An Initial Guide: What Is SEO and How to Improve It?

eCommerce

What Is SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to the process of optimising a website and its content to improve its ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and thus increase organic traffic.

1. Keyword Research and Optimisation

When a user enters keywords related to the content of a web page on a search engine, the search engine tries to match the relevance of these keywords to the content of the web page and determines the ranking of the web page according to its algorithm. Therefore, choosing keywords that are relevant and popular to the content of the web page will help to improve the ranking of the web page in the search results.

Define website goals: Knowing which target audience you want to attract, what type of content to promote or what products/services to sell can help narrow down the keywords.

Generate a keyword list: Start with the topic of your own website and find all possible keywords, then research your competitors' websites to get the keywords they use, and use tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, etc. to assist you.

Select keywords: Try to choose a moderate amount of search volume of keywords and try to avoid choosing highly competitive keywords. The longer the keyword, the less competition there will be in general, while bringing a higher conversion rate.

Placement of keywords: Keywords can be naturally incorporated into headings, paragraphs, tags and other page elements to communicate the theme and content of your page to search engines. However, be careful not to overuse keywords, which can be viewed as spam by search engines and negatively impact page rankings.

Monitoring keywords: Keyword research is an ongoing process and once you have started keyword optimisation, you need to monitor keyword performance and make adjustments to it on a regular basis. Depending on the data analysed and trends, certain keywords may need to be added, modified or removed.

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2. Website Structure and Navigation

An effective website structure and clear navigation can help search engines index the content of a website and improve its ranking on search pages.

Simple navigation bar: The navigation bar needs to contain links to the main pages and sub-pages, and it also needs to use simple and easy-to-understand text labels, avoiding the use of obscure and ambiguous words.

Clearly structured website: Organise the content of your website in a way that has a hierarchical structure, making sure that each page has a clear location, hierarchy and theme.

Appropriate URLs: URLs should be kept simple and easy to read, and the vocabulary should be as meaningful as possible, with fewer stop words and special characters, which improves keyword readability and makes it easier for search engines to recognise and understand them. URLs shouldn't be too long; shorter URLs are more likely to show up in search results and are more likely to be shared by users. It should also be ensured that URLs are not duplicated on each page. Duplicate URLs can lead to search engine confusion and a drop in the ranking of the searched page.

Responsive design: responsive design is especially important due to the rise of mobile devices nowadays. You can start by enquiring about different screen sizes and device types to provide different styles and layouts for different devices. When designing a web page, use elastic units rather than fixed units to adjust the size and position of the elements in the web page, to ensure that the various elements look beautiful on different devices. After implementing responsive design, it is necessary to test the web pages to ensure that they display and function correctly on different devices, and make optimisation and adjustments based on the test results.

3. Content Optimisation

High-quality content: Before editing the content, it is important to have an in-depth knowledge of the website's theme, and you can add unique insights, news, tutorials, etc. This ensures that the content of the webpage provides valuable information rather than repeating the content of other websites, so that it can appeal to a wider range of readers. Shallow content also needs to be avoided and try to present the topic of the website from different angles and levels to provide in-depth and detailed information. Personal opinions and experiences can add vividness and attraction to a web page, and data can add credibility to a web page, all of which can help readers understand the topic better and can be added appropriately.

Use alt tags: Use alt tags to provide alternative text to an image. alt text describes what is in the image as accurately as possible. Keywords related to the image can be used as alt text, which helps search engines retrieve the content of the image and improves the chances of the site being found. Avoid using meaningless text or repetitive file names as alt text.

Links to pages: Include internal links in relevant parts of the page to create links between pages, so that users can easily reach other relevant pages by clicking on the links, thus increasing conversion rates.

Page loading speed: The loading speed of a page not only affects the user experience, but also affects the ranking of the page on search engines. Images on web pages can be optimised for size or compressed and appropriate image formats can be used to reduce loading time.

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