1. Use Alt Text for Images

A quick and easy way to make it easier for search engines to interpret your pages is to add alternative text “alt” tags to your images.

2. Focus on Speed

Speed is now a well-acknowledged ranking factor - the longer your website takes to load, the more you will be penalised by search engines, so it is imperative to prune both code and images to ensure fastest possible load times. Sites such as GTMetrix and Google’s own Webmaster tools can help you understand page load times and diagnose issues.

3. Make sure your content is actually being indexed

Although search engines will automatically find and index content, if you have new content on your site that you need to be indexed as soon as possible, it may be worth manually supplying the URL. You can request that Google index your site using the ‘Submit URL to Index’ function in the Fetch as Google tool.

4. Optimise keywords that will generate the most conversions

It’s easy to fall into the trap of optimising keywords that will attract as many users as possible, but sometimes relevance beats reach. A good example of this is local companies focussing on high search volume keywords, but failing to mention location or their specialties. This might increase traffic, but not necessarily from visitors who will buy or interact.

5. Mark up content on your website using microdata

By using microdata, which is a set of HTML tags that were introduced with HTML5, you can help search engines better understand what type of content is on your page, allowing them to index and display it in a concise and useful way. You can see an example of a rich search result for a web page using marked-up content below:

Not only will this make your search results look more appealing to consumers, improving click-through rates by up to 25%, it is also a quality signal, which can boost your rankings. If you want to get started, schema.org, a community sponsored by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex that aims to create a shared vocabulary for webmasters, has a fantastic guide for beginners.

6. Ensure Your Site is Mobile Friendly

In April 2015, Google updated it’s algorithm (in a move dubbed Mobilegeddon) to favour websites that create an easy mobile experience, particularly (but not exclusively) for searches coming from mobile. Marketers should ensure sites have a mobile-friendly design. Check that;

• Text is easy to read.
• Links and buttons are easy to tap.
• Forms are easy to complete.

You can find tips on getting started and you can test how well your site responds to mobile devices with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.