10 tips to optimise your website

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. It is made up of a variety of tasks geared towards improving the usability, usefulness and popularity of a website. A good SEO strategy is essential for improving the quality and quantity of traffic to your website.

Watch our webinar with Toyin Laketu to find out you can:

• Improve your visibility in search engine results
• Rank highly for related keywords and questions
• Help search engines to index your content in the correct places
• Drive more traffic to your website, and to the right pages
• Improve user experience
• Gain more sales and leads

Toyin's top tips

1) First impressions count

• Improve messaging on your front page and make it clear what you do.
• Show shoppable products and inform customers of your price range.
• Promote different areas of the website with links.
• Make sure you have a clear navigation bar to help visitors travel around the site.
• Include high-quality visuals.
• Keep a clean background and reduce decoration.
• Use a sans serif font to improve online accessibility.
• Present your accolades - where have you been featured? Who have you worked with? Where are you stocked?

2) Optimise written content

• Ensure each page has a consistent tone of voice, clear formatting and grammar.
• Aim for a minimum of 500 words to support SEO.
• Do not duplicate content - every page should have a unique purpose.

3) Research keywords

• Find out your target user's intent. What is your customer typing into search engines?
• Build search phrases into your page content and meta-data.

4) Optimise your product pages

• Regularly review your images and product descriptions to appeal to users at key moments (e.g seasons, celebrations, trends, sales).
• Consider any related content you could add to enhance the user experience? For example, details on your materials and sourcing, process, sustainability commitments...

5) Optimise your images

• Compress and format images for web (75 - 150 dpi, jpeg or png, exported in RGB colourspace).
• Create image file names with keywords prior to uploading to your website.
• Product images should be less than 100kb in size.

6) Use SEO tools

• Check your website's loading speed with Google Test My Site.
• Check links regularly and fix any broken URLs with Broken Link Checker.
• Add multiple links across platforms using Linktree.
• Integrate Google Analytics to monitor user demographics and behaviour.

7) Test your search ranking

• Every web page needs its own unique title and meta description. This tells search engines whether your page is relevant to an enquiry.
• Check your SEO ranking by searching for related keywords, and short-tail vs long-tail queries. For instance 'ceramic pots' or 'where can I buy ceramic pots in the UK?'.

8) Set up a 'My Business' account on Google

• This is a great way to improve exposure online.
• A public profile adds credibility to your business (even if you're using a residential address).
• Increase your visibility on Google search and Google maps.

9) Build backlinks

• The more backlinks you secure from credible authorities the better.
• Always try and secure backlinks for your website homepage.
• Check on a regular basis for broken or lost backlinks.

10) Have patience!

Remember, your website is a constant work in progress and building traffic takes time and patience. Bear in mind that change won't happen overnight. It can take around 3-6 months to see the fruits of your labour. Follow each step and make sure to regularly refresh your content for success online.

About Toyin Laketu:

Toyin Laketu, founder of onwardsandup.co.uk is a fashion business and SEO consultant providing website evaluation and tailored business support.