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SEO tips

The best website in the world won't do you much good if no one can find it - this is where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes to the rescue. Here are some tips to help you give your website the best chance of people finding you.

Choose the right domain

Your domain, or URL, is usually the first port of call for both people and search engines. If you can, choose something with your most important key search term - but avoid making it too long, to keep it easy enough for people to type in without errors.

Customise SEO titles and descriptions for each page

When you first set up your Nimbo website, you're guided to fill in the SEO section of your Settings, which gives you your default SEO data for the whole site. Once you start adding extra pages to your site though, for best results you'll want to tailor this for each page.

In the left menu, you'll find "Page SEO" under the options for each of your site pages. When you first create a page, these fields are blank, and the page automatically uses the default site SEO. Search engines such as Google pay close attention to what you put in these fields, so be sure to include your main search phrases and terms (words that you think people will use when searching for a site such as yours).

Nimbo websites on the Business plan and above have access to the Mass SEO update tool under the Apps menu, providing a much quicker way to manage the SEO fields for every page, blog post, shop category and product in your site in one convenient location.

Add "alt text" to all your images

Search engines haven't quite got the hang of interpreting images, so add descriptive titles to help them categorise your pictures and understand your pages better, which will in turn help improve your ranking.

To add "alt text" to your images, hover over the image in the edit screen, click the orange link icon and enter your text in the Title field, then click ok to apply the change. (Note: this doesn't work with background images.)

Add content

Pages that don't have much content generally don't rank that well, as there's not a lot for search engines to work with. You don't need to write a novel, and you'll want to keep it human-friendly, but at the very least make sure you include your key search terms for that page.

Register on Local Directories

Links from other websites pointing to your site is not just a great way to help people looking for your services to find you, but also provides significant benefits to your search ranking. Many directories will add a link to your site for free.

Get social

Another easy way to generate links to your website and is to create social media profiles for your business - and remember to link them from your website (via the Settings page). Facebook and LinkedIn are obvious options, but Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube can also work. Being active in the social media sphere not only increases your SEO ranking, but also extends your marketing reach.

Be patient

This is a tricky one in the age of instant gratification, but unfortunately search engines do take time to go through your site content and add it to their database. Changes you make in your site today might show up in search results within a few days - or it might take a few weeks. Using advanced search management tools (listed below) can help speed this process up considerably, but they're not for the technically challenged.

Advanced options

Nimbo offers an inbuilt automated SEO adviser for Business plans and above which runs daily tests and provides actionable reports on many of the above points, and more. Find it under the SEO section of the Apps menu.

For the more web-savvy, it's well worth looking into tools such as Google's search console (see our dedicated help article for connecting it to your website), and Bing's webmaster tools, where you can get right into the nitty gritty of how your site is being listed, see what search terms people are actually finding you with, and more.

Get on Google

There's more than one search engine around, but Google is inarguably the most popular - so check out our article for getting your website listed on Google specifically.

Outsource

If all of this seems a bit much, there are many professionals around who specialise in SEO, who can offer one-off tune-ups or ongoing monitoring. Just pop over to your favourite search engine and search for Search Engine Optimisation.