designed with small businesses in mind, helping you craft your business into a success. Try Go Sitebuilder today with our 14-week free trial period!

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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 to kick-start SEO for your new website (in 4 easy steps)

Dual heritage female business owner using her phone to update her website's SEO. She is casually dressed standing in her kitchen wearing glasses and drinking coffee

If you’ve recently completed building a website for your business, or you’re thinking about doing so, you might be asking “how do I start SEO for my website?” Search Engine Optimisation isn’t an easy (or fast) task, but there are things you can do to give yourself the best chance for success. Here are 4 steps to help you kick-start your SEO strategy.

Step 1: Perform thorough keyword research

Before you can start optimising your website for search, you need to know which keywords you’re targeting. Just ask yourself which word or phrase best describes your business, then use Google (or even the free Google Keyword Planner) to discover related key terms you could target at the same time.

Step 2: Optimise your text content for SEO

Now that you know which terms you’ll be targeting, how do you get your site to appear higher in the rankings? Well, a lot of it is down to your website’s text content. You need to write it in such a way that it appeals to your website visitors, but also to search engines. It can be a bit of a fine art, but it always pays off. You should also ensure your page titles and header tags are optimised, too. With a bit of practice, you’ll have this down in no time.

Step 3: Submit your website for indexing via the Google Search Console

Once you’re happy with the on-page SEO changes you’ve started with, you’ll want to make sure Google actually knows about your website. To do this, you’ll need to request indexing directly from Google. It will eventually find the site on its own, but registering your website can speed things up. Just sign up for the free Google Search Console tool and submit your website from there.

Step 4: Plan out your content strategy for long-term success

As we’ve discussed, much of SEO relies upon your website’s content — and lots of it. Content marketing isn’t just a buzzword, it’s fuel for the SEO engine. For this reason, it’s a very smart idea to develop and deploy a content strategy, or content calendar. This is essentially a roadmap you can follow to ensure your website is always publishing fresh content — which is something Google really loves!

These steps will form a great foundation for search engine success, but if you’re yet to build a website and you really want to make a splash, try out Go Sitebuilder free for 14-days. With SEO tools built right in, it’s the best way to get a running start for your business.

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Important first steps to make a new website SEO-friendly

Female small business owner sat on her sofa at home with a hot coffee planning her SEO strategy on her laptop. She is casually dressed and smiling

If you’re a new website owner, the whole world of SEO can feel intimidating. You don’t want to get lost in the buzzwords, conflicting advice, and confusing link-building strategies – it doesn’t have to be that hard! With a little bit of advice and planning, you’ll be an SEO in no time. We’ve put together a few simple key points to make your new website is SEO friendly, and we promise it’s easier than you think!

1. Produce good quality, highly relevant content

Your visitors are probably coming to your site to learn or buy something. You’re the expert at what you do after all. You have to make sure that what they see when they visit your site solves their problem. Google rewards relevant, information-filled content. So, produce plenty of highly relevant content such as blogs and articles, and you’ll see the SEO benefits quickly!

2. Keep images as small as possible

Site speed is a key feature of how well a website performs in an SEO audit. If the images on your site are too big (in terms of file size), it can slow a site down and see it rank lower than a faster site. Try to avoid uploading large file sizes, or shrink the images where possible – make sure they are still good quality, but keep them as small as you can get away with.

3. Keep the site design minimal

Websites are becoming more minimalist in design. Minimal design means the content stands out, the site will be easier to read for the visitor and more importantly, the site will load quickly, which is a big SEO benefit. The temptation could be to over-complicate your website design. Keep things clean and simple and your visitors will benefit. Our powerful website builder allows you to create simple, beautiful sites without the need for an expensive web designer or any technical skills.

4. Link strategically

Do you have friends in your industry who could provide a backlink to your site? Relevant backlinks are a big SEO boost, so speak to customers, friends, industry colleagues, etc and see if they’d be willing to give your new website a helping hand with a backlink from their site to yours! If a site has backlinks from relevant sources, it’s a big help.

5. Use relevant keywords in your content

This is very important – you have to write about what you want to be found for. An example could be an electrician wanting to be found by potential customers. They’d make sure they write about the services they offer and the locations they offer them in. Writing articles on previous jobs they’ve done or and where the jobs took place are relevant, keyword-dense content.

You don’t need to be perfect from the start, but it’s important to be consistent. Plenty of content, plenty of information and a few helpful links will all help! If you’re at the start of your website and SEO journey, why not take a look at a 14-day free trial with Go Sitebuilder? Our expert team are always on-hand if you have any questions – so, what’s stopping you from getting your business online?

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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

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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

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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.

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Why is it important to add alt text to your product images?

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Product images are one of the key components for success when selling online. Awesome images of your items will show them off in an accurate, flattering way to entice people to buy. While this is something that you may already have integrated into your routine, you may not be making the most of your product images. This is because optimising product images doesn’t end with the upload. The essential concept to understand here is what developers call ‘alt text’. But what is alt text? And, why is it so crucial?

What exactly is alt text?

‘Alt text’ stands for alternative text; the name hints what it is used for. While most people who visit your site will be able to view the images you upload, not everyone can. Consumers with a visual impairment will often use a screen reader to help them shop online. Many screen readers will block product images, and this leaves some customers with no way of understanding how your products look or even what your product is. This is not solely an issue around visual impairment either – some web browsers, may not show product images properly which makes alt text valuable here too.
Alt text solves this problem by adding a text description to your images which can be used in place of the images themselves. Once you have added an alt text description, anyone who cannot see your product images for any reason can still get a good description of how something looks – before they buy.

Why is alt text so important for your website images?

There are some very good reasons to start adding alt text to your product images. Firstly, it will help you sell more stuff as customers want to understand how things look before they buy. It will also attract more customers to your online store. Alt text is key to what is known as accessible web design; this is the process that ensures that almost anyone, no matter what their ability, can use your online store effectively if they choose to.

The other main benefit of utilising alt text correctly is the boost it will give to your SEO plans. Although search engines are constantly advancing, they still can not see images on websites as humans do. This means that they can sometimes miss a product image on your site that people might be searching for. By adding a text description, it helps the search engines to understand what the images on your site relate to.

If you don’t have an online store to upload product images with alt text to yet, don’t worry – Go Sitebuilder can help. Our online stores include unlimited product listings so you can use alt text to your heart’s content and reach more consumers. Start with a free trial and start building your online store today.