Getting traffic to your website is a crucial part of your growth strategy. The more traffic you have, the more potential leads you’ll gain. But if you want to increase that traffic, you’re going to need to improve your website SEO – because the better your SEO, the higher your site will rank on search engines.

But what can you do to improve your website SEO? Is there anything you can do, or is it something that’s best left to an SEO expert?

The good news is there’s a lot you can do to improve your site rankings. You don’t need to call in the professionals either, as most of these tips are easy to action and will cost you nothing to implement.

Know your keywords and improve your website SEO

Start by knowing what you want to be known for. Pick 3-5 keywords that encompass who you are and what you do, and use them in your content. For example, ‘Virtual Assistant in [location]’, ‘project management for [niche]’ and ‘lead generation help’ are all good keywords.

Make use of your inbuilt website SEO functionality

No matter what platform your website is built on, it will have some built-in website SEO functionality. So ensure you’re using it and giving your website a name, URL and brief description – using keywords in each, if possible.

Want to improve your website SEO? Start with your pages

Use your keywords naturally within the text for your pages. You’re not looking to keyword stuff, but you can naturally include them when describing what you do and who you work for etc. But also think about your page URL too. Just because it’s your ‘About’ page, it doesn’t mean you can’t use a keyword within the URL!

[If you’re not sure what pages to have on your website, check out this blog post.]

Improve SEO on your blog posts

You have lots of SEO improvement opportunities on your blog posts. When you talk about a specific subject, look to use a focus keyword for that piece. You can start by adding that keyword to the alt text of any images you use. Next, look to use your focus keyword in your title and meta description. As you write your blog, you’ll naturally use that keyword and associated keywords within your text. You can make this easier by installing a plugin, such as Yoast SEO – as this uses a traffic light system to confirm how good your SEO is in your blogs.  Yoast SEO is what I use on the VACT site and they have some great training webinars to help you get better while staying up to date. 

Improve your website SEO by using a content strategy

It helps if you have a content strategy. Think about 5-7 different general topics you can talk about. You can then break each of these down into more specific content ideas for blog posts. Each of those topics and ideas can also be keywords you can focus on. You then use them within your blog posts and videos, podcasts and the free content on your website.

Think more about website flow and logicality

Also, think about the flow and logical paths through your site. When you add a CTA (call to action) within a blog post that links over to a sales page, you’re creating a pathway. When you write a blog and mention (and link) to another blog, you create a path and logical flow. Your about page may link across to your contact or services pages.

You want to be linking to your other pages and posts at every opportunity, as these internal links help confirm that your site is full of relevant content and is an authority on those topics.

Link out to other websites

It’s a good idea to quote others and refer to other useful sites too. These external links help to not only provide value they also help your SEO rankings too. They help build relationships, raise organic traffic results and show that you’re a helpful, valuable site.

Look to build your backlinks

And then you have backlinks. These are the links back to your site that you gain due to guest posting, podcasting, interviews etc. If these backlinks are from other quality sites, they’ll help your website SEO too. It’s a bit like showing you’re useful and valuable as you hang around with other quality sites. If other people are happy to link back to you, you’re someone to trust.

Getting traffic to your website is a crucial part of your growth strategy. The more traffic you have, the more potential leads you’ll gain. There’s so much you can do to improve your website SEO and ultimately get more traffic to your site – as the above tips demonstrate. But it isn’t a one-time-done scenario. Website SEO takes time to implement, and it can take several months for you to see the results of your efforts. But know that everything you do to improve it is good practice, and you will reap the benefits for some time to come.

 If like me you like to read around a subject and want other credible articles to learn how to do stuff, I encourage you to have a read of this post from FatJoe “What is SEO? A beginners guide to learn SEO.” It really breaks it down into layman’s terms and explains things like local, national and international SEO. 

If you are looking to improve your website SEO, as part of the VA Membership we have a couple of training Masterclasses from Alison Rothwell of WPFiddlyBits on the subject of SEO available for you to implement. 

The VA Membership is the only UK VA business accelerator that’s designed specifically to help you build and grow your VA business, to help you create recurring revenue and consistent growth through regular and consistent action.  With over 100+ hours of courses, weekly co-working sessions, weekly group coaching calls, a private support group and the ability to pay as you go – when you’re ready to grow or scale your business online come and join us in the VA Membership. 

The VA Membership has the option to upgrade to more one to one coaching and mentoring support – this is perfect if you are looking to really scale your business.  If you would like to see / learn more about our one to one coaching and mentoring then you need to check out the new One to One Mentoring page.