Although you might think that the launch of your new website means that your job is done – and that the customers will come flocking – this is actually far from the truth. After your launch, you’ll need to implement a hefty dose of search engine optimization to help ensure your website actually gets noticed by people on search engines. Search engine optimisation (otherwise referred to as SEO) isn’t just a one-off amendment to your website but actually needs to be part of an ongoing, long-term marketing strategy.
This is because search engines are so frequently making adjustments that if you hold off for a bit, a competitor can quickly overtake you. In this article, we take a look at a few of the most popular tools that are used for SEO, and how you can implement them to your benefit.
Understanding the most common tool
Search engine optimisation and good website design should be going hand-in-hand – the best website builder in Australia can’t make up for non-existent SEO practices, and likewise, there is little point funnelling people to your website if it’s completely broken and unpleasant to use. First off, you should start familiarising yourself with ways you can use to actually monitor the impact good (or bad) search engine optimisation can have on your website – many of these are free, so much of the time it’s simply a case of familiarizing yourself with the tools that work best for you. The best possible place to start is with Google Analytics. This free, flexible, and powerful tool give users at-a-glance insight into what is happening on their website.
In the context of search engine optimization, it allows users to see when things they implement do – or don’t – work, and gives them the opportunity to change things up or apply them site-wide. For starters, Analytics allows users to see how many people use their website, and what they do when they are there. It’s much more than that, though – Analytics gives insight into sales, what content works your audience, and where your audience is coming from.
Need more help from Google?
If you still need some more information related to how your website functions, Google also offers the Google Search Console (GSC), a tool that allows Google to assess your site. Google Search Console informs the user how often the search engine spiders crawl their site and also provides highly useful information describing what these spiders understand the website to be about. Have a website where you sell shoes, but Google thinks it’s about hats? You’ve obviously got a problem somewhere on your website, but you may never have known otherwise.
Google Search Console is also a tool designed to help users and will offer suggestions to amend any issues it finds on your website and send them straight to your business email. To get started, all you need to do is verify that you’re the owner or admin of a website by adding a meta tag to your homepage’s HTML code or uploading a file through your Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager setup.
Understand your website better – for free!
These tools from Google are great ways to develop a better understanding of what your website lacking, and more specifically, where it may be lacking it. By also better understanding your audience, there’s also a good chance you’ll get some new insight that you never would have previously considered.
