SEO – Search Engine Optimisation | aceArt GmbH

What is SEO?

SEO is the abbreviation for ‘search engine optimisation’ and is a sub-discipline of online marketing.

What is SEO for?

SEO optimises a website so it earns a better ranking from search engines. After all, every website operator wants their site to land right at the top of the rankings and be visited regularly.

Important to-dos = on-page optimisation / off-page optimisation

On-page optimisation means optimising your site in the backend. Best practices include:

Keywords

Keywords are the be-all and end-all. Without meaningful copy containing relevant keywords, your website’s online presence suffers. Don’t use too many keywords, though — search engines will consider it spam and it will tend to have a negative effect on your site.

HTML elements

<title> — use a keyword in your title. The title should be no longer than 60 characters or 512 pixels wide, since search engines only display that much; the rest gets cut off. <meta description> — write a punchy description of your page in under 155 characters. A good, interesting description invites the click.

Hyperlinks

Image links – “alt” attributes serve as anchor text and increase the page’s relevance with search engines!

Add like/share buttons so your content travels the world.

UX design

A clean layout and well-written content captivates users and encourages them to explore further topics on your website.

Responsive

The future is mobile – design your website responsively! It’s not a good look when your site doesn’t work well on different devices!

Voice search

With the marked rise of voice search and voice control, it’s advisable to adapt your keywords accordingly. Users use voice search by asking a question directly, e.g. “Where is the nearest toilet?” “What is Ebola?” “Who is Waldo?” Consider the big question words – “who, what, where, why, how”.

Backlinks

Link and be linked. High-quality articles get linked gladly.

Sitemap

Create a sitemap so users can find their way around and Google gets an overview of your structure.

Canonicalisation

Avoid different URLs pointing to the same page. Otherwise your link popularity scatters across several URLs instead of one. In some circumstances, search engines may even treat the duplicates as the primary resource. Prevent this by using rel=“canonical”.

Crawlability

This is user-friendliness for search engines: it describes how well a website’s structure, code and content are suited to being indexed by search engines.

HTTP status codes

Use redirects (301 pages) to forward users to your new URL, etc. The link popularity is transferred from the old URL to the new one.

Off-page optimisation: this is about building your site’s reputation.

Blog

Create a blog for your site with valuable information and entertaining posts.

Content is KING!

The best-optimised site is worth nothing if you don’t maintain it with new posts over the long term. Try to stay part of the conversation and encourage people to share your posts! Ideally your posts are longer than 300 words. Users don’t like landing on a page where the post is only 2–3 sentences.

Partnership badges

If you have partner companies, encourage them to link to you from their site! (Of course you should then do the same for them ;))

Local search optimisation

Personalise and localise search results by registering with your local directories, aka the Yellow Pages.

Social proof influences users: person X buys something and praises the purchase. Person Y hears about it, trusts X and, in the best case, buys the product too.