SEO Guide

SEO Guide for Websites : Optimising Your Site for Google Rankings

Getting a website online is only the first step - the real challenge is making sure that people can actually find it. With millions of websites competing for customer or client attention, ranking well in Google search results is essential to drive organic traffic, generate leads and grow your business. This is where search engine optimisation or SEO comes into play.

This SEO guide for websites, including eCommerce websites, will walk you through the key areas of SEO, why it matters for your website and what steps you can take to raise your rankings. The principles you'll find learn about here will help you attract more website visitors and turn them into paying customers.

Why SEO Matters

Search engine optimisation helps your website get found on Google, by ranking highly (ideally on page 1) in Google search results pages. When done well, SEO will bring your website more visitors, customers and purchases without the need to pay for ads. SEO is time consuming, and it is not a 'do once and it's done' task, but the rewards for websites which are SEO optimised are significant.

SEO matters because it:

• improves your website's online visibility
• assists with long term growth of your business
• is a cost efficient business growth strategy (it keeps working once live) compared with paid advertising (which stops working when you stop paying)

What is SEO?

SEO is the process of optimising your website's content, visibility and structure to improve its ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). The main goal is to increase the volume of organic or free traffic from search engines to your website.

SEO is the practice of improving your website so search engines like Google can:

• Find it (crawling and indexing your pages)
• Understand it (through your content, structure, and links)
• Rank it (by deciding how relevant and trustworthy your site is compared to competitors)

Great SEO will help search engines find your content, by crawling and indexing your pages, understand your content, and rank it according to its relevance and trustworthiness. SEO is often something website owners put into the too hard basket because it seems too complicated. The good news is though, that SEO is something we can all do at some level on our websites, and the way to get started is to understand what is SEO and how it works. 

Website World SEO Features

Website World makes SEO easy for beginners and advanced users alike. Our popular website platform has:

• Built-in SEO fields for headings, meta titles, meta descriptions and image alt tags. The meta titles and descriptions can help improve your click through rates from search engines, and Website World makes them easy for you to edit. You can set meta tags easily in our CMS for page, category, product and blogs. Image Alt text makes your 
• Automatic sitemap creation, which will be indexed by search engines, or you can submit it manually to individual search engines
• Fast secure web hosting helps performance. Website speed is a ranking factor; faster hosting = better rankings
• SSL secure hosting certificate (HTTPS) included with most hosting plans
• Schema markup - we use JSON schema markup to provide clear, structured data
  
• DIY SEO capabilities - you have the ability to manage your own SEO using our in-built tools. Check out our SEO Resources for specific guidance on how to do so
• SEO tools including Google Analytics are easy to connect with by using your tracking details. AWStats are available for live websites built using our website builder

Four Core Areas of SEO

There are four core areas of SEO to know about and understand: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO and local SEO. On-page SEO 

1. On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is all about optimising your website content and structure, with the goal of improving your website's ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). On-page SEO is the content you write for your site's visitors, the file names you give your pages and images, image alt tags, title tags, page headings, page sub headings, anchor text, meta descriptions, keywords and internal links.  You can learn more about many of these on page SEO tasks by reading our article on optimising your meta tags. 

On-page SEO is the easiest of the four core areas of SEO to do, as you have complete control over what you add to your site. It does take time and effort to learn how to do, and the results are never instant. It's also something you need to keep doing and for every page on your website too!

Best practices for on-page SEO include:

• Using unique content within your website. Avoid using manufacturer provided copy for product descriptions - create your own!
• Add targeted keywords in page and product titles, URLs, and meta descriptions
• Include high-quality images with descriptive alt text, optimising the file size by compressing if it is too big
• Use reviews and ratings to boost your SERP (search engine result pages) rankings and online conversion rates
• Optimise your category shop pages with introduction text and clear headings
• Add internal links to related products and blog posts. Develop an internal linking strategy which has a main topic or pillar page, and then from here redirects into highly focused aspects of the main topic
• Use a URL structure which has a keyword focus for each page, eg: www.shoes.co.nz/baby-shoes

Read more in our article On-Page SEO Tips for Small Businesses

2. Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO builds authority and trust for your website across the web. These are the things you do which are not directly on your website. A large component are links or backlinks from other websites to your website. Obviously you can't add a link from someone else's website; they need to do that themselves. But you can publish a piece of content so great on your website that they will want to share a link to it from their site. The theory regarding backlinks is that Google sees a link as a recommendation for a website. If someone links to your site from theirs, then they must think your site is worth sharing. In the past though, people have overused this SEO strategy and brought thousands of links from other sites, hoping that the more links they have to their site, the better Google will think their website is. While this did work years ago, nowadays Google sees it as spammy and will rank your website lower. Another thing to consider with a backlink is the quality of the website the link is from. You only want a link to be from a reputable and high quality website, as that is the sort of traffic you would want to receive.

For off-page SEO, you'll be needing to work towards:

• Earning ethical quality backlinks from other websites to yours - let other businesses in industries that compliment yours know about articles you have written on your website, or your products which may suit their audience, with a view to linking to these via their websites
• Trying guest posting on relevant websites to earn backlinks - ask businesses within a complimentary industry if they would be interested in you writing a guest blog for their website on a topic of their choice. 
• Getting brand mentions on social media and directories. Social signals and your online brand presence help indirectly with search engine rankings
• Building partnerships with industry blogs, 
• Create a content marketing plan, which identifies your content gaps and what specific areas or topic content you need to prioritise adding to your website
• Avoid spammy link schemes. These are often advertised as 'get 5000 links for $' Google frowns on any purchased backlinks

To learn how to earn good backlinks, take a read of our article named Beginners Guide to Link Building

3. Technical SEO

Technical SEO is best left to the experts. It involves the usability of your website through both the design and the technical things which keep it going. Because of this, it's not often something individual owners can edit, unless they are web developers. When a website has great technical SEO, it is easy for the search engine spiders to crawl and index content within a site. The elements of a website which technical SEO are concerned with include it's speed, if it is mobile friendly and how it has been built. Having a strong technical foundation helps Google crawl every page on your website.

Generally, technical SEO focuses on:

• Fast, secure hosting (SSL/HTTPS included on Website World)
• Mobile-friendly design 
• Clean, crawlable URLs that are indexable by search engines
• XML sitemaps, Website World automatically creates sitemaps for each website
• Avoid duplicate content from filters or variants
• Schema markup - Website World uses JSON schema markup to provide clear, structured data for various types of content such as pages, FAQs, categories, products, and blog posts. This helps search engines understand content better so they can improve their SERPs accuracy 
• Redirecting broken or old page links, using canonical tags to tell search engines which content is original and which is duplicate

The great news is when you use our website builder for your website, we take care of all of the technical SEO aspects for you, including providing schema markup, SEO friendly URLs and providing an up to date sitemap for your website.

Download your free SEO checklist, which includes technical SEO tasks to do here.

4. Local SEO

Local search engine optimisation is about doing tasks which will optimise your online presence and increase your search engine rankings and website visitor traffic volumes. Local SEO helps customers in your area find you, making it perfect for NZ businesses with a shop, office, or local geographic area. In other words, hairdressers, florists, cafes, real estate agents, restaurants, builders and tradies. Google wants to provide its users with the best results, so it will be selective when choosing which web pages to link to.

Key tactics of local SEO include:

• Set up and then optimise your Google Business Profile
• Collect positive reviews
• Add consistent contact details to online directories
• Use localised keywords (e.g. “plumber Auckland”)
• Local link building between and/or from other businesses or community groups
• Add details to local places, such as NZ directories, Neighbourly, Reddit

Read our article on local SEO for retailers, for more detailed information on using local SEO.

Creating an SEO Strategy - Grow Your Organic Traffic with SEO

An SEO strategy gives you a clear plan of the things you need to do to improve your website's visibility. A comprehensive SEO strategy should help you to:

• Identify your SMART goals - do you want to increase your website traffic, raise your profit through online sales, turn website visitors into customers or improve brand awareness? 
• Know your audience - who exactly is your target audience and what do they want? Create a buyer persona, in which you identify the specific characteristics, needs, wants, pain points and demographic information on your target audience.
• Do keyword research - spend time identifying which words and phrases your audience uses to find products or services like yours. Use keyword tools to help find these, identify what the intent is when the keyword is sued (to buy, for information) and ideally select keywords which have a high volume search rate and low competition. Most likely this will be long tail keywords, which are more specific but do have less search volume. 
• Create unique, high quality content - your keyword research will have identified the words and phrases your target audience are using in search engines, and now you can use these to help guide you in listing specific topics on which to write about on your website. 
• Analyse your SEO performance - knowing what impact your efforts are having lets you make changes when required. 

Below we have included a list of general tasks which can be altered to meet the needs of your website. A general SEO strategy will likely contain:

• A content audit - work through your website to identify content areas of strength and those which can be improved. What content needs updating or do you have older pages which need redirecting to newer ones?
• Keyword mapping - what are your main keywords? Do they start on a pillar page (the most important page on that topic) and move through to cluster pages? What words and phrases are you using to link between pages of your website?
• Content guidelines - which on-page SEO skills are you using? Headings, meta descriptions, filenames, saved images. 
• Content calendar - plan out your content for the next quarter or year. Which topics are you focusing on and when? What current content can you repurpose, which content needs updating and what is your schedule for doing this?
• Building trust - create authoritative content, use case studies, testimonials, collect and share data related to your products or services with your site visitors. 

Useful SEO Tools and Analytics

Like when you use paid advertising or cost per click, it is important to track the performance of your SEO efforts. Tracking tells you what is working and what you need to focus more on, or try a new SEO strategy. There are plenty of online SEO tools and analytical software options to choose from, many of which are free to use.

Examples of online SEO tools and analytical software options include:

• Google Search Console – shows search queries and indexing issues
• Google Analytics – tracks visitors, conversions, and behaviour
• Keyword research tools – help you find the right keywords
• Website World SEO tools – built-in SEO features for optimising meta titles, descriptions, filenames and creating sitemaps

Read our article Best SEO Tools to find out more about both free and paid SEO tools.

SEO Audits and Ongoing Maintenance 

Optimising a website's SEO is an ongoing task and one which should be reviewed regularly. Undertaking frequent SEO audits will help you identify what aspects your website's search engine optimisation is strong in and which ones need improvement. There are multiple website audit software options available online, with both paid and free versions including Ubersuggest, Semrush, SEOptimer and Screaming Frog. The issue is that in order to achieve the most benefit from a web audit, you need to understand what you want from it and what the results mean.

When first starting, look for a basic SEO audit software option which should give you information about your website's:

• traffic - search engines, paid advertising, direct URLs
• how visible the website is in Google
• broken links, missing meta titles or duplicate content
• missing headings, image alt text and incorrect/missing meta tags
• keywords you are ranking for, and recommendations of keywords you should work towards ranking for
• backlinks and overall link quality
• recommendations, including a prioritised action plan

It is important to remember though, that not everything a website audit presents you with needs fixing. Spend your time on focusing on the main recommendations. 

Trends & Future SEO

• voice search
• AI-generated content & SEO
• answer engine optimisation (AEO)
• generative engine optimisation (GEC)
• rich results and structured data

Website World are not just NZ focused. We sell domain names, provide website hosting and our free website builder and eCommerce platform to customers all around the world! 

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Build Long-Term Growth with SEO

SEO isn’t a quick fix — it’s a long-term strategy. But with the right tools, consistent effort, and Website World’s all-in-one website platform, you can build an online presence that attracts more visitors and grows your business.

Get started today — Try Website World free and optimise your site for Google.