7 Effective Ways to Boost SEO

In this post, we cover...

If you’ve got a website for your business and you’re not working to boost SEO then you need to start, like, yesterday. So here’s 7 effective ways to boost SEO that’ll kickstart your results.

I’m big on transparency when it comes to SEO and I make it clear to my clients that you won’t see results until 4-6 months after you’ve put the work in.

Which is why you need to start ASAP with your SEO because by the time you realise you need to do it you’ll then have another 4-6 months until you’ll see the results.

So basically drop whatever it is you’re doing, open up your website and get started on this post!

7 Effective Ways to Boost SEO | Webhive Digital

7 Effective Ways to Boost SEO

Before we begin, I recommend actioning these tips alongside some solid on-page SEO to make sure that you’re ticking all the boxes when it comes to your website’s SEO strategy.

Not sure how to do that? I’ve got exactly what you need so you can download this free SEO checklist and save it for the next time you’re working on your website copy.

Now that’s added to your toolkit, let’s get started with my 7 effective ways to boost SEO that you can do right now!

1. Increase your homepage copy

Your homepage is the most important page on your website and Google will crawl it before it crawls any other page. The algorithm uses your homepage to work out what other content you’ve got on your website, how important it is in relation to your homepage and what your website is actually about.

It’s recommended to have at least 300 words on each page of your website if you want any chance of showing up on search engines and you’d be surprised how many words that actually is!

Go to your homepage now, copy and paste all of the text to a blank Google Docs/Word file and go to Tools > Word Count. Are you hitting 300? If you are, try and lengthen your copy out to 500 and if you’re not, get yourself up to that 300 minimum!

Why am I telling you to lengthen your copy if it’s already at 300? Because 300 is the minimum! When it comes to ways to boost SEO, the more words on the page the better and if you haven’t considered your word count before then chances are you can definitely increase it a little!

2. Submit your sitemap to Google

If you haven’t submitted your sitemap to Google, then you’re basically telling Google to figure it out for themselves, which might harm the efforts you’re putting into your content. Submitting your sitemap is a really simple way to boost SEO fast!

Your sitemap tells Google every single page on your site and the order of importance so Google knows how to crawl your site. And this is important because otherwise pages will be missed.

To submit your sitemap to Google you need to set your website up on Google Search Console if you haven’t already.

Once you’re all set up, head to Sitemaps on the left and submit your sitemap on the screen below:

Google Search Console Submit Sitemap | 7 Effect Ways to Boost SEO

Not sure where to find your sitemap?

If you’re a Wordpress user then I recommend installing the Yoast SEO plugin and following this guide once you’re set up.

For Squarespace, Shopify and Wix users it’s a simple a case of submitting yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml to Google Search Console.

For Showit users, your URL to submit will be yourdomain.com/siteinfo.xml.

3. Include images on every page of your website

If you want to boost SEO on a specific page of your website and it doesn’t have any images then adding an image will immediately inject some SEO juice to your page.

Make sure to properly name your image before you upload it, for example – my-amazing-ebook.jpg rather than IMG574.jpg, and include an alt tag with each image too. Your alt tag should include keywords, your website name and what the image actually is. For example – ‘My Amazing Ebook | Ebook for My Niche Here | My Website Here’.

And while we’re on the subject of images, make sure they’re resized to fit your page and optimised for web! See this post for more info on how to optimise your images.

4. Start a blog

I started this blog for 3 reasons which I’m going to be completely transparent about below.

1. I’d like you to visit my website and get something of value from it. Maybe in the future when you’re looking for a new website design or to up your SEO game, you’ll remember me and drop me a message. Or maybe you’ll recommend me to someone else

2. I wanted to promote my business on Pinterest – is that how you found this post?

3. I wanted to boost SEO on my website. And I know that a blog of an excellent way to target new keywords on a weekly/monthly basis and let Google know that my website is regularly updated.

If you want to do any of the above then you should start a blog too!

You don’t have to post daily or weekly – yes, daily blogging genuinely used to be a thing and I did it for over a year back in 2013! PHEW!

Even if you can only show up once per month, that’s going to do great things to boost SEO on your website because it’ll show Google you’re providing fresh content and allows you to target more keywords than your site content can do in it’s own. So start a blog ASAP!

5. Check your URL structure

Google uses your website’s URL to figure out what content is on that page. So your URL needs to properly communicate what content will be found when visitors access it.

What do your website URLs look like? If they’re like either of these:
yourdomain.com/your-amazing-service
yourdomain.com/category/your-blog-post

Then you’re golden and we can move on to the next tip.

If they look like any of these:
yourdomain.com/page5
yourdomain.com/lots/of/these/that/don’t/show/hierarchy
yourdomain.com/products/2640

Then we need to sort this out ASAP! Each website platform has a different method to change your URLs so I recommend a quick Google search to find the best way for yours.

Wordpress tip – You can fix this under Settings > Permalinks on your dashboard. Select Post Name for the best URL structure.

6. Use headings on every page

Every page on your website should use headings to communicate to your visitors, and Google, exactly what your page is about. H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 & H6 are all headings which can be used for this, however you should focus on the first 1-3 when trying to target Google search results.

I’m going to use this blog post as an example.

My H1 is at the very top and is the title of this post and my H2 is the same title again but further down when the actual post begins (below the image). The headings you see such as ‘6. Use headings on every page‘ are H3s.

I’ve done this for two reasons.

1.So that you can easily skip to the parts of my post you want to read.

2. So that Google knows the order of importance for this page content.

My H1 is the most important and gives Google a clear indication of what my post is about and my H2 reiterates that. The H3s tell Google what content I’m offering within each section.

As a rule each page should only have one H1, whereas you can use H2s and H3s however suits your content and design best.

7. The ultimate way to boost SEO

All of these tips will help you on your way to that much needed SEO boost, however there’s a lot of work left to do (like did you know your website’s design can affect your SEO?)

Don’t panic! Before you go falling down the Google/Pinterest rabbit hole looking for what you need to do, or even worse – giving up (definitely don’t do that!), I’ve got the perfect SEO boost for you.

In my opinion, the best part about working with an SEO strategist is that you can sit back and relax whilst someone else fully optimises your website so it’s in tip top shape for SEO. Click here to learn more about my SEO services.

Picture of Kate Smoothy
Kate Smoothy
Kate Smoothy is an SEO specialist and web designer based in Essex, England. As well as being the director of Webhive Digital, Kate shares SEO tips and guides on TikTok, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Picture of Kate Smoothy
Kate Smoothy
Kate Smoothy is an SEO specialist and web designer based in Essex, England. As well as being the director of Webhive Digital, Kate shares SEO tips and guides on TikTok, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Steal Our Free SEO Checklist

Steal our free SEO checklist to use on every page of your website to supercharge your SEO!